How to handle a bad boss

In an excerpt from her new book, Harvard Business School lecturer Margaret C. Andrews lays out strategies for dealing with a bad boss.

Most of us will work for a really bad boss at some point in our lives, perhaps more than one. Research by the Harris Poll bears this out, showing that more than 70 percent of workers have had at least one such noxious manager in their career. These difficult managers can range from inexperienced and incompetent bosses to truly mean-spirited individuals who have little regard for human suffering. Researchers have found that when we experience incivility in the workplace, about half of people intentionally decreased their work effort, more than three-quarters said it decreased their commitment to the organization involved, and more than one in ten said they had left a job because of poor treatment/behavior.