It turns out that we are not skeptical about managers per se. Rather, we are profoundly suspicious of power, and the way managers historically have abused it. A traditional manager controls your pay, your promotions, your workload, your coming and going, whether you have a job or not, and these days even reaches into your evenings and weekends. While a manager doesn’t necessarily abuse any of these sources of power, the potential for abuse exists. Our anxieties about toxic bosses show up everywhere in the culture, from Michael Scott on The Office to the recent flood of books like The No
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