CHAPTER 1

THE BULLYLimit the Pain, Target the Gain

My Bully looked like his moniker, in that he was a big guy. The Bully, however,doesn't have to be physically large to be intimidating. I've known Bullies whoare small in stature yet have a swagger and sneer about them that inspire fear.There are women Bullies as well as men. And the Bully may be a first-timemanager or the CEO.

In short, this type comes in all shapes and sizes.

The word bully connotes a number of negative traits, but like all bossarchetypes that I'll discuss, this one is a mixture of positives and negatives.In fact, the positives are often the flip side of the negatives—you don'tget one without the other.

Let's look at my particular Bully, and then we'll examine the best way ofmanaging this heavy-handed heavy hitter.

THE BULLY IN ACTION

As some researchers demonstrate, the three critical factors for the making of aCEO are self-esteem, self-confidence, and self-control. My Bully lacked thislast one, a common failing among Bully bosses. These managers have unexpectedbursts of anger, and their volatility contributes to their intimidatingpresence. It's one thing when a boss becomes angry over a costly mistake, butit's something else entirely when his rage seems to come out of nowhere.

My Bully hated surprises. He was most likely to fly off the handle and castigatepeople when he was unprepared for what he saw or heard. For instance, Joshua,the Bully's direct report, once made a presentation to the Bully's boss at whichour entire group was present. Joshua did an excellent job, but during thepresentation he revealed that we had made a second trip to a key customer tocorrect a complaint. It was a relatively innocuous admission, but the Bullydidn't think so. After the meeting, behind closed doors, the Bully's screamsechoed down the hallway, and Joshua slunk out of his office like a whipped dog.In fact, Joshua was so shaken by the encounter that he tried to avoid the Bullywhenever possible, and his effectiveness diminished considerably; he left thecompany within the year.

The Bully was intensely competitive, so when another group within the companydelivered better results than our group, or an outside competitor did well, heerupted. Sometimes his eruptions had a touch of paranoia to them. He wasconvinced that there were leaks—that someone in our group had revealedsomething to another group that gave them an edge. Or he believed that we hadbeen careless with our electronic correspondence, allowing competitors toobserve what projects we were working on and take advantage of this knowledge.Rather than accepting that there were other good teams and companies out there,the Bully would browbeat us as a group as well as individually for our failings.Like most Bullies, he was skilled at knowing where an employee's most vulnerablespot was and hitting it with a barbed comment. Judy, who had been fired early onin her career for taking a risk that resulted in her company losing asignificant amount of money, tended to play it safe with her decisions. TheBully, fully aware of her past problems, would needle her unmercifully: "Judy,is this really what you want to do, or what your fear of failure is telling youto do?"

At times, the Bully micromanaged when he should have supervised and delegated.Even worse, he let you know that he was taking over your task because youweren't smart enough, fast enough, or savvy enough to complete it effectively.He thought nothing of taking back an assignment he had given you and doing ithimself. While he often was very good at executing these tasks, hismicromanaging not only was demeaning, but it prevented learning and growth; italso made people wary of taking on stretch assignments where there was a goodchance of making mistakes.

The Bully, though, possessed the strengths of his type as well as theweaknesses. He was highly aggressive, competitive, and driven, and this oftenresulted in our group meeting or exceeding our objectives. He was notintimidated by anyone, and he was willing to stand in front of the company's topexecutives and defend our group with convincing ardor. New or unfamiliarsituations were not a problem for him as they are for some executives. At onepoint, our group faced a crisis about which the Bully knew very little, yet hetook it on with great confidence and handled it with great effectiveness.Confidence to the point of arrogance has its benefits.

Despite his temper and intimidating demeanor, many good people wanted to workfor the Bully. This was due, in large part, to the Bully's reputation forsecuring top bonuses and rewarding his favorites—if you were on his goodside, he made organizational life easy for you. He also created excitement andenergy around his teams, much as motivational sports coaches do. He pushed hard,posed challenges, created pragmatic strategies, and rewarded performance.

The people who got along best with the Bully tended to be either jaded or highlyambitious. Members of the latter group felt that he could help advance theircareers—if the Bully could get them the compensation and promotions theywanted, he could yell as much as he wanted. The jaded group felt that the Bullywas savvy about office politics and would use the force of his personality toprotect those he liked; they figured he offered them more protection in toughtimes than managers who were nice but ineffectual.

The people who had problems with him harbored more idealistic notions of whatbusiness could and should be. Up until the time I began working for the Bully, Ihad subscribed to certain beliefs about being a manager in an organization.Perhaps naively, I had always assumed managers joined and stayed with anorganization because they believed in what the company stood for. They possesseda purpose that transcended their personal mission. They were loyal to thecompany, their bosses, and their teams. Though they certainly had individualgoals—in terms of salary, bonuses, titles, and so on—they were alsomotivated by factors larger than these personal objectives. While my previousbosses had flaws, most were driven by a group vision—they wanted theirteams, their departments, their divisions, and their organizations to do well.

The Bully wanted himself to do well, and if others also did well, that was finebut of secondary concern. Such selfish behavior was difficult to deal with. Atbest, it was disillusioning. At worst, it bred cynicism and similarly...