All right. I need to get something off of my chest and I know this might ruffle some feathers or even feel very confronting, but it’s important for you to hear this for your own peace of mind and success at work. We need to stop boss bashing. And today, I’m going to share an unpopular opinion about so called difficult bosses, one that might make you maybe a bit uncomfortable at first, but could potentially transform your career trajectory.

This isn’t going to be one of those feel good, your boss is the problem type episodes, but it is going to be about taking your power back and getting what you want at work, whether your boss ends up being your biggest fan or not. Now, I know everything I’m going to share today is not going to win me any popularity contests on LinkedIn or social media. Because trust me, I see those viral posts every single day. 10 signs, you have a bad boss. It has 5, 000 comments all piling on about horrible managers.

And they rack up engagement because let’s be honest, it feels good to be validated, to have thousands of people confirm that, yes, your boss should give clear directions. And no, you shouldn’t have to deal with constant priorities changing.

Before I go any further. Let me be crystal, crystal clear about something. There are genuinely toxic bosses out there. I have worked with clients who have experienced real serious workplace bullying, discrimination, abuse. That is serious. It is unacceptable. It requires intervention. And unfortunately, in some cases, even legal action.

That’s not what we’re talking about today. What I’m talking about is the other 90 percent of situations we see every day or you may encounter every day because when someone comes to us and tells us that their boss is impossible to work with maybe because they never give clear enough directions about what they want.

They change priorities halfway through a project. They cut you off in a meeting before you can even finish your point. They want daily updates. They ask for more data. They shoot down your ideas in front of people.

Whatever the situation is. These lists of frustrations, annoyances, they go on and on. And I bet as I’m saying these, you’re nodding your head right now.

And maybe even thinking of that meeting last week where your boss did one of those exact things. Here’s what I know, and I have seen time and time again over the last decade plus. When we label these behaviors as difficult, or even jump to labeling them as toxic, we’re missing something crucial that’s actually keeping us stuck in patterns.

And those patterns can cost you promotions, exciting projects, and yes, even more money. Because when someone says, my boss is difficult, sometimes what they’re really saying is, my boss is more direct than I am. My boss needs more data and evidence than I do. My boss isn’t as open to brainstorming as I am.

My boss focuses on details while I would prefer to focus on the big picture. So in other words, your boss processes information differently than you do. They make decisions in a way that might feel totally foreign to you. They have pressures and priorities you might not fully see. Or they communicate in a style that clashes with yours.

Does this mean that any of these behaviors don’t drive you crazy. Of course not. Does it mean that you shouldn’t wish your boss was a better communicator or more consistent or that they take responsibility and ownership to improve as a leader? Absolutely not. But what I want you to consider is what if labeling your boss as difficult or impossible to work with for these types of behaviors, what if it isn’t just inaccurate?

But what if more importantly, it’s actually giving away your power. We’re going to get to that in just a second. But here’s what’s missing from all of those viral boss bashing posts on social media. Most leaders are decent people. They are just trying to do their job. They’re trying to get through every week.

Leaders, the people you report to, they are imperfect, stressed, complex humans. They are juggling competing priorities. Most of which you can’t even see. That VP that keeps changing project timelines, she’s probably getting hammered with pressure from the C suite to switch directions every week and chase shiny new objects.

That director who seems to unnecessarily focus on all of the minutiae, he might be dealing with audit concerns you don’t know about and that he’s under a lot of scrutiny to be accountable for. I am not giving poor quality management a pass here. Bad management has real costs to people’s wellbeing, to team performance, to the bottom line. And we shouldn’t sugarcoat that or pretend that it’s okay. When you are in a position of power and authority, you should be held to a slightly higher standard.

But here is the thing about having empathy for your leader’s situation. Empathy does not mean you approve of their behavior or that you think it’s okay. It doesn’t mean that you just stop advocating for better practices or pushing for changes you want to see. But what it does mean is that you stop taking their behavior so personally, you’re able to put it into context.

You stop burning precious energy, ranting about it in your group chat with your friends or to your spouse all night. And you start dealing with reality as it is. This is not an either or situation, it’s a both and. You can both understand why your boss acts the way they do and push for better treatment.

You can both understand their pressures and be more assertive about your boundaries. You can work within the current reality and work to change it. It’s both. When you stop viewing your boss as the enemy, you start seeing them as a complex human in a complex system. You open up new possibilities for influence and impact.

And this is psychological flexibility in action. And psychological flexibility is the ability to adapt your approach based on what the situation calls for instead of just getting stuck in rigid patterns of thinking, reacting. And research shows that psychological flexibility is directly related, directly correlates with lower stress, less depression, anxiety, less insomnia, improved sleep quality. And that’s because when you’re able to be psychologically flexible, able to respond to the conditions, you’re not taking every interaction as a personal attack. You’re not ruminating about every comment or decision that you disagree with.

And in this context that we’re talking about today, psychological flexibility goes beyond just managing your own emotions.

Though that is a very, very big part of it. It’s also about consciously choosing how you interpret and how you respond to people that are in positions of power.

So just take a moment to think about your current patterns. When your boss interrupts you in a meeting, do you immediately shut down and withdraw?

When they send you that short email about your project timeline, do you spiral into second guessing about your job security. When they change priorities without explanation? Do you just feel your blood pressure rising your blood boiling and you find yourself venting to anyone who will listen to you?

Let me break down for you what’s actually happening in these moments. Your brain perceives all of that as a threat. Your boss, your boss’s behavior rather, triggers something that feels threatening to your status, your autonomy, your competence. And because you’re human, you react. You might get defensive.

Like, they just don’t understand how much work this is. You might withdraw, pull back. Why bother? Why bother sharing my ideas if they’re just going to shoot them down anyway? You might lash out passive aggressively. Well, it must be nice to do whatever you want. And those reactions, they are costing you.

They are costing you energy. Opportunities, quite possibly your next promotion. You’re reinforcing a pattern that keeps you stuck. Because your boss senses your resistance, your withdrawal, which affects how they interact with you, which triggers more defensive reactions from you and round and round and round we go. But what if instead of just reacting automatically, you could pause, assess the situation objectively and choose a response that actually serves your goals?

This is where psychological flexibility becomes so powerful. Instead of taking that interruption personally, you might just notice it, observe and think, well, interesting, my boss tends to interrupt me more when we’re discussing numbers. So maybe I can try inputting my data earlier in the conversation so they feel more comfortable with the direction.

Or instead of stewing over that terse email, you might think maybe they’re under pressure from their boss too. They, they need an update on this to report up the chain. How can I frame this timeline discussion in a way that helps them manage up more effectively? The most successful professionals we work with, the ones who consistently advance, who get pulled into exciting opportunities, who have autonomy, flexibility over their work, their schedules, they have mastered this skill of psychological flexibility.

They are not immune to feeling frustrated. or triggered. They just know how to work with those reactions rather than being controlled by them. You don’t need to become some enlightened, completely zen being who never gets annoyed at work. That is not realistic. It’s never going to happen, but you do need to be strategic with your energy and your responses.

You need to choose behaviors that align with your longterm career goals, rather than just giving in to your immediate emotional reaction. And when you can flex your style, maybe leading with data for a very analytical boss, but focusing on vision and possibilities with your big picture client, when you can do that, you become known as someone who can work with anyone effectively. You can navigate different personality types and working styles.

And when you can do that, you’re the one who gets tapped for important projects and for high visibility work.

And this skill is only becoming more crucial. Because we are living in an era of constant reorganizations, shorter leadership tenures.

we have matrix reporting structures where you may be juggling multiple stakeholders on one project that all have different working styles. Your boss today may be gone in three to six months replaced by someone who has a completely different approach and set of expectations.

So we need to get better at adapting yet all too often, we’re just talking past each other in the workplace, not because we’re trying to be difficult, but because nobody ever taught us that these psychological, these personality differences exist. Let alone, how do we actually navigate them?

Just think about when was the last time your company offered training on how to work with someone that processes information completely differently than you do. It happens every day, but we rarely, if ever, get training and education on that. And this is exactly why I wrote my new book, managing up how to get what you need from the people in charge, because as a therapist, as a emotions researcher, I’ve spent years deep in the psychology, the neuroscience of influence, emotion regulation, human behavior in the workplace.

What I kept seeing was that all of this incredible knowledge about how humans work, how we make decisions, how we affect one another. It was all locked away in academic papers and ivory towers. Meanwhile, we need these insights the most in our everyday work lives. Where we spend 70, 80 percent of our time, where every interaction can feel like it’s loaded with a power dynamic. We’re having high stakes conversations. We have complex relationships with people who can make or break our careers. When your boss’s comment sends you into emotional tailspin, when you spend hours crafting that perfect email, that’s still somehow missed the mark. When you left a meeting thinking, why can’t the people here just see my value or just can’t get on board with my idea? When those things happen? They are not just communication problems.

They are psychology problems. Because we have to understand how human brains actually work and when you can do that, you can cut through the noise. You can get through to the people whose decisions actually impact your work, your career, your livelihood. So we need to take these psychological principles that have been proven in research labs and therapy offices and put them to work for you in your next conversation.

So let me walk you through some examples of what this might look like. Let’s say you are pitching a new, automated reporting system. When you do that, instead of diving into what excites you about the project, maybe it’s a cool technology, it will be a great opportunity for you to learn. You flex your approach based on who you’re talking to.

So let’s say you’re talking to a VP who tends to be more of a big picture thinker. You might say there are three particular market trends that are making this reporting essential for us to stay competitive. First, our key competitors have used this same reporting system to reduce lag time. Second, our clients are increasingly interested in this other trend. And third, that positions us to scale our operations. Maybe you are trying to pitch this idea to a stakeholder who is very risk averse and hesitant. With them, you might say, Let me start by addressing the three biggest risks we’ve identified. Data security, system integration, and the team actually getting on board and adopting this technology. Here are some specific mitigation strategies for each of those. Then walk through your contingency plan.

Well, let’s take another scenario. Maybe you need to give feedback to your boss about their style. Instead of coming out and saying, you are always changing priorities. It’s causing all of us a lot of headache. Here’s how you might reframe that. Let’s say your boss is very data driven. You might say I’ve been tracking our team’s productivity and in sprints where we maintain our original scope, we deliver about 40 percent more features. And so you’re attuning to what your boss cares about, which is data productivity.

Let’s say you’re giving this feedback to a boss. Who’s more relationship oriented, cares more about perception. You might say, I’ve noticed something interesting about our team’s collaboration and in meetings where we get to fully discuss and deep dive on one topic, like last week in the product review, it seems like people leave feeling really energized and on the same page. But in meetings where we’re jumping between different priorities, there seems to be a lot more confusion and, you know, after meeting conversations that we have to have to clarify direction.

Let’s take one more example. Let’s say you need to set boundaries around the fact that you are getting late night emails. So here’s how to frame it based on what your boss or the person you’re talking to cares about the most. Let’s say your boss is very focused on process and procedures. You might say when we have to respond to emails late at night, that totally throws off our workflow for the next day. People are coming into multiple email threads that they need to sort through and catch up on, which delays our 9am meetings and pushes back our entire schedule.

Or let’s say you are having to set this boundary around late night emails with a boss who is very stakeholder focused. You might say those late night emails are starting to create a risk with our clients. When we are rushing to respond late at night, we’re more likely to make mistakes or miss important details. And if we keep this up, it could damage our relationship with this key client.

So in all of these examples, I just shared, notice what is happening there. We are not changing the core message. We’re not being manipulative or dishonoring ourselves. We’re simply translating. We’re translating our needs and ideas into a language that resonates with different styles and approaches.

And I want you to think about the leaders you admire the most. I bet they have this ability. They can read a room. They can adjust their approach based on the audience. They can influence across different styles and preferences. They are not stuck in one rigid way of doing things. They’re not thrown off when the unexpected happens.

This is what I mean when I say the boss bashing narrative is keeping you stuck. When you’re busy complaining about how your boss should change, you are missing the opportunity to develop this very, very crucial skill that will serve you throughout your entire career. You don’t actually need your boss to change in order to succeed. And the truth is you might be waiting forever for that to happen. You can’t count on it. You just need a different strategy.

So here’s what I want you to consider. What if, instead of wishing your boss was different, you got curious about how they operate? What if, instead of resisting their style, you saw it as an opportunity to build your psychological flexibility? Or, you saw it as a puzzle to solve to get more of what you want and need at work?

I want to leave you with a few questions so that you can begin unpacking this for yourself.

Number one. Think about your last three frustrating interactions with your leader. What were you assuming about their intentions? What else might have been going on that you couldn’t see? Expand your thinking.

Number two. When you pitch ideas, do you present them the way you would want to hear them or the way your audience needs to receive them? What’s the difference there? Number three. Notice your triggers. What specific behaviors from people in authority tend to make you shut down or get defensive? What would happen if you got curious about those reactions instead?

And number four. Look at your success patterns. Or look at the success patterns around you. Think of someone who seems to navigate the politics around you effortlessly. How do they adjust their communication style for different audiences? Or think about times when you have been able to do that. What worked? What was different in those situations?

Now here’s the bottom line. From everything we’ve talked about in today’s episode.

Stop letting style differences hold you back from the recognition and opportunities you deserve. Having a so called difficult boss doesn’t mean your career has to suffer. It doesn’t mean watching opportunities just pass you by. And it certainly doesn’t mean settling for less than you deserve.

You have a choice. You can keep spinning your wheels, feeling frustrated and stuck by other people’s behavior, watching others get ahead while you’re still trying to figure out why your excellent work is not being recognized. Or you can learn to navigate these differences strategically and get what you want regardless of who you report to.

This is exactly why I wrote Managing Up How to Get What You Need From the People in Charge. This is not just another business book that’s full of the same old tired advice about building rapport and improving communication. This is a hyper practical field guide to getting ahead in the real world of work as it exists today where bosses aren’t perfect, personality clash, and your success depends on your ability to influence up, down and across your organization. So if you are ready to stop feeling derailed, every time your boss changes direction to get your ideas heard and implemented, not just nodded at. To land the high visibility projects you want, instead of watching them go to others. To finally feel confident in high stakes conversations and create boundaries that actually stick. This book is for you.

We are now down to the final days to pre order and get over $400 worth of bonuses and exclusive implementation resources so you can get a jumpstart on the content. And when you head to managingup.com and pre order now, you will get instant access to three amazing bonuses. The first of those is the on demand Push Back and Protect Your Time Training.

This training is going to help you get two to three hours back every week with word for word scripts so that you can decline unrealistic deadlines, extra meetings, and scope creep. It also shows you what to say and do when your boss challenges, pushes back on your boundaries that actually makes them respect you more.

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All right. Thanks so much for tuning in today and bye for now. ​