Stuck With a Bad Boss? You're Not Alone

If you work for someone else, it’s highly likely that sometime during your career you have worked for someone that wasn’t the highest on your admiration and respect list. :) It’s an all too common occurrence in the business world.

Even today, with an abundance of management advice and help available, people get promoted into positions for the wrong reasons or someone hits the wall against the Peter Principle. With the current economic environment, many team members feel the need to stay right where they are -- miserable or not.

And plenty of them are miserable according to a recent study by Sperion Staffing Services (pdf). Here are some of the highlights (so to speak!).

• More than one-third of workers (34 percent) say they are somewhat or very dissatisfied with their relationship with their boss.
• Nearly half (45 percent) of U.S. workers indicate their relationship with their boss has been affected by the recession and 74 percent of these workers say the recession has weakened their relationship with their boss negatively.
• 38 percent of workers indicated their boss is somewhat or very uncaring when it comes to their career development.
• One out of four workers feels their boss is somewhat or very dishonest about their job security, and more than half (53 percent) feels their boss doesn’t respect them as a professional equal.

According to the survey, many employees feel they could do their bosses job better, so you would think that with all this dissatisfaction, team members might want to step into their bosses shoes, but that doesn’t seem to be the case.

• Only 34 percent of workers would accept their bosses’ job if it were offered to them, with a full 40 percent saying they would not accept their bosses’ job.

Given that people leave managers, not companies, this is not good news.

But what does this mean for you? If you work for someone else, you need to decide whether it’s worth staying with your company. If it is, set out a plan to mitigate the “bad” stuff and make the most of your career. If it’s not, then make sure your resume is in good shape and start tapping into your network so you can learn about new opportunities.

And if you’re the boss, take a good hard look at yourself to see what you can change to be a better leader.

What do you think about this survey? Please leave your thoughts in the comments.