On Leadership: Wrong reaction to an abusive boss can make things worse

Random fact: There is such a thing as National Boss Day, and it was this month. This baffling calendar milestone — recognized by Hallmark and apparently intended as a moment to show appreciation for your manager — may be the most groan-inducing, unofficial pseudo-holiday of them all. That’s especially the case for people with an abusive boss who likes to ridicule them or put them down in front of others.

While more attention has been given to the effect of bad supervisors at work — lousy managers can make you sick and ruin your family life — there has been less focus on how employees’ response to that bad behavior helps or hurts the situation.

Recent research, however, shows that your reaction to an insulting or belittling boss can, over time, make things worse.

A forthcoming paper in the Journal of Applied Psychology surveyed nearly 250 employees in a variety of organizations over a six-month period about their bosses’ behavior and their own.

The researchers found that trying to avoid bosses who had behaved poorly, as well as retaliating against their abusive acts, created a vicious cycle that was linked with subsequent mistreatment.

That’s not too surprising. If you jab at a boss who treats you poorly, it makes sense that more ridicule might come your way.

But the researchers also found something they didn’t expect. They predicted that acts of compassion and empathy — assisting bad bosses by going above and beyond, helping with heavy workloads even when they’re not asked to — would help lessen future rude or abusive behavior. But the study found that wasn’t true.

“Abusive supervisors didn’t respond to followers being positive and compassionate, and doing things to be supportive,” said Charlice Hurst, an assistant professor at Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Business, who was a coauthor on the paper. Their findings, she said, seem to “clash with common sense.”

In the paper, the researchers say one explanation may be that bosses just see all that extra work as part of the job, something that academics refer to as “organizational citizenship,” and therefore don’t feel the need to treat their employees any better because of those efforts.

So if avoiding or lashing out at your boss is linked with more bad behavior — and if compassion and assistance do little to help — what should employees do to deal with their very own Bill Lumbergh or Montgomery Burns?

Hurst says their paper doesn’t answer that question; so far, they have discovered only what not to do.

“I think companies have to create cultures where abusive supervisors are not acceptable, and they have to implement policies for employees to report being bullied,” she said. “You’re only going to make your situation worse if you try to retaliate or try to withdraw or hunker down.”

Perhaps. Although the boss’ behavior may not improve if workers retaliate in passive-aggressive ways, such as ignoring the boss or doing halfhearted work, research from earlier this year shows that such an approach has at least one upside: Employees say it made them feel better.

Those who stood up for themselves were less likely to self-identify as victims, less apt to report psychological distress and more likely to be committed to their jobs.

Jena McGregor writes a daily column analyzing leadership in the news for the Washington Post’s On Leadership section.