325: Dealing with a Difficult Boss

If you are a mid-career professional feeling drained, discouraged, or stuck because of a difficult boss, this episode gives you a clear path forward. Many professionals stay silent or shut down when leadership becomes unpredictable, controlling, or inconsistent. In today’s job market, that silence can stall your visibility, performance, and promotion potential.

This episode breaks down five difficult boss archetypes and gives you a practical strategy to stabilize your workweek, protect your confidence, and manage up with clarity and professionalism. 

What You Will Learn

• The five difficult boss archetypes: micromanager, ghost, credit taker, hot and cold leader, and conflict avoider
 • How to interpret leadership behavior without internalizing blame
 • Why empathy helps you respond strategically without excusing poor behavior
 • How to set realistic workload and time boundaries that reduce stress and prevent burnout
 • A simple structure for weekly check-ins that prevents surprises and strengthens accountability
 • How to use data-driven updates to negotiate scope, timelines, and trade-offs
 • When to use “we” language publicly to manage credit takers while safeguarding your individual contributions for reviews and interviews
 • How to respond when your boss swings between praise and pressure
 • The key difference between a difficult boss and a toxic culture
 • How to make values-based decisions when an environment becomes unhealthy

A Story About Leadership, Boundaries, and Repair

I share a pivotal career moment: losing a promotion after a leadership conflict, and how a calm, clear conversation helped rebuild trust. The lesson is simple. Communicate with intention. Protect your boundaries. And treat managing up as an essential leadership skill, not a survival tactic.

Mid-career professionals often work under heightened expectations while receiving less direct feedback. Navigating a difficult boss becomes a visibility issue, a performance issue, and a career advancement issue. This episode gives you tools to lead from where you are, strengthen your professional reputation, and keep your career moving forward.

Chapters

• 0:00 Facing The Horrible Boss Problem
• 2:08 Five Difficult Boss Archetypes
• 9:55 Stop Personalizing Their Behavior
• 12:28 The Core Of Managing Up
• 17:10 Clarity, Boundaries, And Pushback
• 21:02 Clean Communication And Credibility
• 23:26 Difficult Vs Toxic Cultures
• 26:22 A Defining Career Story
• 31:20 Takeaways And Next Steps

Transcript

John Neral: 0:00

Let's be honest. Most of us at some point have worked for a horrible boss. Maybe they micromanage everything you do, or they disappear when you need support. Or worse, they take credit for your work. But the reality is, if you work for a horrible boss, you are dreading going to work and working for them. Look, your career or your working relationship with your boss is no hallmark movie. And if you're listening to me today and you have a great working relationship with your boss, my friends, please consider yourself blessed. And I'm sure you are beyond grateful. Because as a mid-career professional, the truth is you've worked for more than one person. And a difficult boss is someone who can crush your motivation, create anxiety, and make you doubt your value. But learning how to navigate a relationship with a difficult or problematic boss is one of the most important leadership skills you can develop. See, managing up effectively isn't about manipulation. It's all about understanding human behavior and showing up to protect your integrity while still getting results. By the end of this episode, I will give you some practical tools to help you manage up with confidence, reduce stress, and recognize when it's time to take bigger action. Let's get started. We had a lovely, lovely Thanksgiving as well, and also a Friendsgiving, uh, which just worked out wonderfully well. So um, and I say that because we didn't cook. We actually went out for all you can eat sushi and had a really, really nice time for the Friendsgiving. So it was great. And so now we are in the last month of 2025. The holidays are here. It's gonna get crazy and stressful and chaotic. And you might be looking at your relationship with your boss and going, What the heck is going on? So I want to give you right off the bat today five difficult boss archetypes that I've seen in my career, I see in my work with my clients. But more importantly, what I want you to think about as I go through these five archetypes is to figure out which one most resonates for you with your boss. So the first step here is we have to understand that managing a relationship strategically is vital in how we manage up, but also in how we show up at work. So we don't want this relationship to be confrontational. We want to find a way to work with it as best as possible. So, for example, the first archetype is you're working for a micromanager. This is someone who's constantly checking in, they're redoing your work. And most importantly, they struggle to trust you. Now, they often act this way because they are fear-based. They have probably come under some kind of scrutiny from a leader above them. And so they equate having control over their team with being safe. So oftentimes when we're working with this type of manager, we want to be able to understand that. Look, I may not fully get or recognize what exactly the fear is, but we're gonna acknowledge there's some kind of fear there. So the more you can keep them informed, the more you can work on building their trust, the better off you're gonna be. The second archetype is the ghost. This one, this one may resonate a little bit for some of you, right? Because the ghost manager is someone who is always unavailable and they avoid feedback. Now, they probably are very well intentioned, but oftentimes what I have seen with a ghost manager, and this is something where I have direct experience with in particular, they are overwhelmed, they are conflict averse, and they are unclear about where the priorities lie because they are pulled in so many different directions. When I worked with a ghost manager, if you will, what I often found was there were things that I had to take initiative on and do everything I could to keep them informed so they never felt like they were caught off guard. Now, the third type of bad manager, and this goes back to an episode I did recently about what do you do when you're thrown under the bus. They're the credit taker. So they're gonna accept all of the praise for your ideas or results. They are someone who craves recognition and attention, but they're also craving validation. That validation is what comes from their management above. So they feel like they are the ones who are doing all the great work. Now, you and I both know they can't be successful without having the team behind them, but they are going to use I language. And in some ways, there's nothing wrong in that. There's nothing wrong in saying I led, I managed, I directed. But for you, if you're dealing with a credit taker or you're dealing with a boss who is inclined to throw you under the bus, what I would offer you here is to start using some we language and using the we language in group settings so they can hear where collectively you and the team are contributing. It's about creating visibility with stakeholders and internal customers to speak in the collective rather than the singular. Typically, the people I work with are really big-hearted individuals. So when they work with a credit taker, it's often very demoralizing and demeaning for them. What's also difficult is it's hard for them to take credit individually when they're interviewing or when they are networking to say, look, this is what I am directly responsible for. So we want to be careful about the language we're using, but also understanding that if the manager or the boss is being a credit taker, where we can perhaps shift some of that language to include the collective as best as possible. The next one, oh this is like walking on eggshells. This next one. That's the hot and cold manager. You never know what you are going to get on any given day. One day they are super supportive and personable. And the next day they are downright evil. Okay. Um, they're like Sybil. It's the multiple personalities that are at play. See, the hot and cold manager is emotionally volatile. And the reason why they are emotionally volatile is that they are inconsistent when it comes to how they manage stress. Everything is a big deal. If you work in an environment where everything feels like it's chaotic, a hot and cold manager may be somebody you see often. So what often helps is you've got to distance yourself from their mood swings, their emotional volatility. And you want to be that calming, steady presence. Okay? You want to be someone who isn't over or underreacting to things, but they're just extremely steady down the line. The fifth archetype is the conflict avoider. This is the boss or manager who will not address performance or team issues. And very simply, they fear confrontation. They're fearful about what might happen if they bring up an issue. So having a boss who's a conflict avoider often means that things that should be done or taken care of aren't, because they don't want to have that conversation. We've talked so many times on the podcast about bringing in evidence-based results and keeping the emotion or drama out of it. So here's what I have seen. Here's what I have heard. Those things help when it comes to bringing evidence with the conflict avoidant boss, as opposed to things like I think or I feel. Remember, they're going to want data. So the five boss archetypes that I've shared with you: the micromanager, the ghost, the credit taker, the hot and cold, the conflict avoider, once you can name your boss's archetype, you can stop personalizing their behavior. And when you stop personalizing their behavior, this is where the power begins. Because your boss's behavior is often reflective of their stressors and not your shortcomings. Oftentimes, what I've seen with these five boss archetypes is there's a lot of deflection going on in terms of maybe where they are placing blame or how they are deflecting from situations because they don't want to deal with it. So your boss's behavior is often reflecting their stressors. And where this could be impacting you if you work for one of these archetypes is you may end up taking it personally. If they're hard on me, I must be failing. I must be disappointing them. They're not happy with me. The most difficult bosses, as I've seen throughout my career, they're often reacting to their own pressures or insecurities, their fear of meeting deadlines, their lack of support from the management above them, the imposter syndrome of feeling like they have to take care of everything about themselves. But here's what I want to offer you. And if you're multitasking for a minute, come back to me. When you can interpret their behavior as data, you can respond more strategically. If you can interpret their behavior as data, you can respond strategically. So what I'd want you to do in a situation here is to ask yourself, what might be driving my boss's behavior? What are they afraid of losing, missing, or failing at? And when you can ask yourself that question, and when you can answer that question, we now can move into what it actually means to manage up and how you can do it effectively without resentment or overstepping. Are you ready? Okay. Here's the thing. From my experience, I know that managing up is one of the kindest things you can do. Managing up isn't about quote unquote fixing someone. Managing up its foundation is empathy, clear communication, and boundaries. If you've been listening to the podcast for a while, you will often hear me say, it's clear and clean. So the empathy piece. We're going to see your boss as a human being who is under pressure. Now, being under pressure doesn't excuse bad behavior. So we're not gonna give them a pass on those things, but it can help you navigate it. Having a clear boundary, okay? Protecting your time, your workload, your energy. It is okay to say to a difficult boss, here's what I can realistically deliver to you by the end of the week. And lastly, it is data-driven communication. Stick to your facts, deliver updates with structure, organization, and clear timelines, and do your best to remove any emotional language. So, for example, I worked with a boss who I knew she never wanted to be caught, quote unquote, not knowing. So for her, the thing was if she went to a meeting with the executives or she was in a meeting with a client, if she was caught not knowing, it made her look bad. And the one thing none of us want is we never want to look bad. We never want to look bad in front of our superiors, our bosses, our clients. We never want to look bad. So when I recognized that, I knew that one of the ways I could help her was to make sure that she was always informed as much as possible. So, what I would often do is at the start of the week, we would meet and I would say to her, here's what I'm working on, here's what I expect to get done, here's what's next, here's where I'm going to need your help or support. Here's where I have questions. Now, sometimes when I was being really, really good, I would send this email ahead of time prior to our meeting so they would have something to react to, but that didn't always happen. Okay. But we would have this check-in meeting, and I did that because I wanted to reduce their anxiety as much as I possibly could during our check-ins. So I wanted to give them the information ahead of time so they could feel more prepared. Now, that works in most situations. I found it is not perfect. And so sometimes the boss or you will have to push back in that conversation. And when that happens, I want to offer you this is an opportunity to seek clarity or reset expectations. For example, if you were to say, I'm going to be able to deliver A, B, and C by Friday. And your boss says, that's great, but I'm going to need D, E, and F as well. And you go, I understand you wanting that. Here's the obstacle I'm coming up against. Here's where I'm not certain that's going to get delivered. What can we do about this? Okay. You could also propose some solutions about maybe where it could be delegated, where the timeline could be shifted, how the deliverable might be changed. You can come with a solution. What we want to avoid in dealing with a difficult boss is a their way or no way, which in all fairness, they might do. They may do. So as you're managing up, you want to be able to work around that as much as possible. Okay. What I have often found is that the clearer and cleaner you are, by saying things like, I want to make sure I am delivering what you expect. Could you share what success looks like? You might even get more specific than that and say, I want to make sure I'm delivering what you expect and what you need. Be specific with me. What does that look like? The clarity is what allows you to show up from a very clean place. Okay? These kinds of conversations do not have to be confrontational. That's what we're trying to avoid. Okay. These conversations are about alignment and clarity because you are in a working relationship. And ultimately, if they are your boss or your manager and they have supervisory authority over you, the likelihood is they're writing your performance review. They are having an impact in on your bonus or your raise, whether or not you get promoted. So when we show up from this very clean and clear place, what we want to do is increase our credibility as a calm, solutions-oriented professional who is partnering with them for their success and your collective success. When I shared those five archetypes, I want to emphasize once again: we are not going to condone or give a pass to bad behavior. That means we are not taking abuse, we are not being yelled at, we are not being verbally assaulted, okay, physically assaulted, none of that. Okay. We have to know where the clear boundary is between a difficult boss and a toxic one. When you think about how happy you are in your current job, in your organization, whether you have just started a job or you've been there for a while, okay, look at the organizational culture. Look at how they reward leadership behavior. If your organization is rewarding bad leadership or a toxic culture, that is a signal. And that signal likely likely is it is not going to change. You can come in with your cape on every day and want to change the world. And I think that's very admirable. Trust me, I've tried to do it. But there comes a reality check when you realize that is impossible. And if you decide to leave and go somewhere else, it doesn't mean you have failed. What it means is you are choosing your values and your well-being as the priority. So before we wrap up, I want to share with you a very personal story about dealing with a quote unquote bad boss. Now, I want to tell you that I absolutely, absolutely enjoyed working with this person. This person, like all of us, is flawed, have their mistakes, wish they could have handled some things differently. But the long story short of it is, is that we had gone through a pretty difficult reorganization. I was given essentially a new role inside this organization that was loosely defined. And I proceeded to do what I thought was best. And it didn't land particularly well with one of the senior executives when they got wind of what I was doing. And very simply, it had to deal with how I was leading a team of managers and working with them. And I just did an exercise with them around aligning their purpose and vision and work around the restructuring of the reorganization. In the end, it came to a philosophical difference because I had the team create a mission statement. And the executive felt and strongly believed that people don't make mission statements, organizations do. Okay. And I was perceived as going rogue, which, you know, if you've been listening to a while, I think that's kind of funny. We had a disagreement, all good. Um, so I was up for a promotion, and that promotion got taken away from me. And to say this was one of the lowest points in my career, but also one of the most defining moments in my career would be accurate. Because I know when we build relationships with our bosses, we have to be able to have intentional conversations. And one of my show up six strategies about having intentional conversations is that the goal of that intentional conversation is to move the relationship forward. It doesn't mean we're going to always hug things out and be happy and have peaceful resolution, but we're going to move the relationship forward. And in the course of that lunch meeting, learned that they did not stick up for me. That it wasn't a fight they wanted to have. Now, I understood it. I got it. I understood why this boss would do it. It doesn't mean I was happy with them. And in a in a pivotal moment in that conversation, as we were sitting at lunch, they looked at me and I had and I called them out and I said, Look, here's what I believe you did and why you did it. And I listed all the things. And they looked at me and they kind of threw their hands a little bit and they said, Well, I guess I'm just a bad boss. And I looked at them and I said, You guess you are. And I didn't say anything after that. Now, I do not recommend this kind of conversation. I do not advocate for this conversation, but my friends, when I tell you I was angry, it was an understatement. And I believed those were the right words at the right time. Here's what I said after that. Because I didn't say much for about 30 seconds after that. I let that sit. And I said, here's what's gonna happen. I like working with you too much to let this go. So I'm gonna take the rest of the day off. And when I come in tomorrow, you and I are gonna get to work. Because I'm never going to let you do to anyone what you just did to me ever again. You have the potential and the pathway that this is not who you are. So if you want to do some work, I will support you and we will do some work, but you need to know I'm disappointed in you.

SPEAKER_00: 25:35

And that was the conversation. That was the conversation.

John Neral: 25:42

There was no yelling, there was no screaming. In that moment, I stood up for myself. And I stood up and was basically saying what you did to me was wrong. I needed you to have my back and you chose not to. But I get why you did it. I showed empathy. I established a boundary that I didn't appreciate being treated that way. And to say to someone in a very calm and confident manner, I am disappointed in you, was the right thing for me to say in that moment because I didn't need to yell or scream. They got the message. The clear and clean communication. Here's how we move through this. Here's how we work on repairing our relationship. Here's what the outcome of that's going to be. And I worked with that person for the next two years. And like I said, I truly, truly loved working with them. Does that mean I was happy with them? Absolutely not. Did that mean I wasn't upset that I had a promotion and a pay raise taken away because of an interpretation of something that happened? Yeah, of course not. But I am proud of myself for how I handled that situation because one of the things I've learned in my life, and it is not easy. And I, you know, we never want to do anything that we're gonna end up regretting. But I thought, oh my gosh, if this is the last thing I get to say, am I okay with it? And honestly, if I didn't like working with that person as much as I did, I don't think I would have said those things. Because I cared about them. I cared about who they are and who they are as a leader and know they were capable of better. So if they could learn from what happened in our relationship to never let that happen again, okay. We're all good. So my takeaway for you in this episode is this think about the relationship you have with your boss. Okay? Are they the micromanager? Are they the ghost? Are they the credit taker? Are they hot and cold? Are they the conflict avoider? If you're dealing with a quote unquote bad boss, which one are they? Figure out how you want to manage that relationship based on your empathy, based on your boundaries, and based on your data-driven communication. And look, if you're working for someone whom you truly enjoy, your empathy, boundaries, and data-driven communication are also vital to maintaining and sustaining the success of that relationship. So often at mid-career, it is about managing relationships. And right now, with so many of you job hugging and trying to figure out what's going to be next, there's nothing wrong in staying where you are and getting better at managing those kinds of relationships to see how you navigate the internal politics or the organizational culture in ways that are ultimately going to benefit for you and your career. So much of what I do with my coaching clients isn't just about helping them find a new job. It's about helping them love the one that they have and helping them path um pave out the next step for them on their career pathway. So if you want more, if you want more about how I can help you, very simply, go to my website, johnner.com. Um, right there on the homepage, there is a way. To join my free twice-weekly newsletter called the Mid-Career GPS newsletter, where I share more information about leadership and careers. It is free. You are welcome to come on in and join. And then certainly check out the resources tab on my website for other things that I have available to help you figure out whatever's next for you and your career. And that also includes one-on-one coaching. If that's something you're interested in as well, you can message me there. Okay. So until next time, my friends, as we kick off the month of December and all the great things that are coming, and the holiday parties and the time with family and friends, and as we wrap up this what has absolutely been a uh dynamic and ever-changing year. Remember this. You will build your mid-career GPS one mile or one step at a time, and how you show up matters. Make it a great rest of your day. Thank you for listening to the Mid Career GPS Podcast. Make sure to follow on your favorite listening platform. And if you have a moment, I'd love to hear your comments on Apple Podcasts. Visit johnnarrell.com for more information about how I can help you build your mid-career GPS, or how I can help you and your organization with your next workshop or public speaking event. Don't forget to connect with me on LinkedIn and follow me on social at Johnnarrell Coaching. I look forward to being back with you next week. Until then, take care and remember how we show up matters.