I absolutely love the cover of this month’s Entrepreneur magazine. The lead tag says “Say goodbye to bossholes*” and directs you to the page for the definition. The definition is a mashup of the words “boss” and “asshole” used to describe an employer who makes hell on earth. They then ask you to venture to http://entrepreneur.com/octfeaturedquestion and tell about any experiences you have had with a bosshole of your own.
I love this word and we all know we’ve worked for these people at some point through our lives. They’re the ones who blow up at the drop of a hat and quickly start apologizing to everyone for the behavior. They don’t realize that in a 15 second rant they destroy whatever goodwill they’ve built up over the last several weeks. They also don’t realize that after continuing this type of behavior several times their employees give up on them, lose desire to do good work and simply put in their time until something better comes along.
Here’s hoping you don’t currently work for a bosshole… If you do, pick up this month’s Entrepreneur magazine and read more or check out Robert Sutton’s book entitled The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn’t.
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