The "Emperor's New Clothes" Boss
Good managers know exactly who they are.
Not "Emperor's New Clothes" bosses, who obsess first and foremost about only one thing: how to make people see them as they WISH they were.
The good boss wants the best staff for the job. The Emperor's New Clothes boss wants the best enablers.
The good boss would rather BE an effective manager than look like one. The Emperor's New Clothes boss is just the opposite — trapped in the delusion that contrived style can somehow pass, and blind to all the eye-rolling when he or she leaves the room. You know the type, right?
I've been lucky. I've had only two Emperor's New Clothes bosses during my three-plus decades in journalism, both of whom, not surprisingly in retrospect, were rank-amateur publishers who'd spent their entire careers doing something far different.
First there was the terminally twitchy economist and failed politician whose brother died and left him a fortune, which he used to buy a left-for-dead weekly. I'll call this guy "the Quacker," and that's exactly what he did — incessantly. Listening to him got to be an awful, tin-foil-chewed-between-fillings ordeal every time.
Most of his quacks were about an ever-changing list of perceived "enemies" — former employees and rivals, for example — that he was absolutely positive were still trying to stab him in the back. He'd insert barbs against these phantoms into any story he could, too — regardless of whether those barbs actually related to the story, or, for that matter, were even true.
Another of the Quacker's tell-tale quirks: His most favored employee — by far — found a way almost every staff meeting to refer to him metaphorically as, "the king."
The world heavyweight champion of Emperor's New Clothes bosses in my book: the even twitchier longtime certified public accountant who used his nest egg to buy a trade monthly. His idea of good management: daily OCD fits of hovering, brow-beating and the same threats and lame maxims — over and over and over again. Anything could set him off. Nothing was ever his fault.
Mind you, he was as cordial as can be during the interviews. But I'll never forget how palpable the learned helplessness was in the office on my first day at work. Everybody was so timid, so silent, so flinchy and so vacant-eyed. It was as if they'd been thrown into some weird reeducation gulag years before and had not seen the light of day since. And, of course, in many ways that's exactly what had happened.
At least twice before I arrived — and once within the first three weeks I was there — employees who just couldn't take it anymore stormed out of the office on the spot after tossing their office keys in the ultra-twitcher's face.
That's how it tends to go with Emperor's New Clothes bosses.
Why? Because they're too image-obsessed to listen; everything's a power play; and they have no clue that they're imposing their own insecurities on everybody else. Trying to do right by these guys is hopeless. You might as well try to quench a parched-desert thirst with warm brine.
And so, my friends, I implore you: Look closely for the warning signs of an Emperor's New Clothes boss when you're job searching, and be prepared to bite the bullet if you find them, even in vulnerable, slim-pickins times like these.
Be wary of lifelong amateurs in new top-dog positions. Watch for evidence of troops-blaming and hovering. Do your homework, ask around and coax out signals that you could be dealing soon with constant motivation-busters that'll only keep your career more and more stuck.
Above all, listen well — REALLY well — to your instincts, especially if you encounter a sad, lethargic, vacant-eyed staff at some point before you're hired that, well, just creeps you out way too much.
Sure jobs are scarce, but remember: With an Emperor's New Clothes boss in your future, there but for the grace of God go you.