Surrounded by Bad Bosses and Lazy Employees: or, How to Deal with Idiots at Work

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Surrounded by Idiots remains one of the most useful NF books that I’ve ever read, I thought it was full of insight and tips that I’ve applied and have found incredibly useful. I wasn’t the biggest fan of Book 2 (Surrounded by Psychopaths), but I had that down to the fact that perhaps I’m just not very good at identifying these psychopaths in my life, and when I do I tend to just steer clear rather than try and deal with it head on (very green!), and therefore I found the tips less useful. I was hence incredibly excited when the title of the third book was revealed, as I thought it would be something very widely applicable and one I would find useful. Obviously, there are exceptions. I’ve also had bosses who have been good listeners and been open to the thoughts and ideas of members of their staff. Some of them have even had the decency to admit whose idea it was in the first place. Why is it so hard to define a boss’s role? Is it really that difficult? Perhaps it’s the simplest thing in the world? If you just sit down and give it a shot. He has until today published twelve books – half fiction and half non-fiction – and he will continue to write as long as he breathes.

Thomas was writing for twenty years before finally getting published. Being an author was his dream in life, so he never gave up. Instead he tested new ideas, tweaked his writing style, learned new skills, asked professionals, worked from 03.00 in the morning for years. Of course, much as we love to blame our bosses, sometimes management isn’t the problem at all. For every bad boss there is also a lazy employee, so Erikson also looks at the issue from a completely different perspective—employees themselves— and explores why some colleagues frequently underachieve, and what you can do to change this if you're the boss. Let’s get straight to the point: the world is full of bad bosses. Team leaders, group leaders, departmental managers, unit managers, deputy managing directors, managing directors, and the bosses of managing directors. Sometimes the boss is a chairman of the board in a Fortune 500 company, and sometimes the same chairman is at the head of a local sports team. At every level, in all types of organizations, there are bosses who have ended up in the wrong place and cause problems for themselves, who cause problems for their staff, who are incompetent, and who are naïve. There are bosses who are far too nice, and there are ones that are just plain mean. Some can’t manage to learn the names of their staff, and some just sneak away from their own responsibility. Some of them are so incompetent that the company would have been better off without them. But for those of you who really wonder why on earth your boss behaves like that—just keep on reading. You’ll learn the reasons why some bosses function well—and others don’t function at all. If you have a friend who is a bastard, you can always just walk away. If your boss makes unreasonable demands on you, it immediately becomes more complicated, and the value of having a working dialogue to help those situations is so much greater. That’s what I’ll be giving you in this book.

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It used to be that the boss’s responsibilities were simple: to lead and say who should do what. If you managed that, then you were doing your job. A good friend of mine often quotes his own father when it comes to leadership: Never become the boss, because you’ll end up doing everything yourself. By identifying your boss’s behavior profile you’ll be better able to interact with them no matter what the situation. Erikson offers example stories and concrete steps to help you thrive in any work situation. countering violent extremism cve an understanding of the problem the process and some solutions radicalization islamic terrorism white supremacist eco extremist case studies citig Written with Erikson's signature humour and warmth, Surrounded by Bad Bosses (and Lazy Employees) will help you deal with the most hopeless managers and employees you can imagine - and keep you entertained along the way. His mission is to make people’s lives easier by making them more aware of themselves and help people to a better understanding of what it takes to achieve the best possible communication.

Internationally bestselling author Thomas Erikson has helped changed how the world thinks about behavior using a simple 4-color behavior analysis system. In Surrounded by Bad Bosses he applies that same system to revolutionize the workplace. But I have also met an endless number of bosses who have been practically useless. Some of them haven’t grasped what the job requires. Some of them would like to learn, while others aren’t even interested in that. Which—in my opinion—makes them even less suitable. Some of them are just superfluous. They’re in the way. The organization doesn’t really need them. There can be differences in behavior between the sexes, but I do not deal with the gender perspective in this book. A few years ago, I wrote a book called Surrounded by Idiots. It’s about differences in communication styles, and why certain people can be so difficult to understand. I introduced William Moulton Marston’s DISC system which, over time and with further development by others, evolved into a simple model based on four colors: Red, Yellow, Green, and Blue. The point was to show how you can better understand people who don’t function or communicate like you do. Of course, the model doesn’t answer all the questions when it comes to how we function day to day, but it does give us a good starting point for discussions and ways to institute change. A person is rarely just one color, but most often has elements of two or even three. Written with Erikson's signature humor and warmth, Surrounded by Bad Bosses (And Lazy Employees) will help you deal with the most hopeless managers and employees you can imagine—and keep you entertained along the way.And the bosses who function brilliantly in their roles—what do they understand that others don’t? Is there actually a secret? Why is good leadership so rare? Everyone has to manage up to some extent but frankly some bosses are worse than others. If you're being driven crazy by a micro-manager, frequently drown under your boss's unreasonable expectations or struggle with being handed out responsibilities but no authority international behavioural expert Thomas Erikson is here to help.

He is a highly sought-after public speaker with 120 keynotes yearly on topics such as human behaviours, self-awareness, , narcissism, and leadership.The reasons that many bosses are ineffective, do, of course, vary, but there are nevertheless certain patterns. And it’s a good idea to learn to recognize these patterns. Unfortunately I thought that the book fell short of this expectation, while Eriksen does a wonderful job in catering the narrative to a purely workplace context, I thought it was horrendously repetitive (and very unlike his self-assessment of being a Red, I thought). There were elements that I did like, such as the splitting up between the boss perspective and the staff perspective, and the relationship between colour and drive. The latter with concrete examples of how people of different colours, but the same drive, achieve their objectives in a different way. Fun fact: Thomas is a true anglophile. He is a passionate gardener, loves topiary: if he could wear tweed the full year he would. And he is s collector of old Land Rovers. This section isn’t designed for the reader who is already a competent boss and actually knows what they’re doing. But if you are a boss and you think there’s still a lot you can learn about how to best manage your employees, you might find this section valuable. The second part of the book is Surrounded by Lazy Employees. Because there are some workers who aren’t exactly in the running for employee of the month. Everybody has different strengths and weaknesses. Read on to find out how you can you help your staff discover their potential and find their genuine driving forces. The DISC model builds upon thorough psychological studies, is used throughout the world, and has been translated into fifty different languages.

It is frustrating to only be at the receiving end of a problem, without being able to make decisions and influence how the job should be done in the first place. And it’s even more frustrating when nobody listens to your proposals and ideas. Sometimes my boss has listened politely, nodded, and said I hear what you’re saying. This is often followed by a but … You know what that means, right? What they actually mean is: I hear that you are saying words but I couldn’t care less about your idea. Your boss has already decided. So why did they even ask you? Everything that I talk about is connected to personal insight and awareness. Problems arise when personal insight is limited. In Surrounded by Idiots, I didn’t focus on the different roles we have in the workplace. And I’ve received many questions about whether it’s possible to take the whole thing one step further. And of course, it is. I, probably just like you, have often wondered how my boss thinks and functions. Because I really don’t know what they’re doing. So why not take a look at some of the reasons behind their behavior?

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Written with Erikson's signature humor and warmth, Surrounded by Bad Bosses (And Lazy Employees) will help you deal with the most hopeless managers and employees you can imagine—and keep you entertained along the way. There are other models that seek to explain behavior, but I use this one as a starting point because it is pedagogically simple to grasp. Or your boss does actually listen, and says: do what you want, but it’ll be your responsibility if it all goes wrong. Approximately 80 percent of all people have a combination of two colors that dominate their behavior. Around 5 percent have only one color that dominates behavior. The rest are dominated by three colors. Thomas Erikson is a behaviourist and the bestselling author of the Surrounded by- series about human behaviours.