What the blogosphere’s saying about bosses this week…

• Listen up bosses – Washington Post business columnist Steven Pearlstein interviewed Daniel H. Pink about his new book, “Drive” in which he discusses why the traditional carrot-and-stick approach to leading, does little for job performance and satisfaction.

• Forehead Tittaes – I don’t create it, I just report it. Click here to read, and see, what this is all about, and what it could possibly have to do with bad bosses.

• The great divide – 30 years ago top executives at S&P 500 companies made an average of 30 times what their workers did — now they make 300 times what their workers make. And they don’t understand why we can’t stand them. The Business Insider takes on ‘Undercover Boss’ and how out of touch bosses really are.

• The secret to having happy employees? Fire all the unhappy ones. Wait. What? Trust me, it’s not as bad as it sounds.

• This just in – courtesy and manners can help improve job satisfaction. In Back to Basics: The art of saying Thank You, Laurie Griffith asks bosses to check themselves.

What the blogosphere’s saying about bosses this week

• Good boss, bad boss, young boss? US News & World Report offers 7 tips for working with a young boss.

• Tula Connell at the AFL-CIO blog, introduces us to the book Can They Do That: Retaking our Fundamental Rights in the Workplace. The books author, Lewis Maltby,  president and founder of the National Workrights Institute (NWI), reminds us that “almost 20 percent of employers today require all employees to agree in advance not to go to court if the company violates their legal rights….If you don’t agree, you don’t get the job.” Connell thinks this book should be “part of every high school curricula.” We’ll get our hands on a copy and let you know what we think.

• Everyone’s talking about Brittain’s PM, Gordon Brown, being a big bully and that includes Hugh Cortazzi writing for The Japan Times Online. Like us, Cortazzi believes bullying in the workplace needs to be tackled seriously if abuses of power are to be kept in check.

• On Tuesday, amNY ran a post about tyrants in the workplace, and interviewed us for the piece. Check out the online version here.

What the blogosphere’s saying about bosses this week…

• Candadian site, GlobeLife wants you to know “What to do when your boss is a bully.” The post centers around a new book out that alleges that British Prime Minister Gordon Brown was a big bully to his staff. While some claim the PM was merely passionate, Gary Namie, founder of the Workplace Bullying Institute, suggests that calling bully behavior passionate, sends the message that  everyone else should “learn to live with it.”

• Got a boss who’s a perfectionist? Be Ruly offers a couple of pretty good suggestions for dealing with a perfectionist boss. We’re big fans of her Defensive Documentation suggestion.

• What to do when your boss gives up – While some might use it as an excuse to give up too, if you’ve got career goals then giving up on a boss who’s given up, is not an option. The New York Times offers suggestions from leading management experts on what to do. And although we wouldn’t necessarily suggest going this route, they even share the story of a group of employees who were bold enough to confront their own boss.

• Frank Newell’s back with part 2 of Bad bosses, bad employees. This time he’s talking about bad employees, specifically the thieving kind.

• NWsource reports that a new study proves what we’ve known along. Bad bosses who appear to be good performers get a pass. Upper management, and anyone outside of the line of fire for that matter, may not want to befriend the bad boss, but they’ll accept the bad behavior “as long as they don’t think they’re the next target.”

What the blogosphere’s saying about bosses this week…

• I came across a really great article about the relationship between bosses and employees on VandNews.com, Virginia and North Carolina’s community newspaper. In part I of his series, Bad bosses and Bad Employees, Frank Newell, of Newell Farms Wildlife Center, writes about the mutual respect that bosses and employees should have for each other and how that manifests itself in a great culture.

• Firing bad teachers – Teachers are one of our most underpaid and undervalued positions. Charged with instructing the children of this nation they’re faced with daily obstacles that would be difficult for many of us to surmount. That said, a bad teacher is a bad teacher and he or she has got to go. Not so easy in Los Angeles it seems. According to an article on KCET Local, “trying to fire a bad teacher in L.A. can cost the city up to half a million bucks, and almost never happens.”

• Egypt moving closer to passing sexual harassment laws – Although they’re often ignored by bad bosses in the states, at least we’ve got laws on the books that define sexual harassment and make committing it a crime. Egypt, not so much. Reuters reports that that might be changing.

• Over on OpEd News, Roger Shuler reacts to a federal jury awarding $2.7 million in a sexual harassment suit against Georgia based security company, U.S. Security Associates Inc. Referring to his own age-based harassment claims againt the University of Alabama at Birmingham, Shuler asks the question ‘How clueless can management be these days?’ By the number of sexual harassment and discrimination cases in the news each week, we think the answer is “very.”

What the blogoshpere’s saying about bosses this week…

As we suspected they would, a lot of people had a lot to say about CBS’ premier of the reality show ‘Undercover Boss’ this week. Here’s some of what was said…

Popeater asks, is ‘Undercover Boss’ exploitive of employees? To make their point, Popeater points out that the employees featured don’t make a dime from their appearance. This while the networks are making millions from the show. Good point. We still think that anything that has the boss cleaning toilets and collecting garbage can’t be all bad.

Newsweek thinks the dirtiest job in America right now is producing reality TV and exhibit “A” is the “deeply fictional” reality of ‘Undercover Boss.

Over at Three Star Leadership, Wally Bock’s post entitled “Undercover Boss: A Repellant Piece of Trash” left us unclear about how he felt about the show. Not really, obviously he hated it. Check out his post here, to see why.

The HR Capitalist thinks executives wished that’s all it took to change their businesses and questions the real “reality” of the series. Kris Dunn sees the main problem with ‘Undercover Boss’ as that fact that transformation just can’t plausibly happen during the course of a 60 minute reality series.

What the blogosphere’s saying about bosses this week…

Contrary to popular opinion, and our personal experiences, not all bosses are bad. This week Ebosswatch highlights bosses that are actually great. Yes Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.

Remember when Fridays were Fridays? Colette Martin does, and in her blog, aptly titled When Fridays Were Fridays, Martin reflects “on life in Corporate America when Fridays were Fridays, loyalty mattered, and bosses still cared.” This week she shares an all too familiar bad boss story submitted by one of her readers.

Bosses aren’t the only bizarre creatures in the workplace. The Work Buzz has a post this week spotlighting the strangeness of coworkers. Our favorite bizarre coworker tale – the colleague who chewed tobacco and spat it into empty soda bottles. Read the entire list here.

Are you a nanny boss? If so, The New York Times says chances are, you’re bad at employer-employee communications. The often passive-aggressive nature of mom-nanny communication can lead to misunderstandings and hurt feelings. Never fear, the folks at the Times have a few suggestions, and, there’s always the Nanny Training School. Seriously.

A look at what the blogosphere’s saying about bosses this week…

According to Yahoo Finance, “the day of reckoning has arrived” for bad bosses - If only. Truth is, really bad bosses never read articles on bad bosses. They either don’t know or don’t care. Nevertheless, Yahoo asks, what kind of bad boss are you? Choices include poor preparation, lacking influence and not knowing your job. They forgot to include ‘jackass.’  Check out the complete list here.

Surprise, surprise…or not, pastors can be bad bosses too – In the post Bad Boss Pastors Who Drive You Nuts, the site Church Forward, lists several ways pastors drive their staff nuts including pretending they know better than everyone else and constantly checking their phone at meetings.

Ten Ways to Be a Better Boss – Over on the Rodg3R blogspot they propose 10 pretty effective ways to be a better boss. One of our personal favorites? Public praise, private punishment. Great advice, we wish more bosses would listen.

Management needs training too! – So why won’t anyone give them any?! The Training Time Blogspot is trying to change that. A resource for HR Managers, the article makes the excellent and sadly overlooked point that for bad bosses, “the right training at the right time could transform those rule-huggers and glory hogs into leaders.” Finally someone in HR is acknowledging this fact. We’re wondering though, what do you do if it’s the HR Manager who needs training?

Got a blog or post you’d like us to feature in the roundup? Email it to denised@reallybadboss.com.