An Automation Engineer’s Viewspace

How to manage a Blow-Top-Boss

25 May 2007

There are a few established facts about a boss.


  • Bosses come in diverse shapes and sizes.

  • They have their own behaviour and temperaments.

  • While you can pick and choose your subordinates, you cannot choose your boss.

  • They come as an add-on to the functional area you chose to work at.

  • Every boss is a boss and a subordinate too.

  • You must thank your stars and consider yourself lucky if you get a considerate and understanding boss. So it is your job to keep him as your boss for as long as possible, since you don’t know how the next one will be. For that maybe you need to put in more than your usual share of work and make sure that your boss’s boss is happy with your boss.

  •  If you happen to be the unlucky guy to have a shouting and in-tolerant boss, you have only two choices:

    • Pray to God that your boss changes his style or the management replaces him.

    • Get yourself rotated to a different function or quit your job.



  • Either of the above cannot happen immediately, so in all certainty you have to work with a boss whom you did not choose, and who shouts his top off at the slightest provocation.


This is a deliberation on how to work with a boss who is extremely generous with his opinions and that too in a very loud voice, or in simple language a boss who shout at everything and everyone most of the time.

Firstly let us bullet out, why does a boss shout at all:


  • Establish a sense of importance or to spread the word around, who is the boss.

  • Motivated management style of divide and rule. Shout at a select group and motivate the groups to shout at each other.

  • Lack of knowledge of a situation or unable to provide a solution to a problem.

  • To circumvent established systems or processes.

  • Personal animosity resulting in persistent fault finding.

  • Put up an act for someone. Usually a showoff in front of outsiders.


Finally if you have a boss who shouts, after all what do you do? There are many strategies, some of which I have tried myself and some of which I have gathered from my colleagues.


  • Frontal – Take the bull by the horns. This is the most dangerous. In all probability you may be kicked out of the job, or your personal rating so badly pulled down that you have to quit.

  • Keep mum – A dead man standing.

  • Practice selective hearing – Let the boss yell, transport yourself the last fun holiday on the beach.

  • Psychological attack – This is possible when you have a premonition that the boss has called you for a roll over. The moment he comes into view, wish him a good day with a pleasant smile.

  • Divert attention and blame it on others - This needs glib talking and good background information.


All this apart, all bosses are predictable. Well almost all. The greatest success lies in anticipating your boss. It takes time and patience to thoroughly understand your boss and form a response strategy. In the meantime, till you have a rock solid game plan, do not do anything that antagonizes your boss. Also do not be seen too much with persons whom your boss hates, or is in competition.

Your health is your own, and it is your paramount responsibility to take care of it. You are useful to your organization as long as you can contribute, which means that you have to be healthy both in body and mind. So, at the end of it all, if the day was really bad and you went through a major grill you still have a few options to keep up your spirits:


  • Go home play with your kids,

  • Take your wife and kids out for a movie and dinner,

  • Go the bar and drown a couple or

  • The best, go for a jog, swim or a rigorous workout.


There are too many good things in life to simply brood over a horrible scuff.

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