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FT editor Roula Khalaf will select your favorite stories in this weekly newsletter.
Isabel Berwick is an IT editor at which FT works and is the author of “The Future-Proof Career.”
The most perplexing thing in the workplace in 2025 (in a competitive field) is the enduring prevalence of the leadership styles of Shouty, Negative and underling Blaming. Of course, the tricky bosses were always with us, but I imagined that if workers could call them online they would start to ease their behavior. Apparently that’s not the case. With 850,000 followers, Tiktoker Ben Askins kills it with a horrible, bad boss story sourced from viewers. This content will drop your chin.
These actions force staff to act quickly and achieve things (and of course they do!), but in the long run, they cause anger, motivation and mental health issues to those affected. A recent essay from The New York Times, “America is Learning the Wrong Lessons from Elon Musk’s Success,” organizational psychologist Adam Grant provides explanations and evidence on why leaders who run a culture of fear and criticism don’t get good results. Even if you don’t care about the staff at “Snowflake” it’s bad for business to hit people.
It is clear that the majority of business leaders have acquired senior positions for positive and noble reasons. What causes some of these wise and outstanding people to engage in despicable behavior? Analyzing the “what’s below” will help you understand the problem. This is the first step towards change, as therapists will tell us.
In a 2017 paper on “abusive supervision” in workplace culture, authors Bennett Tepper, Lauren Simon and Heman Park found three factors driving the boss’s dark behaviour. “The Threat of Identity.” This can include dealing with difficult staff and leaders’ own anxiety. “Self-regulation disorder.” This is summarised as an “anger management problem.”
Unless you’re dealing with real narcissists (that’s a whole other story), the organization is responsible for taking action on their staff and their P&L, the bullying boss. In other words, who holds managers and leaders accountable? There are generally poor underlying causes of boss behavior, so you can tackle it. Coaching, continuous and constructive feedback, and honest self-reflection are the types of strategies that will help your boss get better. (Or help them leave.)
You can sympathize with the boss in 2025. It’s enough to drive someone. However, there must be a more constructive and profitable way to lead during an uncertain present and even more unstable future.
According to Kirstin Ferguson, a leadership expert and columnist for the Sydney Morning Herald, the important thing that CEOs should do now is to recognize what they don’t know. One of the problems faced by perennials, even thoughtful leaders, is that they end up falling into a limited bubble of information. Because often, staff members who have something to help contribute are too scary to present a different perspective. This is especially true when the boss is intimidating.
Ferguson believes that “traditional approaches to leadership – hierarchical decision-making and controlling information flow – are no longer sufficient. Complex issues require complex leadership solutions.” As she outlines her upcoming book, Blindspotting: How others see what they miss, we “want to accept that we need leaders who are open to having their own biases and that their personal views may not reflect those of the people they lead.”
A good side note is that bosses need to monitor people who copy their interests and hobbies. I learned about this phenomenon from leadership coach Kate Lei. As reported in Working IT Newsletter, one of her CEO clients was pleased to arrive at a new company to find a senior team who are as enthusiastic cyclists as he is. He was late and realized that this was not a happy opportunity. They were playing new bosses to get favors.
World leadership problems cannot be solved in 700 words. But at least you can stop screaming and hear what your colleagues have to say. Not that while everyone is dressed head to toe with Lycra.
