Many of us have had to escape from a bad boss situation. But like any bad breakup, the departure has residual effects that can last for weeks, months, and sometimes even years after you last laid eyes on each other. If your boss' critiques linger in your mind, it can leave you questioning your abilities, possibly even your worth as an employee, which is no way to start a new job.
Here are six ways to get over a bad-boss breakup.
1. Take the high road.
"You have to close your eyes and breathe and try not to say anything negative about that bad boss," coaches Diane Gottsman, an etiquette expert and owner of The Protocol School of Texas, a company that specializes in corporate etiquette training. "That doesn't mean you can't vent to friends or a counselor, but it's much more dignified to keep quiet even though you may loathe the ground they walk on."
2. Work hard to stay positive.
"No one has the right to make you crazy," says Sue Thompson, bad-boss survivor, founder of Set Free Life Seminars, and author of a forthcoming book on bad bosses. "You must guard your heart and your mind and surround yourself with positive things." While enduring her bad boss, Thompson started every day listening to motivational CDs.
Jenny, a fellow bad-boss survivor, took a similar approach. "I had to force myself to work through these feelings, sometimes with therapy, and identify the positives that came out of this experience," she says. "I decided if I continued to feel bad, it was just another way for her to win, so it was up to me to turn this around."
3. Take ownership of the situation.
Accepting responsibility for the situation can help speed the recovery process, notes Ben Dattner, a workplace psychologist, coach, and professor at New York University. He illustrates this point with a study that examined how people dealt with the dissolution of romantic relationships.
"The more you blame the other partner, the better you're doing in the beginning because you're enraged, you're energized, as opposed to sitting there thinking about all the things you should or shouldn't have done. Then you're depressed and ruminating," he says. "But that's the short-term benefit with a long-term cost, because it makes you much less likely to meet someone. If you don't learn from the experience, you might repeat the experience."
4. Take notes for next time.
Getting fired doesn't carry such a stigma if you look at it differently. "It's a character builder," says Gottsman. "Say to that boss, 'Tell me how I could have made this different. Tell me what you think I could benefit from.' You may not want to hear it, but we don't learn a lot when things come easy to us. It's through our failures that we learn the most."
5. Analyze yourself.
If, over the course of your career, you continually are butting heads with a bad boss, it may be time to point your finger in the other direction. "Take a more balanced view and think, 'What is it about me that makes me particularly sensitive to this issue?'" suggests Dattner. "'Do all of her insubordinates see her as intolerable or is it just me?'"
6. View it as an opportunity.
Though you should give yourself time to grieve the loss of the relationship, no matter how bad or abusive it may have been, always know that the right boss is out there waiting for you. "Dealing with a bad boss can be the best thing that ever happened to you," says Gottsman. "Maybe it's a wake-up call to try something completely new."
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