Oye boss!

How do you deal with a bad boss? That’s a question a 25-year-old asked me last week. The worst thing anyone — individuals, organisations, countries — can tolerate today is a bad boss. It impacts teams, creates bad blood, generates disharmony and tilts the balance against work in a work-life balance where life drives work and work influences life. It seriously impacts the organisation, though most leaders, in an either-or, tend to favour the bad boss on the cold assumption of premium replacement value, not realising that it is generals in corner cabins that have to be retired, not soldiers on streets getting business.

Can spirituality help, she persisted. I told her that in today’s growing economy, there is no need for anyone to tolerate a bad boss — every competent (and some incompetents too) person is walking with multiple offers in his pocket. But will leaving one job help? While it may change the general environment and bring about short-term relief, it is finally a Band-aid. What really matters is the environment within. In the evolution of the soul, events, people and conditions are created that help us grow.

When seen in that light, bad bosses come packaged as a general vibratory map, which catalyse growth. The bad boss before us is only a reflection, a material manifestation of a vibration within us that needs a magnified resonance for us to grow. You may call it part of a divine conspiracy. More than the bad boss, it is the inner invitation of disturbance that we need to address, we need to stop that vibration and transcend it. Else, we will carry it from one organisation to another, meet one bad boss after another.

How do you deal with it, how do you stop that vibration? At a mental level, I suppose, time should help as a body practises over the years and understands, often through a midlife crisis. But our souls are thousands of years old. I’ve seen and learnt much from young people, the depth of their eyes show their real age, their spiritual maturity. Haven’t you sensed the power of stillness that some people around us carry with them everywhere? Combine that with genuine compassion for the poor soul, and the bad boss will crumble or find another vulnerable vibration.