Tame Your Terrible Office Tyrant: How to Manage Childish Boss Behavior and Thrive in Your Job

Tame Your Terrible Office Tyrant

“The HIGH Relevance of Lynn Taylor’s Tame Your Terrible Office Tyrant (TOT)In the Worst (and Best) of Times”

A quick retrospective: The financial world has been turned upside down…Some of America’s largest companies are in Chapter 11…Experts say the economy won’t fully recover until 2013…High visibility corporate leaders are doing jail time…

With this perfectly depressing backdrop, rampant bad boss behavior—bullying, demanding, tantrum-throwing, and whining—is the icing on the cake. Right?

Yes and no. “It’s a mistake to think too conventionally – that it’s all the economy’s fault,” says workplace expert Lynn Taylor, who has studied boss behavior in good times as well as bad. “It is a fact that in the current labor climate, TOTs are in high gear because they hold all the hiring cards,” she explains. “But they also behave this way during any period of stress – even in good times, when there’s unwieldy workloads to dole out, or when they are just having a bad day,” she said.

Taylor’s new book Tame Your Terrible Office Tyrant—TOT™ (Wiley; July 31, 2009; Hardcover; ISBN: 9780470457641; $21.95) identifies terrible office tyrants, or TOTs in 20 different flavors. She offers ways to tame them based on 20 years in corporate America – many of them with large employment firms studying workplace dynamics – coupled with the practical know-how of raising two young boys.

“Bad bosses and tiny tots behave in strikingly similar ways, and the tricks for managing them are virtually the same,” says Taylor.

“We are all TOTs inside, but when it comes to the office, the child inside should stay there,” says Taylor. Surprisingly, many bosses are little lost lambs who act out to cover the pressure they feel and the fear of being exposed as incompetent.”

“Especially in today’s super-stressful work environment, employees at all levels need to understand what makes a TOT tick, and then defuse juvenile walking time bombs before they implode and drain productivity.”

Taylor says that a “TOT-proofed” workplace is achievable with the help of a few simple, yet transformational, techniques. She cites CALM, an acronym for Communicate, Anticipate, Laugh, and Manage, as one of the most effective.

“This book is not about boss-bashing. It’s an enabling roadmap for businesses to function harmoniously and efficiently minus the personality landmines that can be found anywhere in today’s business environment. This is valuable information for tough times as well as better times.”

According to Taylor, learning to tame your TOT can turn a bad situation around 180 degrees. “You can reduce job tension, harmonize the workplace environment, get on with your career and make the company more profitable. “For senior management, it’s about creating an atmosphere that makes it safe for success. I tell everyone, regardless of their level within an organization: you can tame your TOT. You just have to make sure that there’s always something in it for the Terrible Office Tyrant,” she concludes.