In the recent film comedy 

Horrible Bosses,  three truly dreadful managers make their employees’ lives
miserable. The first is a cruel executive who dangles a promotion in front of a subordinate as bait, only
to snatch it away once his stupid demands have been met. The second is a mean cokehead who inherits
the family business from his kindly deceased father. The third is an orthodontist who sexually harasses
her assistant, threatening to tell his fiancée that it’s his fault.

The victims in the movie can’t quit. They need the jobs. Instead, they compose elaborate, farcical plots
to eliminate the bosses.

In real life, horrible bosses are the stuff of tragedy, not comedy. Workplace discontent is no joke. Some
surveys show that as many as half of American workers feel low levels of work engagement, stemming
in part from poor management.

It’s not insults that cause the greatest harm, but rather callousness about people’s time. Horrible bosses
want control. They expect subordinates to be on call 24/7 and to hit unrealistic deadlines with limited
resources. When the work product is delivered, horrible bosses may ignore it for long intervals, making
it clear that the deadline was artificial and the stress unnecessary.

To minimize the impact of horrible bosses, companies can ensure that performance reviews are based
on objective measures, not subjective ones. They can examine tasks and workloads for relevance and
fairness. They can offer training to teach respectful behavior. They can police sexual harassment and
make flexibility a right. But formal processes go only so far. Employees sometimes find themselves
worse off when they use official complaint mechanisms.

The best cure for horrible bosses is alternative relationships and collaboration. Organizations that foster
strong, multidimensional relationships among colleagues weaken the control of a single autocratic boss.
They make it more likely that the sins of horrible bosses will be exposed to others who can stop them.

Groups caught in a horror show can end the misery by banding together to focus on goals and show
compassion for one another. Jane Dutton of the University of Michigan, a leader in the positive
psychology movement, has shown that simple gestures of caring can humanize the workplace and raise
levels of performance.

Another good way to neutralize horrible bosses is to focus on the mission and help others around you
succeed. A manager I’ll call Pierre was sent by his company to lead a turnaround, as COO, of a low-
performing subsidiary in a developing country. The country CEO was imperialistic and antagonistic. He
gave Pierre a basement office with no staff and proceeded to ignore him. Pierre’s corporate bosses told
him to work it out. After a few days of feeling depressed, Pierre decided to move into the tiny office next
to the CEO and find his own assistant from outside the company, someone with no history with or
allegiance to the CEO.

Then he forged ahead with relationship-building. He identified the best performers in the unit who he
thought would be the most independent of the CEO’s power. He met with them in small groups and
provided abundant performance data and ideas for growing the business. Soon they were leading their
peers in making changes. The horrible boss couldn’t control Pierre and couldn’t stop the momentum.
The boss became impotent in his irrelevance—and later was fired for corruption.
In the movie, the three friends help one another, and the horrible bosses fall on their own swords. Real
life is not as dramatic or entertaining. Still, an underlying truth holds: The best cure for horrible bosses is
wonderful colleagues. 

It’s not insults that cause the greatest harm, but rather callousness about people’s time.

A version of this article appeared in the October 2011 issue of Harvard Business Review.