Bulletproof Boss

n Friday, March 6, a Connecticut state lottery accountant with eight years of service returned to work after a five-month disability leave with a 9 mm handgun and a hunting knife hidden under his jacket.

By noon, he had killed the lottery's president, chief financial officer, vice president for operations, and supervisor for information systems. Then he killed himself.

An assortment of pundits and Monday-morning quarterbacks explained that the man was disgruntled, irrational, mentally ill, and an avid war games enthusiast. They noted that he had been dumped by his girlfriend while he was on leave and that she had begun dating his replacement.

While all of that may be true, what was crystal clear was that the man believed the four people he targeted had exploited him, treated his application for promotion shabbily, and destroyed his career. "They were the people who had the power in the lottery," one of his co-workers told The New York Times.

The accountant walked up to his boss, the chief financial officer, and silently mouthed, "Bye-bye," before shooting her three times. "He could have gotten any of us," another colleague observed, "but he knew who he wanted." His unfaithful girlfriend was at her desk at the time of the shootings, yet he never sought her out.

The disgruntled worker had been suffering from stress and depression exacerbated in his mind by an unreasonable work load, according to The New York Times account. He'd been assigned additional responsibilities that he insisted belonged to the information systems department, and requested a $2-an-hour pay increase in return. When management denied him the adjustment, he filed a grievance, which he won. At the time of the murders he was awaiting a judgment about whether the increase would be made retroactive.

After his grievance was processed, however, the accountant was denied a promotion he'd previously applied for. He interpreted the denial as retaliation. The rest is history.

Incidents of rage at work are increasing across America. In government agencies, private corporations, nonprofit organizations and even schools, men and women in authority are being targeted. The postal worker jokes aren't funny anymore. How do job conflicts spiral out of control so quickly? What can you, as a manager, do to protect yourself? Can you become a bulletproof boss?

The Five Pillars of Stupidity

While bosses are certainly not to blame for the actions of irrational, violent employees, there are steps managers can take to avoid situations in which employees feel they have been mistreated.

There are some universals we can count on in our interactions with other people. For example, we know from childhood that if you pinch people long enough they're going to yell. If you keep it up, they are very likely to strike back. It is this ability to take care of ourselves-to identify the remedy that stops our pain-that allows us to feel in control of our lives.

As a supervisor, you learn quickly that there are certain actions that should never be taken with employees, no matter how angry you get or how "in the right" you believe you are. Call them the Five Pillars of Managerial Stupidity:

• Humiliation. Publicly disciplining an employee.
• Sabotage. Withholding information.
• Intimidation. Making threats or delivering ultimatums.
• Harassment. Using vile or offensive language or behavior.
• Constructive discharge. Making life miserable for an employee in an attempt to get him or her to resign.

If an employee can't get satisfaction through agency channels, he or she can file complaints with the Merit Systems Protection Board, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission or the Office of Special Counsel, depending on the circumstances of the situation.

If you are the kind of boss who leans on any of the Five Pillars, you're likely to spend a lot of time defending yourself against grievances. But you'll probably survive to retire. The stakes rise dramatically, however, when more subtle forms of mistreatment are added to the Five Pillars.

The Seven Deadly Subtleties

An enduring managerial myth is that supervisors who don't humiliate, sabotage, intimidate, harass or constructively discharge the people who work for them are good bosses. Maybe, but they're not bulletproof. A bulletproof boss has to do better. He or she must also avoid the Seven Deadly Subtleties.

The Seven Deadly Subtleties are managerial behaviors, none of which is so overt that an employee can easily articulate a grievance against it. They are the kinds of things bosses have traditionally gotten away with-the behaviors that make employees feel powerless, defeated and hopeless.

• Broken promises head the list. Meetings that you schedule with an employee then abruptly cancel, phone messages that are left unreturned, and requests that have been approved but not followed through all can be interpreted as disrespect or even disdain.
• Fair-weatherism is another enrager. President Clinton has been criticized by several of his former aides for engaging in a style of fair-weatherism in which he favors certain staff members, showering them with privilege and protection until someone else comes along who can better move his agenda. Staffers who once could do no wrong suddenly find they can't do anything right. Employees often find it hard to confront this behavior in a boss, and tend to simply seethe.
• Refusal to listen sends the subtle message that the person speaking is not important. To listen intently to an employee is a universal indicator of respect. An employee will generally cut a boss who listens some slack-even one they don't fully respect.
• Disdainful body language always overrides a manager's words. If you make dismissive or contemptuous gestures, take an arrogant stance when disciplining staff members, minimize issues by rolling your eyes or shrugging, or if your tone of voice is cynical or derisive, you are sowing seeds of rage.
• Minimizing a staff member's contribution is a strategy used by some managers to "keep the staff hungry" and pushing toward excellence. But discrediting employees' efforts doesn't motivate them to work. As an enrager, however, minimizing is extraordinarily effective. It makes employees recall, perhaps not even consciously, all the times in their lives when what they did was "just not good enough." Overcritical, unappreciative, overbearing bosses should not be surprised when employees don't respond enthusiastically to being part of their "team."
• Manipulation produces anger because it is deeply insulting. If you cannot play straight with an employee when there are differences of opinion-or negotiate a job transfer-anger is inevitable. If you maneuver to reward an employee at another's expense, the manipulated employee will feel diminished. Diminished people feel childish. Echoes of parents, siblings, teachers and friends "pulling rank" fan the flames of anger around the immediate workplace issue. Some bosses manipulate when they are under pressure from their own managers. Others are incapable of dealing with employees in a straightforward manner because their interpersonal skills are deficient.
• Retaliation is the ultimate frustrator, the definitive "get even" tactic. Retaliation not only prevents an employee from getting or keeping something very meaningful to him, it is really intended to show who's the boss. Retaliators often retaliate merely because they can. If you engage in such behavior, use arrogant body language and speak with a contemptuous tone, you ought to make sure that your insurance premiums are paid up.

Tragically, a supervisor may be unaware of what his or her behavior is communicating. Sometimes overworked, overwhelmed and stressed supervisors can exhibit unintended behaviors that enrage employees. In those instances, the Seven Deadly Subtleties are sins of omission.

A Danger Zone

The danger zone where the Pillars and the Subtleties most often fuse in the workplace is in the highly charged arena of performance appraisal. In most organizations, managers are urged to communicate with employees throughout the year about their progress, performance and potential for promotion.

Somehow it rarely works that way. For supervisors and non-supervisors alike, the performance evaluation is often singled out as the most distasteful and stress-producing event of the work cycle.

Employees with whom information is rarely shared, who receive little positive feedback, who have been given instructions without explanations, who feel overworked, underpaid, ignored and replaceable, seldom expect a positive outcome at evaluation time.

Supervisors who use an employee appraisal to spring criticism, who think that it's more important to talk about what's going wrong than what's going right, and who become defensive when employees challenge their assessments, also can expect little from a performance appraisal session. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Anger that has been bottled up for months on both sides tends to either explode or get buried even more deeply.

What Can Be Done?

The good news is that angry, hostile work environments can be changed, just as angry, hostile home environments can be salvaged.

Abuse rarely manifests itself as an isolated incident and is rarely perceived that way. Employees tend to support bosses who are seen as "tough, but fair." They will forgive occasional bad behavior by a boss who is viewed as generally operating in good faith, while they will react differently to one perceived as dishonest, manipulating or self-serving.

This is no mystery. The workplace is an extension of the rest of life. We judge others by the impact of their behavior on us, and we generally assume we know what drives other people. Their behavior seems to make it fairly obvious. This is how human beings perceive, and this is why we managers need to carefully examine what the unintended impact of our behavior is, especially during times when everybody feels pressured.

Bulletproof bosses ask questions, assume little, and are willing to wait and react more slowly to what appears to be an employee's unwillingness to cooperate. Bulletproof bosses know how to listen. They build relationships with the people who work with them, they treat people as trustworthy until proven otherwise, and they are aware that what is painful to them is painful to others.

Managers might be wise to take the advice of the first century rabbi, Hillel, who offered this variation on the Golden Rule: "do not do to others what you do not want them to do to you." Likewise, more than 40 years ago, Eleanor Roosevelt observed: "Where, after all, do universal human rights begin? In small places, close to home-so close and so small that they cannot be seen on any map of the world. Yet they are the world of the individual person-the neighborhood he lives in; the school or college he attends; the factory, farm, or office where he works. Such are the places where every man, woman, and child seeks equal justice, equal opportunity, equal dignity without discrimination. Unless these rights have meaning there, they have little meaning anywhere."

Heeding these words may be just what we need to do to bulletproof the workplaces of the 21st century.

Mary Stanton has been a personnel and labor relations administrator for more than 20 years. She is now deputy for administration at the Riverside Church in New York City.