Bossy BS

So this gem popped up yesterday - International Women's Day - on some government site I follow:

Stuff like this gets up under my skin like nobody's business.

Bossy is not good.
Bossy has never been good.
People don't like bossy people.
Not caring if people don't like you as long as you get to continue being bossy is a really weird outlook.  What's the payoff?

From the time you are little you would recoil whenever anyone tried to boss you around.
You stopped being friends with people because they were too bossy.

I know the bossy thing was a thing awhile back.  It was cool to be bossy; somehow even "empowering".

Beyoncé wanted/wants you to be bossy.
And you know you're supposed to do whatever it is that celebrities tell you to do. ::massive eyeroll::

I used to be a boss. In fact, I was a boss of a lot of people when I ran the freelance and editorial departments of two major publishing firms*. But I was not a bossy boss.  Instead, I was a leader boss.

I was a leader of my people!

A bossy boss is a jerk that no one likes or respects or is loyal to.

A leader boss is well-liked because they lead by example and respect the people who work for them. In turn, leader bosses have a happy, loyal team.

Being a good, non-bossy boss is not hard.  Like all good things, being a good boss is rather simple: you start with a foundation of treating people just the way you would want to be treated, aka the Golden Rule.  See?  Not hard at all, people (I'm looking at you, bad bossy bosses)!

I have had bossy bosses, both female and male. You know what they got from me and the other people who worked for them?  A whole lot of not much, that's what!  When I used to interview people for jobs one thing I always told them was that they would not last long working for me if they were just warm bodies.  A warm body is someone who shows up to work and does the bare minimum so that they can just collect a paycheck.  Warm bodies are the kind of employees that bossy bosses have. I have been a warm body so I know.

Well, that doesn't sound right, does it.  

I have been a warm body for bossy bosses.

Nope, still doesn't sound right.  Forget it, you know what I mean.

Anyway, I really think that quote above by Miss Sheryl Sandberg needs a little makeover.

How about:

I want every little girl to be told she has leadership skills and that one day she can be the boss but she doesn't have to be bossy 

to be effective.
-Sharon O'Brien Huey, COO at Huey Enterprises

Much better.

Take that, Beyoncé!






*Easily verifiable; contact me for list of publications in which my name appears in masthead.