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The modern workplace is in crisis. Last year, more than 2.82 million Britons were out of work with long-term sickness, a number that’s gone up by a staggering 41 per cent over the past three years. Working from home, sicknote culture, Gen Zs “quiet quitting” and approval-seeking millennials caught in the middle of it all: the theatre of workplace dynamics is where the drama of our upbringing, relationships, hopes, fears and generation wars all play out.
While we’re used to the cries of staff calling out toxic workplaces and horrible bosses – over one in three people who quit their job blames bad management – we don’t hear the other side of the story. As a millennial manager, working in the third sector, I remember being shaken to my people-pleasing core when a staff member made a complaint about me. How could I – warm, supportive, an actual hand-holding angel – have possibly offended this lovely woman? How did our wires get so badly crossed?
It’s clear a generational shift surrounding attitudes to the workplace has emerged between employers and their staff. It’s partly to do with the gap between managers’ and employees’ expectations of each other, says Michael Smets, a professor of management at Saïd Business School at the University of Oxford, who works with high-performing executives around the world.
“Managers complain about a lack of commitment, staff refusing to work long hours, the high level of expectations from superiors and demands for flexible working,” he says. “I recently had a conversation with a partner in a large consulting firm where they had exactly those kinds of complaints about their junior lawyers. The managerial generation has often come up the ranks with the attitude, ‘I’ll work long nights and weekends, and I’ll do whatever it takes’. With generational differences, but especially post-Covid, people’s priorities have simply changed.”
The irony is that having a positive relationship with your boss is crucial to career success. A 2023 McKinsey report found that positive relationships with leadership accounted for 86 per cent of employee satisfaction with interpersonal ties at work. Moreover, bosses are more likely to assess staff potential by their personal connection to them than by performance metrics.
So, how can managers shift perception of workplace culture, and be better leaders? And how can the relationship between worker and boss be reset in order to make workplaces happier?
One way, perhaps, is for managers to shift their thinking. Age-old stereotypes about “lazy employees” come down to the “attribution fallacy”, says Smets. “When we think someone is behaving a certain way, we assume it’s out of choice or ill-will. They’ve checked out, so they’re lazy.”
My first instinct when hearing the complaint against me was to do the same. Here was someone who clearly didn’t want to work and didn’t understand the business demand of meeting KPIs [key performance indicators], I thought haughtily. Instead, Smets advises bosses to have continuing discussions with their employees to ensure that personal circumstances aren’t affecting their performance.
This resonated with my experience: it turned out that my staff member had a lot going on personally and I’d overlooked the cues that something was wrong. I couldn’t help but sympathise: I’d been there myself, being told to hurry up with a deadline at the same time as finding out my cat had cancer. “If only they knew what was REALLY going on,” I cried down the phone to a friend on my lunch break.
It’s certainly all too easy for managers to dismiss “disruptive” employees, who may be challenging micromanagement, as simply difficult or irritating. “Most good managers will ask themselves, ‘What’s going on here?’ and try to get to the root of the issue,” says psychotherapist Nicola Noél. “You’ll get the odd bad manager who will take it personally, which ends ugly because that gets combative. But most managers are confused and wondering why you’re trying to disrupt the team.”
She says that one fraught relationship can affect the morale of the whole group. “It affects the team’s performance, then the profit line. When there is pushback against management, it can resemble splitting the team. So, you may get someone who is contentious in team meetings who will almost want people to start taking sides.”
It may seem obvious, but the main thing a manager wants is for you to do your job. “It’s not a great place to be when you’re a manager, and you’ve got a bigger goal and people don’t want to get on board with it,” says Merrisha Gordon, who has over 20 years of experience in management across NHS hospitals and is now a career coach. “For example, if someone is constantly late, it has a ripple effect. The reality is that if people are not doing the job that they need to be there to do, there are repercussions.”
And they want you to understand that they have to do theirs. “It’s not personal, but you have to apply policy,” she adds. “If someone’s sick leave runs out, it might feel unfair to that person at that time, but I’ve got to be consistent in how I treat people. People can have a very strong emotional reaction to that.”
No one is saying managers aren’t fallible. With 82 per cent of managers finding themselves in the position by “accident”, they are often not equipped with the emotional intelligence needed to motivate a team. That means they can tend to hold critical views about commitment or work ethic rather than questioning their own ability to lead.
To complicate matters further, the roles people take on in the workplace can often be impacted by upbringing. Noél says highly strung employees often exhibit trauma responses such as defensive behaviour and high sensitivity to criticism (hello, that’s me). Break the bad news to me softly, and I’ll rise to the challenge like a basilisk. But opening an abrupt email makes me feel like I’m being chased by a pack of wolves – that’s if I can bear to open it in the first place.
While boomer managers might shrug that off as “snowflake” behaviour, it has a big impact on individual and collective productivity. Meanwhile, those who feel out of control in their personal life may become overly controlling in the workplace, while managers who are also people-pleasers will make moves to try and be friends with their staff. Noél believes this is why the relationship can quickly start to feel personal as parental complexes are projected onto authority figures, and managerial needs for authority or approval play out.
Professor Smets, who recently carried out research with Ernst & Young on the importance of “emotional energy” in organisations during corporate takeovers, says that treating people as difficult can negatively impact innovation and undermine psychological safety. “Once people realise that if you broach a controversial subject or speak truth to power that is harmful to their career, they will hold back. They no longer contribute. The less divergent views you have, the less diversity of thought, the less innovation, the less risk-taking and performance. Morale takes a dip because people are treading on eggshells and not engaging fully.”
Sometimes managers may also take a personal dislike to someone. “I’ve had a number of instances where I’m managing staff, and actually, I don’t like them,” says Gordon. “I struggle with certain personality types who are passive-aggressive. They don’t say what they mean and there’s always an undertone or trying to undermine your authority. I deal with it by venting elsewhere and coming back and giving them a smile. It might not be a genuine smile, but I will dig very deep and find that smile. You don’t need to like each other, but we do need to respect each other, and we do need to be professional in the workplace.”
Unconscious or implicit bias can play a role in this. McKinsey reports that women and minorities have weaker relationships with managers, which blocks their access to promotion opportunities. With rapport often based on mutual interests and similarities, those from different backgrounds to their seniors can quickly feel excluded, negatively affecting their career progression.
Although they should remain professional, there are some telltale signs that your manager may feel awkward with you. We’ve all had that feeling that a manager doesn’t like us. You might notice they exhibit a warm and friendly vibe with the rest of the team, asking about holiday plans or taking a cordial interest in their personal life. Meanwhile, you’re met with a frosty air of strained formality. I remember it took one manager months to greet me in the office. The northerner in me was appalled. The importance of these interactions can’t be overstated, with a British woman winning an unfair dismissal claim in court last year, after her boss ignored her when she said “hello” to him three times.
Professor Smets advises managers to keep a mental tally of how often they’ve spoken with their staff. “Who are the people you engage with most frequently? Are these engagements visible to others, so they may think that you’re engaging more with one employee over another because they are your favourite.”
He says it’s also important that staff have equal opportunities to engage. “If, for example, all your socials are after work, with alcohol in a pub, then already you make it more difficult for some people to engage with you than others. Create equal opportunities to have access to you in different ways and be visible. The most critical signal here is that you welcome and possibly celebrate divergent voices as driving the conversation forward, rather than as being troublemakers.”
For managers, it may sometimes seem as though they can’t win. Squeezed between pressures from above and complex expectations from below, they can find themselves the workplace punching bag. But Professor Smets says the relationship should work both ways.
“Managers are not superhuman,” he tells me. “I think in the past, we’ve often treated them in that way. We’ve pretended that they don’t have fluctuating energy levels, that their enthusiasm doesn’t wane, that their emotions don’t fluctuate.”
Gordon agrees. “People think you don’t care, but you do, you go home thinking about work just like they do. I’ve had times when I’ve felt really angry about something that’s been said to me. Other times, I’ve gone into my office, closed the door, and had to cry. We’re accused of not caring, but you don’t do this job unless you care about people on some level.”
In other words, next time you’ve had a bad day at the office, spare a thought for your boss. The chances are they’ve had a bad day too.
