What should I do with an abusive boss?

Studies suggest employees who stand up to an abusive boss feel less victimised. / iStock

While more and more attention has been given to the effect of bad supervisors at work - lousy managers can make you sick and ruin your family life - there has been less focus on how employees' response to that bad behaviour helps or hurts the situation. Recent research, however, shows that your reaction to an insulting or belittling boss can, over time, make things worse.

A forthcoming paper in the Journal of Applied Psychology surveyed nearly 250 employees in a variety of organisations over a six-month period about their bosses' behaviour and their own. The researchers found that trying to avoid bosses who had behaved poorly, as well as retaliating against their abusive acts, created a vicious cycle that was linked with subsequent mistreatment.

That's not too surprising. If you jab at a boss who treats you poorly, it makes sense that more ridicule might come your way.

But the researchers also found something they didn't expect. T

hey predicted that acts of compassion and empathy - assisting bad bosses by going above and beyond, helping with heavy workloads even when they're not asked - would help lessen future rude or abusive behaviour.

But the study found that wasn't true. "Abusive supervisors didn't respond to followers being positive and compassionate, and doing things to be supportive," said Charlice Hurst, an assistant professor at Notre Dame's Mendoza College of Business, who was a co-author on the paper. Their findings, she said, seem to "clash with common sense."

In the paper, the researchers say one explanation may be that bosses just see all that extra work as part of the job, something academics refer to as "organisational citizenship," and therefore don't feel the need to treat their employees any better because of those efforts.

I think companies have to create cultures where abusive supervisors are not acceptable, and they have to implement policies for employees to report being bullied.

So if avoiding or lashing out at your boss is linked with more bad behaviour - and if compassion and assistance do little to help - what should employees do to deal with their very own Bill Lumbergh or Montgomery Burns?

Hurst says their paper doesn't answer that question; so far, they have discovered only what not to do. "I think companies have to create cultures where abusive supervisors are not acceptable, and they have to implement policies for employees to report being bullied," she said. "You're only going to make your situation worse if you try to retaliate or try to withdraw or hunker down."

Perhaps. While it may not improve the boss's behaviour if workers retaliate in passive-aggressive ways, such as ignoring the boss or doing half-hearted work, research from earlier this year shows that such an approach has at least one upside: employees say it made them feel better. Those who stood up for themselves were less likely to self-identify as victims, less apt to report psychological distress and more likely to be committed to their jobs.