Today, Tyler R. Tichelaar of Reader Views is pleased to interview Tony Deblauwe, who is here to talk about his new book “Tangling With Tyrants: Managing the Balance of Power at Work.”

During his career in Human Resources, Tony has worked through many complex people and business challenges to yield lasting results for customers. His interest in high-tech and how technology impacts people has given him insight into what it takes for people to succeed in a virtual economy.

Tony grew up in an eclectic family just a few blocks from Apple in the suburb of Cupertino, California. The son of Belgian immigrants, his father is a former college professor of art, language, and history. His mother is an entrepreneur having worked in haute couture fashion.

Tony has practical, in-the-trenches experience in human resources and organizational development. He has a master’s degree from University of San Francisco, is a certified coach, and a Master Career Director. Additionally, he has authored articles for “CareerSource Magazine” and the Northern California HR Association. Tony is a board member and Director of Innovation for Career Directors International, the premier educational and credentialing organization for career professionals.

Tyler:  Welcome, Tony. I’m excited to talk to you about your book today. To begin, will you tell us what made you decide to write “Tangling with Tyrants”? Did you have your own personal experience with a tyrant?

Tony: Thank you Tyler it’s a pleasure for me to share my book with you and your audience. The background for the book comes from a combination of personal and professional experiences. I have worked in corporate Human Resources for about fifteen years and have seen my share of workplace behaviors at all levels, especially management.

I suppose the true motivation for the book started with my experience reporting to a bad boss early in my career. It was a client-facing role which meant I had to report to someone in the location as well as report to a field HR manager. This was my first real job in HR, and I was scheduled to meet the new head of what was at the time a large global engineering division. He was an executive, and it was critical I make a good impression. Needless to say, I prepared for days to make sure I was credible and polished. Nothing prepared me, however, for what I was about to experience.

My first meeting with him, I went to his office and without saying a word, he motioned to me to close the door and sit in a chair that faced his giant mahogany desk. He didn’t shake my hand or introduce himself. Instead, he launched right into how he disliked HR and didn’t want to be bothered with what he felt were “non-essential” requests. He stated he was a great boss—his team knew it, his boss knew it, and the divisional GM knew it. So unless he needed something or he was absolutely required to do something (i.e. his boss telling him to do it) then I (meaning HR) shouldn’t “get in his way.”

Can you imagine this as your first introduction to a new job? I was crushed! It didn’t stop there, however. Before I could respond, his phone rang and he took it. It was clear a minute into it the call that it was a friend catching up. He could have told the person he’d call back but didn’t. Instead, he looked at me and waved goodbye. In other words, he was signaling the meeting was over. I got up to leave. As I got to the door, the final insult came—he said to close the door behind me.

I’ll never forget that meeting. I went back to my cubicle and sat at my desk stunned and speechless for about ten minutes. I brooded over what happened for a long time afterwards. It was tough seeing him each day, and I avoided him as much as possible. I simply wasn’t prepared emotionally and it was clear my training had not prepared me to handle such behavior. When you are confronted with bad boss behaviors directly, it doesn’t matter if you are an HR person or not, it still stings. From that point on, I knew I had to change what I knew about my communication strategy if I were going to make it. Over time, I practiced my approach until I had a system that would help me with various difficult personalities I came across.

Now I have honed my methods into a process that I use with people I coach. A few years ago, several people I have ongoing coaching relationships with and my colleagues encouraged me to write a book about my experience guiding others through similar situations dealing with a negative work environment. The concept for “Tangling with Tyrants” was born soon after.

Tyler:  Tony, how common is it for people to dislike a boss or find him or her difficult to work with?

Tony:  Actually it’s a big problem. Depending on which survey you pick, roughly 30-50% of people report a problem with their bosses. Having a difficult or non-existent relationship with one’s boss is one of the top three reasons why people leave a job. Most often boss problems rank above pay or benefits in exit interviews with people who quit involuntarily.

People want a civil working environment where they can perform their job but also be satisfied doing it. When your mental energy is constantly tasked wondering what your boss is going to do next, and how miserable you are, your work suffers. You can’t be as productive as you’d like to be and you start to question yourself, your abilities, and your personal value.

Tyler:  What do you feel makes “Tangling with Tyrants” different from other books that provide advice on bad bosses?

Tony:  I’m always reviewing books and other materials on bad bosses looking for tidbits of information. Over the years I found it difficult to find what I wanted in terms of something that felt applicable at work. As a coach and “HR guy,” I am in the field and on the front line. People expect me to offer guidance and solutions, and that requires having a toolkit that’s ready to handle a variety of people matters. What has frustrated me is that many bad boss books look at several labels for bad bosses or focus only on the bully boss style. Many do provide useful advice but typically jump to the exit strategy too fast. I needed something that mirrored my experience coaching others and most people I know don’t have the luxury simply to jump ship when the situation with a boss boils over. It takes time and a lot of planning and decision-making.

Also, I did not find many resources that really asked people to turn inward and think about personal accountability in contributing to problems in the relationship. In other words, regardless of whether your boss is a bully or incompetent, how clear have you been acknowledging what you could have done better in addressing concerns earlier, or handling your boss more effectively?

To illustrate this point, in the book I talk about Hoping, Coping, and Compromise. This is the pattern of thinking we tend to get into when we feel we can’t change a boss. First you hope something happens such as your boss transfers or quits. You compromise—that is, you tell yourself what you can do, how you can work around the behaviors that bother you, etc. until you can justify to yourself what you are going to do. Finally, you compromise. These are the behaviors you show the world and reflect the decisions you made (with yourself) about how you can best deal with your boss. Digging deeper into these areas is very important because if you don’t, you’re likely to attract the same problems in the future.

My book looks at both sides of the relationship—boss behaviors and your behaviors. By taking these concepts apart, I walk people through a series of steps and techniques that change your thinking and your perspective so that you become clear and focused. This is a unique approach versus other books because I am looking at the two-way communication and profiles that contribute to understanding how power works in the relationship. It’s not about how many different bad boss types there are, it’s about what you need to do, and practice, in order to build a long-term plan for sustained success.

Tyler:  How has technology changed the relationship between bosses and their employees, and for the better or worse?

Tony:  Technology has definitely influenced communication style. We have seen the benefits in terms of how new communication tools connect with people all over the world and allow us to collaborate and be more productive. On the flip side there is a price—substituting or replacing internet and mobile based technologies for face-to-face dialogue has created distance between people. For instance, it makes it easier to avoid conflict. I can just send an email and deliver bad news without looking at the other person’s reaction in front of me.

Your boss can make demands in email without a lot of information. You have to struggle a bit more to figure out what your boss intended. Face-to-face, you might have asked a few questions and been done with it. Now if the request isn’t clear, you might start an email thread that goes back and forth. I see this all the time. An employee is so tired of not being talked to that they save every email and respond only through email. This is done in case the boss says something the employee interprets as wrong or demeaning as an archive of behavior. Email makes it convenient to capture the “gotcha” when the boss slips. This thinking erodes the overall communication. The important thing is, no matter how comfortable and easy it is to use technology for day-to-day interactions, when it comes to the relationship with your boss—if it’s headed south or broken, face time is critical to fixing it.

Tyler:  How does the current economic situation influence bosses, and by default, their employees?

Tony:  Now more than ever, people are asked to do more with less. The past year has seen such a dramatic shift in the economy and we’ve seen the results—mass layoffs, more off-shoring, and fewer jobs in general. Most companies are in survival mode trying to break-even. Under this kind of pressure people are required to work at a faster pace just to remain afloat.

Managers are held more accountable and the pressure to deliver fuels negative behaviors. That’s when you see the Tyrant profile emerge. Either micro-managing kicks in or gets worse, or managers withdraw and are hard to find, can’t commit, or are too immature to manage varied and complex demands. Employees become the outlet of the boss’s shortfalls and communication suffers. When things are going well and the economy is flourishing, work environments benefit because there are more resources. Slowed down to the level it is now, a poor economy takes resources away and often people have a hard time adjusting to operating under constrained conditions.

Tyler:  Are there common characteristics that define a “Tyrant” boss?

Tony:  The Tyrant profile consists of direct and indirect behaviors. Direct behaviors are probably the most common traits people think of when describing a bad boss or even the word Tyrant. These traits include: bullying, demeaning, micro-managing, humiliating and belittling. All of these traits create significant emotional damage to the person on the receiving end. Direct behaviors are where you see most cases of horrible boss behavior.

On the flip side, and maybe not as evident, but equally frustrating and stressful, are indirect behaviors. Indirect behaviors represent the other half of the Tyrant profile and include traits like: indifference, tuning out, feigning interest, and boasting.

While manager to manager the displays of these characteristics vary, direct and indirect characteristics represent hurtful, confusing, and annoying outcomes to employees trying to figure out how to deal with them.

Tyler:  Tony, in the book, you reference movies and television depictions of bosses, such as Michael Scott in “The Office.” How common is the problem of having an ineffective or incompetent boss? Would you say the Peter Principle is true in these cases?

Tony:  Michael definitely displays the indirect characteristics of the Tyrant profile. Of course the working environment of “The Office” has so many other people dysfunctions, Michael’s antics are more acceptable and people aren’t severely hampered in getting their work done. I often thought about how Michael got into management. Certainly he did something right as a salesman to get a management role, but in terms of rising to his highest level of incompetence, as defined by the Peter Principle, Michael is there. He tries in vain to act like he knows what he’s doing and tries even harder to get his staff to go along.

Michael’s character may be amusing but it’s not that far-fetched from real life ineffective managers. I know many cases in engineering where a bright engineer gets promoted to management. The idea is that he or she can apply the same logic to solving technical problems to people matters. When people issues arise, pure logic is not the simple solution and the problems start. I will get a frustrated new manager coming to me saying “Why can’t they just do what I tell them?” It’s not a formula or equation that doesn’t talk back—now they have to deal with opinions, disagreements, and managing performance.

Unlike “The Office” people aren’t laughing. Employees get frustrated if they need help and their manager is clueless or incapable of making a decision let alone the right one. The new manager starts losing credibility and some employees may try to undermine him or her or worse, be manipulative to get what they want. Overall, an ineffective manager can be a serious detriment to team morale.

Tyler:  People fantasize about telling their bosses to “Take this job and shove it,” making a scene where they are a hero to their co-workers, and then storming out of the office. However, most people don’t do so because they fear not having a job. What are some other ineffective ways of dealing with a difficult boss?

Tony:  I have seen the fire in the eyes of many employees completely fed up with their boss where making a stand and being the martyr feels like a realistic solution to a bad situation. In the book, I present the pros and cons of seven common approaches I heard working with others or in popular advice columns, websites, and books. I’ll talk about a few that I see most in the workplace.

One method is to go to your boss’s boss. I have known several people who went this route and most times it backfired. These folks didn’t get any further in effectively addressing problematic boss behaviors and risked the boss finding out.

Another example which I have been in the middle of is the group attack. In this approach, the idea is that enough people (the team) complains about how bad their manager is. I am typically the first place the group comes to and demands the problem (i.e. the boss) is fixed (i.e. he or she is fired).

The caution here is that such claims require investigation. In cases where there are accusations of harassment or other volatile behaviors—these are handled immediately. But when the complaint has a little less teeth and it boils down to the boss being mean, demanding, or what the group perceives as unrealistic expectations, it’s a harder problem to address. Certainly the boss can be talked to but the risk is there for the team to have a worse work situation and no resolution.

I believe having a good case where the boss’s behavior interferes with doing business is the only way to get noticed. You have to connect a pattern of negative behavior with impact on the business to show a valid reason for making changes.

Tyler:  What would you say is the single most important thing to do when dealing with a difficult boss, and why?

Tony:  The most important element is to be clear in what you want to get out of each transaction with your boss. When people walk around with their emotions on their sleeves, they set themselves up to be disappointed. If you look past the initial disruptive behavior and focus on the conversation at hand and what you need to do your job, you can take control of the communication process with your boss and get the results you want.

Tyler:  Tony, in “Tangling with Tyrants,” you suggest people use the G.R.A.C.E.© method to deal with their bosses. Will you explain this process to us?

Tony:  The G.R.A.C.E.© model is an acronym that stands for Grounding, Reframing, Acknowledgement, Consensus, and Execute.

Grounding is the process of keeping yourself and your emotions in check. At the moment your boss does something or says something to you that triggers a reaction, put it aside and focus only on the conversation at hand. Essentially, let the negative emotional stuff go and get to the heart of what’s being said by your boss.

Reframing involves getting clear about what is being asked or stated. You want to extract the information you need from your boss’s request so you know exactly what’s being asked of you not what you “think” your boss is asking.

Acknowledging means you got what you needed and now you can identify the outcome(s) your boss expects from you.

Consensus is the negotiation of outcomes. Do you and your boss agree on the go forward plan? Anything outstanding, or are you okay to proceed? At this point, you want to problem solve through any vague concepts or ideas to be clear that what you heard and what you deliver is aligned with your boss’s needs.

Execute is the final step and it’s basically the “doing” part. By this stage of the process, you have broken through any initial negative or ineffective behavior, got your boss to give you the essential pieces you needed, agreed to it, and can go off and do work.

G.R.A.C.E.© is meant to be a straightforward tool to help you in the moment. Reading the steps is one thing, using it in the moment is another. That’s why you have to practice the steps and really understand how you use each step properly for your situation.

Tyler:  Tony, as a human resources person, what is your role in mediating with bosses?

Tony:  I play a very active role in employee relations issues. While I hear about problems with bosses typically from employees first, sometimes I will get the problem boss coming in looking for feedback. If the problem is severe enough, the boss’s boss will be involved. Often when I get involved, there has been a crisis event that set the wheels in motion to investigate the complaint which puts me right in the middle of the employee and the boss. I get both sides and based on my investigation, I come up with solutions.

I have to remain impartial because I have to be sensitive to both sides. I want to know the background that led up to the problems as well as what was said or done. Researching the root cause is critical for me to approach a manager with data. We can talk to the data in context of a problem situation in order to derive the right solution. Likewise with employees, it’s easier for me to be practical and realistic about what outcomes they can expect.

Tyler:  Tony, one thing I found very effective about “Tangling with Tyrants” was the scripting used. Would you provide us a sample script for a situation where a boss is yelling at you and says, “If you screw this up, you’re fired! Do you understand?” what should an employee say in return?

Tony:  I do a lot of scripting for people—employees and managers alike for a variety of scenarios. Because any statement I create needs to be vetted and adapted to the person’s personality—I provide quick starter statements that people can think about and modify to their natural voice. This is important because scripts cannot fit all scenarios. You want to get the essence of what you should say so you can have a fluid delivery.

In the example provided, we have a threat statement so you want to dissipate the threat before you talk about what the business need is. Staying grounded and not reacting to the tone or your emotional triggers is key. Here is an example that provides a simple first response to the boss’s statement:

“I hear you that this project is important and must be done right. To make sure we are aligned with expectations let me ask you a few questions that will ensure I deliver what you want.”

In this example, the point is not to panic and answer “Okay, Boss!” then scamper away with your tail between your legs. You want to diffuse the emotion part, and to do that, your tone must be even and balanced, showing that you aren’t interpreting the statement as “jump now or else.” The “you’re fired” piece is a signaling mechanism that means “this is urgent and I have something riding on this.” Don’t read into the threat language; instead, get clear about what needs to be delivered and focus on that.

Tyler:  At what point do people know that improving a relationship with a boss is unlikely to happen and not worth the stress and instead another job opportunity should be pursued?

Tony:  This decision really comes down to what’s happening to you in your work environment and how damaged things are. I outline a few key points that represent telltale signs you need to make a change:

* Communication never improves. This is evident if after you have made an authentic and conscious effort to change the way you work with your boss, the communication exchange remains difficult. Despite your efforts, nothing has changed, and the relationship has deteriorated further. At this point, any attempt you make to use a strategic communication process is ineffective and a waste of time.

* Overall job satisfaction suffers. Here we are talking about your job becoming a chore. You can’t get motivated by job duties you once enjoyed or excelled at. You can’t pick yourself out of a rut to come to work, stay focused, and perform properly. Your co-workers see or feel you are burnt out and disengaged. All of these factors are clear red flags that a complete environment change is necessary. Sometimes people get into this space, take a vacation and they come back ready to re-engage. Many times the pendulum has swung too far the other way in terms what can be improved and it’s time to move on.

* Career-limiting moves (CLMs). This is a big one. People get so frustrated and feel so trapped they make decisions or say things that equal career suicide. Unresolved emotional triggers are always waiting to burst out so you have to pay attention before opening your mouth and putting your foot in it. If you’re falling into the trap where you are boiling mad all the time and getting into trouble with your communication (email included), it’s a strong indicator a change is needed.

What’s most important before deciding to leave is to outline what you really want. I always tell people who contemplate leaving to make sure you have recognized the factors in the relationship that caused it to turn into conflict. Ask yourself, what are the lessons learned so I don’t run into the same problem(s) in the future? Sadly, I have seen people throw up their hands and leave in haste, never reflecting on the experience or having honestly changed anything about themselves.

Tyler:  Thank you for joining me today, Tony. Before we go, would you tell our readers about your website and what additional information they may find there about “Tangling with Tyrants: Managing the Balance of Power at Work”?

Tony:  Please visit www.tanglingwithtyrants.com and you’ll find more information about me, the book, reviews, and selected media. My firm HR4Change offers a variety of consulting services including personal coaching. The website is www.hr4change.com. I encourage your readers to drop me a line regarding their bad boss experiences and how my book has helped them.