Business English: My bully of a boss has destroyed morale. Can I do anything?

A male banker (49) wrote: I am a senior executive in a leading bank. The chief executive, who has been in place for the past three years, has systematically filled all the key positions with his cronies and has single-handedly destroyed all employee loyalty and morale... von Lucy Kellaway, London

...He cares only about short-term results (which is what drives his compensation) and expects people to put up with abuse on a daily basis.

I am not the only person who is offended by this culture - and in a different economic environment would have moved by now. How, if at all, other than writing to you anonymously, should we deal with this situation?

Read what Lucy Kellaway, "agony-aunt" of the Financial Times (London), answered:

Your situation sounds perfectly normal to me. Most CEOs are mainly directed towards the short term: it would be irrational if they were not. This is because their average length in the job is brief and if they screw up the short term, they get chucked out. Most CEOs surround themselves with their cronies. Or, to put it in a less loaded way, they surround themselves with people they can work with - which usually means people they like and trust.

Lucy Kellaway answers the questions of FT-readers

The reason all this seems so sinister to you is that you are one of the few survivors from the old regime, which means you naturally distrust the team coming in and resent their clannishness.

This is not unusual

You complain that morale is low. This too is natural. Yours is low because it is wretched being in a minority, and others' is probably low because banking has been in crisis. If morale were sky high, I would be even more worried.

You say he abuses people, but even this is not unusual. Plenty of good CEOs are bullies - the answer is to keep out of his way and if he lets rip at you, not to take it too personally.

Nothing you can do

Despite the above, it is perfectly possible this man is unusually horrible and is making ever poorer decisions than others in your sector. If this is so, there is absolutely nothing you can do about it other than bide your time and know that he will get found out before long. And then you will have another new broom to get used to, who might be as bad as this one - or worse.

Mehr zum Thema

I am touched by your faith that writing to me is in itself going to help. Do you expect your CEO will read this, recognise himself and suddenly change his ways? I think it almost inconceivable that he would see himself as the man you describe, but even if he did, his likely response would be less to search his soul than to search his top team for the troublemaker. I fear he will track down Banker, male, 49 pretty quickly, given that you are one of the only surviving non-cronies on his top team. Let us hope, for your sake, that he is too busy tearing a strip off his workers to pick up the Financial Times today.

Aus der Financial Times, London. www.ft.com