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Stanley Bing

How to deal with your crazy boss

Fortune's Stanley Bing shares his take on the five types of crazy bosses, and some strategies for dealing with one, from "Crazy Bosses" (Harper Collins).

The disaster hunter
Be calm in the face of hysteria.
Rationale: As he fritzes out, your crazy boss will begin fl ailing about like a madman, punishing evildoers, medicating himself with long lunches and surreptitious bumps of blow, festering behind his closed door like a hermit, insulting people who should be stroked, stroking people who should be insulted, doing everything he can to take you along on this ride into oblivion. Your only weapon during this phase is your composure. Presumably, people are still looking to you for continued usefulness. They'll be turning to you more and more as he becomes increasingly difficult to deal with. See yourself as an island of cool sanity in an ocean of despair and irrationality. This will make you feel better than if you allow yourself to be swept along in the powerful tides of emotion that attend the death of the king.

Effectiveness: Big but scary.


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