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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).

Symptoms
Richard III, King of England: Killed little princes in the tower; welched on promises of long term compensation to senior management.
The paranoid
Symptoms
  • Default emotion: fear.
  • May at times appear "normal," but is always perched on the verge of an explosive display of hyperhysteria.
  • Capable of great, intense emotion but virtually no actual feeling.
  • Highly mistrustful of others, always looking for motivations and intentions detrimental to his interests.
  • Convinced others are talking, plotting, or conspiring against him; acutely attuned to insults and slights of any kind.
  • Delusional, able to construct vast mountains of conjecture out of molehill of evidence.
  • Cannot stand to be contradicted.
  • Vengeful, has memory of an elephant for people who have hurt him and is intent on meting out retribution.
  • Very organized in the face of the ostensible forces against him.
  • Demands great loyalty while giving very little him- or herself.
  • Contagion factor: 74.
  • Level of difficulty: 69. Unlike bullies, who are often highly lethal to those around them, the paranoid's symptoms make him easier to manage than might at first be expected.



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Is your boss heading for a self-made disaster? Scared of his own shadow? Just plain weird? Share your insane workplace story.
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Most stock quote data provided by BATS. Market indices are shown in real time, except for the DJIA, which is delayed by two minutes. All times are ET. Disclaimer. Morningstar: © 2018 Morningstar, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Factset: FactSet Research Systems Inc. 2018. All rights reserved. Chicago Mercantile Association: Certain market data is the property of Chicago Mercantile Exchange Inc. and its licensors. All rights reserved. Dow Jones: The Dow Jones branded indices are proprietary to and are calculated, distributed and marketed by DJI Opco, a subsidiary of S&P Dow Jones Indices LLC and have been licensed for use to S&P Opco, LLC and CNN. Standard & Poor's and S&P are registered trademarks of Standard & Poor's Financial Services LLC and Dow Jones is a registered trademark of Dow Jones Trademark Holdings LLC. All content of the Dow Jones branded indices © S&P Dow Jones Indices LLC 2018 and/or its affiliates.