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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
Joseph Stalin, Russian dictator. Sent people to gulag, killed millions
The bully
Symptoms
  • Default emotion: rage.
  • Extremely inconsistent, vast emotional swings depending on mood, often seemingly unrelated to external circumstances.
  • Capable of great affection and loyalty, which may be withdrawn at any time.
  • Manipulative and self- pitying, highly aggressive personality that has no problem asserting its priorities over those of others.
  • Extremely insensitive about feelings of others while at the same time extremely solicitous of his or her own.
  • Requires enemies in order to function properly; if none are handy is not averse to creating them.
  • Contagion factor: 96.
  • Level of difficulty: 100. Bully management is perhaps the most difficult of all tasks for those who wish to survive in a world filled with the impressive variety of sick senior officers.

Tell us about your crazy boss
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.