BP, Bad Bosses, and the Rest of Us

As oil and gas continue to gush out of BP's Deepwater Horizon oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico, and as the CEO of BP Group has made one public relations gaffe after another, I have been thinking of how people end up in management positions for which they are experientially or temperamentally unprepared or ill-suited. Tony Hayward seems to have risen steadily through the ranks, from his blue collar background to his appointment as CEO of BP Group. Along the way, did Hayward reveal any of the hubris and public relations cluelessness that he has displayed so well since the oil rig explosion? Or is he so embedded in a culture in which disdain of "ordinary" people is a given that his behavior was not interpreted as unusual or contemptible as the public would assess his later words and actions to be? More talented and smarter people than I concluded long ago that money and power corrupt. Too little of either, and one is crushed, diminished, hopeless--too much, and one becomes superior, assuming that one is better than others, blessed not because of caprice or luck or circumstance but because of some entitlement that gives one permission to discount the worth of others.

Like many managers promoted to levels for which they are, nevertheless, ill-suited or unprepared, Tony Hayward seems to have known the right people and said the right things in the past. Hayward's stepping into the role of CEO followed an earlier tragedy, the explosion of BP's oil refinery plant in Texas City in 2005, in which 15 workers were killed and 170 others were injured. An investigation of BP's safety record revealed serious problems, and OSHA imposed a huge fine on the company. The CEO at the time, Lord John Browne (the man who had been impressed by Hayward and who had promoted him to the position as his executive assistant in 1990), retired early and Hayward took his place. Before that final promotion, Hayward said these words at a townhall meeting in Houston: "We have a leadership style that is probably too directive and doesn't listen sufficiently well. The top of the organization doesn't listen hard enough to what the bottom of the organization is saying." He told his audience that "we need to be part and parcel of the society in which we operate."

Has BP's safety record improved since Hayward spoke those words and since he became the public face of BP? Has the top of the organization listened to the bottom? The record certainly suggests not, as information has emerged indicating that employees raised many concerns about safety even months before the explosion. And in his testimony before Congress, Hayward repeatedly claimed that he was not aware of decisions made concerning Deepwater Horizon, so he must not have been following his own advice to "listen...to what the bottom of the organization is saying." His own words and actions--saying he wanted to get his life back, suggesting that the oil spill would be minimal, and attending a tony yacht race while shrimpers and fishermen in the Gulf were losing their livelihoods--suggest that he also was not "part and parcel of the society in which [BP] operates."

How often have workers heard such high-minded promises from management, only to be disappointed by the lack of consequent action? Not only are organizations difficult to change. Something happens to many people when they reach the top of their professions, are promoted to positions where they have power over other people, or achieve their dreams of wealth. There are exceptions, but too often people begin to believe that they deserve their rewards more than any other, that luck, caprice, or circumstances had little to do with their achievements. Or if they think that luck and circumstances had too great a hand in their success, they do everything they can to conceal that fact, their lack of confidence in their own worth translating into bullying behavior. (See the research reported in "The Making of Toxic Boss" for a discussion of how the combination of power and incompetence leads to abusive behavior in the workplace.)

Over the years, most of us have encountered these "Mini-Me's" of management. Anyone who Googles "bad habits of bosses" will find numerous articles that list behavior he or she will recognize:

• The boss who gives staff an assignment that is "high priority" and that must be completed immediately--and then reverses his demands. The staff spend hours on the assignment, only to be told that the work isn't important, after all. Priorities change overnight, sometimes within the hours of a single workday. Or reports that the boss insisted were high priority are completed, handed in, and disappear into a black hole. The boss does not provide feedback, fails to follow through with the recommendations, and then acts as if the report never existed.
  
  
• The boss who constantly criticizes and rarely, if ever, praises. In 2002, National Public Radio's Workplace Correspondent David Molpus used a recent academic study on bad bosses to solicit stories from his listeners. One listener described two laboratories where he had worked. In one, the workers were proud of their work, competed in working overtime, and stayed with the company a long time. The boss of this laboratory listened to her employees, praised them publicly, and when one of them made a mistake, worked with the employee to rectify the error. At a second laboratory, however, the boss rarely ventured outside her office, was impatient when employees reported problems, never praised employees, and publicly criticized those who committed errors. At that place of employment, the turnover rate "was staggering."
  
  
• The boss who blames others for every error, mistake, or roadblock. People on the make are particularly prone to being abusive in this way. They are frantic to be seen by those above them as always competent, prepared, perfect, so they deflect any problems away from themselves. They are quick to blame mistakes and errors on others, even when the problems are part of the everyday experience of the job, unavoidable and eventually solvable. This abusive behavior can even become psychotic, for the person who fails to admit his own mistakes--or who refuses to accept that less-than-perfect outcomes may be the result of circumstances or multiple rather than individual error--may be so compelled to deflect blame from himself that he begins to view his employees as "enemies," as people determined to undermine his authority. He may direct blame for all problems--real or imagined--to one employee who becomes the scapegoat for the boss. Other employees may notice this behavior, but because they fear for their own jobs and because they feel they don't have the power to change the office dynamics, they can't help but be relieved that someone else is there to buffer them from their abusive boss.

These and other habits of bad bosses show up again and again in articles on management. Although in the long run bad management is bad business, bad bosses often have long tenures because senior management may only care for the bottom line. If the bad boss looks good on paper (often the result of the good work of cowed yet competent workers), the bad boss remains, no matter how many talented employees leave in response to bad management.

So what recourse do employees have? Robert Sutton, Professor of Management Science and Engineering at Stanford University and author of No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving one that Isn't, says that "[i]n normal organizational life, for people who have less power, the best thing is to get out. If you can't do that," he advises,"try to avoid contact with the person as much as possible." As a final recourse, he suggests that "[y]ou can learn not to care." [See Sutton's "Why I Wrote the No Asshole Rule," Harvard Business Review, March 16, 2007; also, "Prof has advice for tackling workplace jerks," at msnbc.com.]

In an economy where over 14 million people are currently unemployed and job competition is fierce, leaving a bad boss is not an option for many people. Also, avoiding the bad boss is useful advice only for those who do not answer directly to management. The best option might be learning not to care, especially if you're a cynic to begin with--but that's a poor option for those to whom other employees report, unless you're an asshole yourself. And there's the rub: evidently, assholeness is contagious. "Jerk poisoning," Professor Sutton says, "is a contagious disease. It's something you get and give to others."

Of course, we don't know how BP CEO Tony Hayward treats employees who answer directly to him, but his public behavior certainly reminds us that poor management skills can have devastating consequences, to individuals, to the organization, and even beyond. In this terrible economy, organizations need to re-assess their management techniques and do as Robert Sutton suggests, that companies "screen for jerks as they hire and purge the bullies already in their ranks because, in almost all cases, they cost more than they contribute."