Who’s a Better Boss: Him or Her?

I’ve had a number of bosses over the years, men and women, and had a good working relationship with them, except for one woman. This woman replaced my previous female boss for a job I’d worked successfully at for years and suddenly wanted to micromanage me. I had no problem taking direction, however the new boss was clearly frustrated that I was a self-starter and adept at doing my job; after a couple months’ time, I discovered she wanted employees to need her.

Like Miranda Priestly in The Devil Wears Prada she wanted to control everything while creating unnecessary work and more problems so that she could be the problem solver. When I compare my last four bosses, two men and two women, the positive working relationships maintained a sense of humor. When there were issues to be resolved, three out of the four bosses worked as a team to do so while maintaining an infectious buoyant attitude. Curiously, I found that the men had a great sense of humor while only a handful of women did and realized that women felt they couldn’t let their professional guard down.

That said, I have had people reporting to me over the years and had a very good working relationship with all of them, except one, a man who clearly did not appreciate taking direction from a woman. He would consistently ignore my direction and do things his way even though it wasn’t company policy. When I found him playing poker on the computer while he was on the clock, I let him go. Later, I found out he’d told other employees that I fired him because “he wouldn’t sleep with me.”

My sense of humor came in handy just then.