Seth Godin's post about toxic bosses (as a follow-up to his post about toxic employees) jogged my memory about the worst boss I ever had.
I won't use his name, because somehow he has managed to become a professor his craft at a well respected university here in the western U.S., which is great for the working world but must be utter misery for the world of academia. I shutter to think about what kind of PowerPoint presentations he's subjecting those poor kids to...
He did things that I would imagine as typical for toxic bosses:
- Routinely made a public example of an individual's mistake.
- Mood swings at the drop of a hat.
- Unusually glowing praise for a favorite employee who had accomplished some kind of very basic task.
- An affair with a subordonate (funny side note: I lived in a townhouse on the second floor, while the co-employee and subordonate who was seeing the boss lived right below me. They saw each other at night...all night long...I'll let your imagination go wild with what I heard through the paper thin wall).
The result of this toxic boss, like other toxic bosses, is a low morale. Low morale equals poor production, and high turnover. Like most things toxic, it poisons what it touches.
As with other businesses, toxic sales managers can kill a business from the inside 
out.
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