What to do when your boss is the problem

Hi Reader! Daria's here.

93% of people say culture matters to their experience at work. But only 36% feel their culture is well-defined and actually drives anything.

The gap widens by level. 77% of C-suite leaders call culture "very important." Among entry-level employees, it's 37%. Leaders are 2.5x more likely to describe their culture as well-defined.

So it's not that leaders don't care. They care enormously. It's that culture, as they experience it, isn't reaching the people it's meant for.

When you ask employees what would actually improve things, two answers top the list: recognition and flexibility. The pressure here is rising fast: the share of people naming lack of recognition as a top burnout driver nearly doubled in a year, from 17% to 32%.

Both of those are usually delivered by one person. Your direct manager.

Whether your work gets seen. Whether you can flex a Thursday without a negotiation. Whether your ideas are accepted or get waved off. For most people, "company culture" is mostly the shape of their relationship with their boss.

Which is a gift when it works, and a slow drain when it doesn't.

If you’re inside one that’s draining you, here’s the short version of what I’d suggest you do:

Diagnose what you’re actually dealing with. A working-style clash (“they want detail, I want speed”) is not the same as a values clash. One you can navigate. The other, you may need to decide about. Treating them as the same problem keeps you stuck.

Decode what’s driving the behavior. Ask, plainly: “What does success look like to you on this?” Then keep asking until it’s specific. Often “I want more initiative” turns out to mean “I want a weekly update so I’m never caught off guard” — and the friction disappears almost overnight.

Decide your path — and yes, leaving is one of them. Adapt. Set a boundary. Escalate. Or exit. Sometimes you’ll find you can make it work, and you simply don’t want to pay the price.

And if you’re the leader reading this, if you feel that company culture is clear and supportive of growth, it’s not always like that for your team members. Ask them if they get the flexibility and recognition they need.

I went deeper into the difficult-boss side of this for the Forbes Coaches Council—the full Diagnose, Decode, Decide framework, including the part most “managing up” advice skips.

You can read it here

See you next week.

Daria

P.S. Got a friend grinding through a tough boss situation? Forward this to them. Sometimes it helps to know there’s a third option.