A bad boss could make you ill, but must he?

Constant and sustained feelings of being undervalued cause stress, which often fosters unhealthy behavior -- such as smoking, eating a poor diet, drinking too much alcohol, and not getting enough exercise -- that can lead to heart disease. During the period studied there were 74 cases of fatal and non-fatal heart attack or acute angina, or death from ischemic heart disease.

Participants in the study were asked to rate the leadership style of their senior managers on competencies such as how clearly they set out goals for their staff and how good they were at communicating and giving feedback. The staff who believed their senior managers to be the least competent had a 25% higher risk of a serious heart problem. And those working for what was classed as a long time - four years or more - had a 64% higher risk.

The study was a limited one. It was male-only, and gender tensions would perhaps add another dimension to the evolution of a good, clear working relationship with one’s manager in order to protect against heart disease. Also there was no mention of what those studied might or might not have done to keep themselves fit and active to grab the double benefit of busting work stress and boosting their cardiac health at the same time.

I admit to not having read the full study but none of the reports I saw said anything about the appropriateness of the employees’ perception of their boss(es), the “worse“ ones among whom could very well be maligned for being fair, even if a tad subjective. Can it be that those termed “the least competent“ were actually the least forgiving, if not the most demanding, within the limits set by acceptable expectations? Was the disgruntlement that led to the unfortunate physical symptoms justified or was it just an expression of the righteous certainty of the many that they are right, and the one who calls the shots is wrong? Complaining may be crucial to our humanity, but misguided gripes just get us down all the more, or give us angina.

Man has been chasing happiness, a major constituent of which is to have things our way, from much earlier than the US Declaration of Independence. Dissatisfaction has been the driver of all human endeavour, not only of our consumerist economy but of progress itself. All major social advances have started with a complaint. If the barons had been content with their lot, and a few instances of ischemic pain maybe, there would have been no Magna Carta. Displeasure has a positive power, disgruntlement can be a robust motivator. The meek will have no world to inherit if the more petulant did not set themselves to fashion one more equitable and durable. We surely did not get where we are today by being sanguine about imperfection, but that imperfection could as well be in ourselves as in our managers.

We would all like the boss to be more appreciative but what if he is not, and, worse, if he himself is not worthy of appreciation? Few of us live our lives in bliss. By making happiness an entitlement, we dismiss the overwhelming majority of human experience as unimportant and thus add to our woes by putting pressure on ourselves to be constantly buoyant. Are the imperfect sympathies of a boss really so important that we should fall physically ill after receiving them? Most psychological research shows that once we reach the age of 25 – or at whatever age one becomes an independent adult in one’s specific culture – neither winning a jackpot nor losing both legs is likely to have much long-term effect on our happiness. We are stuck with ourselves as we are, including the boss who has been allotted to us. Yet the golden carrot of continuous joy, of perfect assessment, of ideal interaction is always being dangled before us as if nirvana depended on these.

Sigmund Freud said loss of happiness is the price extracted from us for our advance in civilization. That insight dates from before World War II and successive decades of material plenitude have merely confirmed its truth. We have ended up with far more than is good for us. These range from food to information – did you know that we tend to overeat in crowded environments, or that, according to a recent study, prolonged exposure to e-mail can temporarily knock off 10 points from your IQ? The instinct to strive for ever more that was naturally selected and honed through millennia in the wilds needs some reappraisal, if only to keep heart attacks at bay even when the boss is a crusty curmudgeon?