Austin, a col­lege stu­dent in a far away land study­ing Busi­ness Admin. works in an inter­net café run by the owner.  There is no HR depart­ment at the café where he tol­er­ates the inap­pro­pri­ate behav­ior of his boss and he did not know who to turn to for advice. He found me via a friend of a friend on Face­book, friended me and sent me this message:

“I have a ques­tion I want to ask. Should one keep on work­ing with his or her employer who has a bad tem­per, always blam­ing you for what he or she knows is not your mak­ing? I hope I will not work under any­body in future, is my great prayers. I wish you all the best.” 

I con­tem­plated Austin’s sit­u­a­tion over my morn­ing dou­ble shot latte. He needs his job and it’s not easy for a col­lege stu­dent to find one that fits with class sched­ules, not to men­tion it’s just not easy to find a job. He comes from a coun­try with extremely high unem­ploy­ment and poverty rates.  He really can’t just quit. I found Austin online and struck up a chat.

I found out that Austin’s a guy who respects peo­ple in posi­tions of author­ity. He felt he didn’t have the right to say any­thing to his boss about his unhap­pi­ness. The approach I took to coach Austin on how he could make a pos­i­tive impact on his work­ing rela­tion­ship with his boss was to show him how he could take con­trol of their communication.

What Austin didn’t real­ize is that he has powers.

Dear Austin,

Your sit­u­a­tion isn’t uncommon. I would not advise that you con­tinue to sup­port the sit­u­a­tion but then I wouldn’t just quit either con­sid­er­ing that you can’t afford a lapse in income. I would ask to have a con­ver­sa­tion with the boss.

It’s always help­ful to use “I” state­ments and not make accu­sa­tions. You could say some­thing like, “Some­times I feel blamed for things that are not under my con­trol and are not going well”. Never be accusatory and say, “You are blam­ing me for some­thing I didn’t do”. That would most likely cause your boss to become very defensive.

This con­ver­sa­tion should take place in pri­vate with no one else around. You could start by let­ting the boss know you enjoy work­ing and always strive to do the best you can. Let him know that moti­va­tion and a pos­i­tive work envi­ron­ment is very impor­tant and help­ful to you.

Ask how you can help your boss main­tain a pos­i­tive envi­ron­ment. See how he responds. Try to gain his view on what’s not going well dur­ing this con­ver­sa­tion when he’s calm and it’s not in the heat of the moment when he’s aggra­vated. Put his hat on and try to think from a busi­ness owner’s per­spec­tive if there is some­thing you could be doing dif­fer­ently to bet­ter meet his expec­ta­tions. Lis­ten to what he says and try to come to an understanding.

End the con­ver­sa­tion by thank­ing him for his time and let­ting him know you will con­tinue to do your best. Tell him you look for­ward to more open con­ver­sa­tions to dis­cuss how things are going and that you’re always open to con­struc­tive feed­back about how you are per­form­ing your job.  Show him he can depend on you and give it time to see if things improve.

If these episodes con­tinue and it doesn’t work out to your sat­is­fac­tion start to look for another job. No one should have to work feel­ing belit­tled or berated and under appre­ci­ated. Take this expe­ri­ence as a les­son on how not to treat employ­ees and remem­ber it when you reach your dream of own­ing your own business.

What advice would you give Austin?