You Might Be a Bosshole® IF: You Fail to Recognize the Trends That Seriously Impact Engagement
Could you be unwittingly venturing into Bosshole® territory without even knowing it? Tune in to our latest series, "You Might Be a Boss Hole If," where I team up with my good friend and business partner, Sara Best, to explore the subtle yet significant behaviors that may be affecting your team's engagement.
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The Bosshole® Chronicles
"You Might Be a Bosshole IF: You Fail to Recognize the Trends that Seriously Impact Engagement"
Original Publish Date: 2/5/2025
Hosts: John Broer and Sara Best
John Broer: You know it's been about four and a half years that we've been talking about Bosshole transformation and Bosshole prevention. Well, we want to bring you something new on the Bosshole Chronicles, and that is a series of episodes called You Might Be a Bosshole If... So, today, for all of our listeners out there in The Bosshole Transformation Nation, I am going to be joined by none other than my good friend and business partner, Sara Best, and we're going to kick this series off to really focus on specific things that managers and supervisors may be doing or not doing which could indicate that they may be in The Bosshole Zone. So just a heads up to keep watch for these episodes that we're going to be dropping in here and there between our standard episodes. But again, listen in and just understand, you might be a Bosshole if...
The Bosshole Chronicles are brought to you by Real Good Ventures, a talent optimization firm helping organizations diagnose their most critical people and execution issues with world-class analytics. Make sure to check out all the resources in the show notes and be sure to follow us and share your feedback. Enjoy today's episode.
Well, welcome everybody out there in the Bosshole Transformation Nation. We are introducing a brand new segment to the Bosshole Chronicles and this is called "you Might Be a Boss Hole, If I'm going to give full credit to. Maybe we need some new bumper music just for this particular one.
Yes, so, Sara, actually I think it was your idea hey, you might be a Bosshole if, and then let's just talk about that, and so this is also a great opportunity for all of you out there to share some ideas about. You might be a Bosshole if. But, Sara, what's our first one? You might be a Bosshole if...
Sara Best: John, you might be a Bosshole if you are not paying attention to the trends inside your organization affecting your employee engagement.
What do we mean by that? Well, we always define engagement as a person bringing their whole self to the work. My heart, my passion, my interest, my discretionary effort. I'm plugged in, I'm tuned in and tapped on. So you might be a Bosshole if you are not aware of the things that are impacting engagement in your organization.
JB: Okay, so what are some of the key- We're not going to go into depth here because, guess what? We have an episode coming up with all of the members of the Real Good Ventures team to talk about that, and specifically about the most recent Gallup results. But what would you say are some of the key trends that you know managers have to pay attention to, and if they're not, they might be a Bosshole. What are those?
SB: Well, I don't want to sound like a broken record, John, because we've talked about these many times. But, first and foremost, clarity of expectations.
JB: Okay.
SB: Less than half of the employees in the Gallup survey indicated they had clarity day to day on the expectations of their role, and that's an easy thing to fix. It really truly is. The next one is feeling like somebody cares about you at work. We've talked about people-centered leadership, people-first kind of leadership, and the third idea, the third trend we're seeing in the most recent data, is someone encouraging an employee's development, like what are you interested? What are your strengths? Where do you want to go? What's available to you in this organization? As simple as they are, I know they're challenging and complex, and we'll add to that, John, that we're going to provide some practical things that managers and leaders can do right now to address issues of engagement.
JB: There is no reason. These are so solvable and, like you said, we've talked about these, but these are so solvable. If you are not paying attention to these three things and are prepared to act on them immediately and resolve them, then you might be a Bosshole.
SB: So again, tune in, but remember we believe no one was born to be a Bosshole.
JB: Absolutely not
SB: No accidental Bosshole, Bossholes out there.
JB: All right, so keep checking back for the you might be a Bosshole episodes. Check back for the episode coming up on the Gallup study. It's going to be awesome, Sara. Thank you.
SB: You betcha, John, stay well.
JB: Thanks very much for checking out this episode of the Bosshole Chronicles. It was so good to have you here, and if you have your own Bosshole story that you want to share with the Bosshole Transformation Nation, just reach out. You can email us at mystory@thebossholechronicles.com. Again, mystory@thebossholechronicles.com, we'll see you next time.