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Cartoon Villains

Reading this article about your boss's impact on your mental health was triggering for me. I have had a few horrible ones in my life and it was no surprise that anyone who had to deal with them hated it. Being their direct report carried a different level of pain. However, it made sense because they were like cartoon villains and no one had anything positive to say about them. You did not question how they made you feel - it was all unfolding exactly as nature had intended. 

Your best bet was to find another role or another job - which all of us did over time. I had a former boss who had the best poker face I have ever seen. There was some good to C but he was entirely inscrutable. People generally held neutral to positive opinions about him. So this guy was not quite the nightmare that some of my past bosses had been. For the one year that I reported to him, I recall having an extremely hard time disconnecting from work in my mind, sleeping well at night and feeling good about anything during the work day. 

This despite the fact that C was not a micro-manager, he gave me freedom to operate in anyway that I saw fit. He gave me rave performance reviews and was nothing but respectful in his demeanor. But something made me anxious about him the whole time. Then came an org change and C was no longer my boss. The new guy was unremarkable and I had no reason to believe he was capable or interested in being a people manager. 

But something changed about my mental state immediately. I was able to decouple from work mentally after the day was done. I slept way better. Still not jumping for joy on Monday morning but I was not entirely dreading it. Some kind of invisible but oppressive weight had been lifted off my shoulder. To this day, I don't know what it was about C as a boss that produced such a bad mental health outcome for me - but he was on par with the most cartoonish villain of a boss I have ever had. That would be S and a story for another day.
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