In Search of the Perfect Boss!

In search of the perfect boss

Sometimes, it is very difficult to decide.

As children, we faced it when trying to decide if we can eat what has fallen on the floor. The decision was usually ruled by the degree of our liking for the ‘dirty’ eatable. Unfortunately, for adult decisions, there is no such helpful parameter. Whether it is marrying your boyfriend, buying a house, investing in the stock market, selecting a good school for your children or simply trying to decide on the restaurant for that special dinner, making decisions is no child’s play.

Perhaps that is why even bosses’ decisions come in various shapes and sizes – and maybe even colours.

There are bosses who will decide instantly and precisely. They will never look back and wonder if it was the right decision. In case it turns out to be a mistake, they take it as learning in life and move on. Blessed are their colleagues – for to have an intelligent decision maker is a boon that is realized only when one experiences a bad decision maker!

And then there are those who will decide on the spur of the moment, only to change it later or realize that they did not take into account all the factors before making up their mind. So then, the decision is promptly changed. Those who fall into this section are seldom at peace of mind themselves and they end up being nothing less than a pain for the more intelligent human beings working around.

The third type is those who will ‘ah’ and ‘oh’ before making any decisions – warm their chairs day and night, pace up and down their garden soil, leaving paths of damaged grass in the process. All external help possible is taken, the internet has been researched thoroughly and midnight electricity has been used. These ones will in all probability end up doing what they had thought of in the first place. A merry go round for the entire team working on the project.

For a certain amount of the decision makers, no decision is a decision taken. They prefer to go through life without taking any call on any matter for fear of it being wrong. An all engulfing doubt swallows them at the time of calling and therefore they end up either being indifferent or keep passing the buck. Or maybe they are just lazy. A collection of such people also goes by the name of ‘Government’

The award winning category though is the bosses who cannot make up their mind until the last minute – and then, inspiration dawns, the bulbs light up, and a decision is made. The sub-ordinates are made to run helter-skelter to get things done in time and deliver exactly what the boss has just recently had a ‘vision’ of.

And it is not just decision making that is so varied – it is also the other traits that make bosses such an interesting topic to write on.

Bosses who are very nice – those who will help you out wherever required, never say no when you approach them for leave and understand if you have to stay at home to attend to a sick spouse. The hitch? They are dumb……. and dumber. It is better to have a mean but intelligent boss rather than a nice and dumb boss. Reason, you ask? In case of the latter, your brains are prone to that infection called ‘rusting’

Some bosses want to know anything and everything about your personal life. How did you meet your spouse, why so much of a gap in between the children, what is your maid’s name, does the watchman wash your car or is it your husband, what brand of lipstick does your wife use …….. the list is endless. In turn, they think we too are interested in listening to all the degrees and diplomas they hold, the most influential people in their lives, their childhood incidents, what makes them such a great boss, how they just love a particular pen, what they ate last night and how it has affected their digestive system…… again, the list is endless. And all this to a seemingly very attentive and interested audience of sub-ordinates who actually want to show the boss the appropriate finger but can’t do anything more than emoting as required to the speech that happens to fall onto their eardrums and that their brain is forced to register.

Well, thankfully these are the only kinds of bosses I have encountered (how many more must exist!).  And, for the benefit of all mankind and for future cloning purposes, I shall never give up my eternal search for a prototype of the perfect boss!