How to Lead When Your Boss Can't (or Won't) (48/2020)

 

Title : How to Lead When Your Boss Can’t (or Won’t)
Author : John C. Maxwell
Publisher : HarperCollins Leadership, 2005
No. of Pages : 149
 

REVIEW 48/2020.

I like the anatomy of this book. It is a palm-sized book with a hardcover and not too thick. It took me about one month to finish reading it.
 
John C. Maxwell needs no introduction. He is one of the modern-days’ management and leadership guru. He is the #1 New York Times Bestselling Author. He is also a coach and speaker. He has incredibly sold thirty million books in fifty languages!
 
This book, How to Lead When Your Boss Can’t (or Won’t) takes a different perspective to leadership. Most of the leadership books talk about how to become a good leader in the top-down perspective. On the contrary, this book looks at leadership from bottom-up. Most interestingly, it looks at how an employee can lead himself and his team in the absence or lack of his own boss’ leadership. It also looks at how an employee can become a good support to the boss.
 
What would happen when you work under a boss who does not want to lead or cannot lead?
 
Among others, the team would go astray, the objectives of the company would not be achieved and staff’s morale would be low. In Malay, there is a proverb to this scenario: “Like the chicks (baby chickens) who lost their mother”.  A bad boss could also become toxic for the company when he/she does not support the vision of the company and at the same time sabotage it or ignore it while pursuing their own agendas.
 
John has listed down the characteristics of a bad boss and the effects that he/she has on an employee. In this book, John provides measures on how an employee can help himself and others in his team to move forward when they report to a bad boss. Following are the topics that he shared in this book, which I find very realistic and doable:
 
1. Self-manage yourself in terms of your emotions, time, priorities, energy, thinking and also personal life.
2. Maintain a great attitude with one thing in mind and that is “I can make a difference”.
3. Ways on how to work with the boss.
4. Get to know the boss.
5. Support the boss.
6. Develop your own influence.
7. Strengthen your own position by doing what you are supposed to be doing and to continue growing / improving yourself.
 
Another point that I find as an exceptionally good advice to all employees is to avoid office politics. By that, he means avoiding gossips at the office, not taking sides, be right rather than be popular and take everything into considerations before deciding on something.   
 
The main point in this book is not to be disappointed by having a boss who is not performing or who refuse to perform as the leader. My principle in these kinds of scenario is to do whatever I can as long as I can get the job done and achieve the objectives or goals provided by the management. It is also important to have the mindset that we cannot control what others think and do, but we can control what think and the actions that we take.
 
Therefore, to become an exceptionally productive employee by developing our potentials for future leadership, I would suggest you read this book. Regardless whether you have a bad boss or a good one.
 
I rate this book as FIVE 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 stars.