Name: How to handle a bad boss | Natalie Parker | TEDxParrish Street
Uploaded: 2026-03-24T21:38:13.000Z
Duration: 11 min 44 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

I'm sorry your dad is sick, but who's going to do this work?

That's all it took to create a storm in my life that would change everything.

And just like a sailboat caught in a current, I got thrown off course by my manager's words because I was unanchored.

You see, when we become unanchored at work, we typically have reactions that make us culprits in helping enable bad leadership, and

You see, I was in a company that I loved.

I spent 10 years there, and I was considered a high performer.

I had promotions and accolades to prove it.

But after one year with this leader, I was crashing out fast, chasing a line of success that just kept moving.

And my colleagues and I, we trauma-bonded, trying to survive a leader whose cruelty was as predictable as the tide, suffocating us with micromanagement and then vanishing when we needed support.

You see, my dad had been sent to the emergency room.

My mom called me and told me, "I needed to get home to Jersey, three hours away." Our team was lean so that I knew my absence would be inconvenient, as emergencies usually are.

So I created a plan, and I shared it with my manager and my circumstance.

And her response, "I'm sorry your dad is sick, but

who's going to do this work?" And just like that, I was caught in the perfect storm: a family crisis and a career under siege.

I'd come later to realize that I was facing a tsunami of epic proportions, and

so many of people had faced it themselves, and it capsizes careers worldwide.

I said it because we've all had something suck the life out of us: mosquitoes, ticks, fleas, mother-in-laws.

You know you have a bad boss because when you see the email with their name on it or you hear their voice, your body reacts.

Your stomach gets tied into knots, and your palms get sweaty, and

And the only thing you can think is, "Oh, dear God, what now?" I've heard it said that when we're unanchored, this is what happens.

After two and a half decades of leading HR and corporate talent management, I now consult CEOs, executives, and

HR leaders and entrepreneurs on how to create good cultures.

We're all in at least one of these groups.

You either have or had a boss that sucks.

Or you're one of the few unicorns that's never had a bad boss, but

And those 13 words damaged and disoriented me.

And that's what's happening to people worldwide.

When we're unanchored at work, we get damaged and disoriented.

You see, according to Gallup, 7 out of 10 of us in this room are some kind of disengaged.

And 50% of people, they leave companies because of the managers, not the company.

And when Forbes asked managers, "Who needs leadership training?" nearly 100% of the leaders said that other leaders needed leadership training, kind of like a bad boyfriend.

"Girl, it's you, not me." Now, while we're staggered by the numbers, what not usually staggers me is our response to it.

Let somebody talk to you about having a bad boss, and you say, "Okay, so what?

We've been there." Our silent acceptance of bad leadership is a problem.

We've subconsciously accepted it and become so good at managing it, we haven't even stopped to think that we are the ones keeping it alive.

According to his book—and this really is the title—Derry Harvey wrote a book called How Come Every Time I Get Stabbed in the Back My Fingerprints Are on the Knife.

He gears up the idea that our greatest career wounds often have our fingerprints on the weapons.

Have you ever been stabbed emotionally at work?

Perhaps stabbed by the boss who asks you for your opinion but doesn't really want it?

Or by the boss who consistently and incessantly procrastinates that causes you more work at 4:59?

Or what about a leader whose toxic positivity creates a culture that makes us all feel like we have to walk around like this?

Our culture is a culture of mandatory happiness.

When bad bosses happen to us, we typically take to our favorite modes of communication: to complain, to commiserate, or condemn.

And that's where our fingerprints get put on the weapons.

Every time we're silent to our own or someone else's suffering, we give a subtle fingerprint of permission to bad bossery.

I think it's time we actively reject the notion that bad leadership is something that we have to endure like the weather.

It's an acronym: Assess, Negotiate, Consult, Heed, Observe, and Resolve.

I believe this framework is going to help us all move from accomplice to advocate and from complicit to courageous.

First, I want you to assess the situation without your emotions because they typically hijack the way you see life.

Next, I want you to negotiate your goals: long-term and near-term, personal and professional.

The journey of 1,000 miles starts with one step.

Plan the step, but remember, the goal is the journey.

Author Gabby Bernstein says that we need to know our triggers and plan ways around them and routines to help us not get triggered.

Managers and people are oddly predictable.

When we know the patterns of people, we can plan better.

Figure out the pattern so that you can plan around your leader's issues or at least try to lessen the impact.

Resolve that their definition of success may be unachievable or unattainable, but yours doesn't have to be.

I didn't have an anchor that day, so I did what most of us would do.

I grabbed a life preserver, and I saved myself.

Instead, I went into silent compliance and completed a 13-hour day based on all the new tasks that were given to me.

And the last thing I did was to fill out leave paperwork so that I could be home with my family and protect my job.

And it's a decision that I don't regret because it allowed me to be with my dad when he took his last breath two months later.

But what if I had an anchor instead of a life preserver?

Perhaps I would have assessed that her priorities were her priorities, and

I would not have been mad that they happened at the same time.

Perhaps I would have negotiated to understand what her immediate needs were, but

I would have invited her to help me solve the problem of how to get homework quickly.

I would have counseled with leaders who invited me to figure out how to have the conflict in a productive way rather than settle for silent compliance.

Perhaps then I would have heeded my trigger.

I wanted approval from my leader, and I wanted to have a good relationship.

But if I had observed her patterns, I would have realized what I had been ignoring for months.

Our relationship was as transactional as an ATM machine.

And I would have resolved not to allow myself to pick between my job and my family.

When we're caught in the current of powerful, terrible leadership, dropping an anchor is exactly what we need.

And my anchor, it would have sounded like this: "I understand the work that you have for me is important to you, and