Did you find out your boss did something completely unfair? Maybe they have a complete double standard? It’s truly awful to be in this situation, but let’s go through the steps you can take to get to the other side of it and to help you cope with what you think is an unfair boss.
Step One: Take A Deep Breath
Taking a deep breath isn’t going to be enough, but if you’re in this boat, you’re probably in the midst of a frenzy of things going on in your head, maybe even going on throughout your body, like sweaty palms and a racing heart. If you don’t want to take a deep breath, by all means, take a brisk walk around the block, hit a punching bag at the gym, or go to a Zumba class. The important thing—and it’s an important first step—is to get it out of your body, take a breather, hit pause, burn off all that energy.
Step Two: Talk To Someone Neutral
The next thing you’ll want to do is find a neutral party that you can share the example with to help you calibrate whether it was unfair or not. And the biggest problem you’ll face is that there’s no such thing as fair.
This sounds strange, but there’s no objective definition of what’s fair and what’s not. Fair can be exactly equal and consistent, or fair can be changing the outputs relative to the inputs. We can have equality and we can have equity. For example, who gets the bigger slice of cake: the five-year-old or the dad? Having equal-sized pieces of cake is equal, consistent. Is it fair? Having a bigger piece of cake for the bigger person is more equitable, but is that fair? There’s no right answer.
One of the benefits of talking it through with somebody who has emotional distance is that they can give you an objective perspective and help you consider options, and depending on your scenario, they could even help you realize that maybe the boss wasn’t as unfair as you thought.
Step Three: Decide If Your Boss Really Is Unfair
You’ve taken a breath and moved past your original emotional reaction. You’ve received feedback from somebody neutral to help you decide whether or not it’s a big deal, if this type of unfairness could thwart your trust in your boss, or if it’s one of those difficult, life-is-hard kinds of situations. Now you need to make the most important choice of all: decide if your boss really was being unfair.
Scenario A: Your Decide Boss Isn’t Really Being Unfair
In scenario A, your best option in many situations is to simply do nothing.
You’ve had a chance to breathe, you’ve received helpful feedback from a neutral person, and now you’re able to see the situation in a new light. At this point, you might conclude that you were overreacting. You might realize that there could be information about the situation that you don’t know and reasons behind the decision that you can’t understand, and conclude that you should give your manager the benefit of the doubt. It’s possible you may still feel your boss was being unfair, but when you balance it objectively, there’s a good chance they weren’t and their behavior was justified. At the very least, when the dust settles, you can see where they were coming from.
In these situations, doing nothing is a really good option. However, this option has to mean that you actually let it go. There is no option 1B: don’t do anything but hold a grudge. That’s a terrible option.
Scenario B: You Decide Your Boss Really Is Being Unfair
In this scenario, your best option (which is best chosen after a good night’s sleep), is to do something. In this case, sit and think about it, document how you perceive the situation, and write down what you want to say to your manager before you say anything. It’s not to your benefit to act impulsively and express your feelings hastily; doing so might negatively impact your boss’s perception of you.
Instead, take a moment and ask yourself a few questions:
- What did my boss decide?
- How am I interpreting this?
- How do I foresee this playing out?
- Why is it a threat to me?
Write your answers on paper. They’ll be subjective, filled with guesses, and possibly include unflattering judgments, which is why it’s crucial not to share them with your boss. Keep refining your thoughts until you can distinguish between what you know and what you’re assuming, and remove all of your assumptions. Focus on what you’re certain of: what you understand the decision to be, what you heard, and what you observed. Exclude everything else.
Feel free to express to your boss, “I’m worried that this promotion decision means I won’t have opportunities in the future and that I’m wasting my time here.” You can be entirely subjective about your own feelings, but never imply that the decision reflects your boss’s belief that you have no chance of a future promotion. You don’t know what your boss thinks and you don’t want to put words into their mouth.
Prepare questions. Take the time to figure out how you’re interpreting your boss’s decision, why you’re interpreting it as something that feels unfair, and why that unfairness is bothering you. Here are a few examples:
- Can you help me understand your decision process?
- What things were you factoring in when you made that call?
- What is it that I’m not understanding about your decision?
These types of questions convey your frustration or concern while also portraying you as mature and painting you in a positive light.
Now you have two good options to address your unfair boss: either choose to move on and disregard it or choose to address the situation constructively and maturely. Whatever you decide, don’t complain to other people about your boss’s decision without giving your boss a chance to address your concerns. This isn’t constructive. It’s passive-aggressive, unproductive, and never a good option.
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Feeling like you’re working for an unfair boss that has double standards is awful. No one deserves to work for an unfair leader. However, it’s essential to take steps to confirm if the situation genuinely qualifies as unfair and to communicate your concerns if it’s going to be an ongoing issue for you.
There are so many bad leaders, not just ones with double standards who are completely unfair: check out what it’s like working for a lazy boss!
What to Do if a Colleague is Being Treated Unfairly