The new chief executive at a mid-sized Atlanta technology company was technically brilliant but totally lacking in management skills. He turned everyone off, including customers. Morale started plunging and employees began to grumble. Then they became emboldened and they reached out to members of the company’s board, laying out how the CEO dampened motivation, wrought havoc with teamwork, and drove customers away. It took a long time, some four years, but the board finally let the CEO go.
Countless workers fantasize about getting their boss fired, but few succeed. I talked to five career coaches, a corporate consultant, a lawyer, and a management professor about how disgruntled workers might oust their superiors, and although I gathered a handful of success stories, all of the sources agree: Think many times over before you try it, because you will likely fail.
“Organizations are power hierarchies, and your boss is automatically one level up from you,” says Marie McIntyre, an Atlanta, Ga., career coach and author of Secrets to Winning at Office Politics. “All of these situations come down to leverage,” she adds. “If you declare war on your boss, 90% of the time you’re going to lose, because your boss has more leverage than you do.”
That said, my sources came up with several stories about employees who succeeded against the odds. I’ll share them here and draw some lessons, in case you feel compelled to take on the challenge.
McIntyre offers the tale of that technology CEO’s ouster. The lesson from that story: Persistence and patience can pay off, but it may take years.
McIntyre also describes a near-miss that’s worth relating. A hard-driving salesman was promoted to serve as a district manager for the top sales group at his pharmaceutical company. He tackled the job by riding along with team members on sales calls and critiquing their performance. “He really ticked people off,” recalls McIntyre.
The aggravated employees started calling the new boss’s boss to complain. But they didn’t just say they were unhappy. They spelled out how he was interfering with their work. The district manager was on the verge of getting fired, says McIntyre, when the company brought her in to consult. The group’s approach was effective, she says, because taken together, each of the six employees’ strong track records gave them leverage. They also made a convincing business case: The manager was driving down sales. McIntyre says that after she led several sessions with the manager and the team together, he changed his style and saved his job.
Sarah Stamboulie, a New York career coach, tells a story about a major bank with its headquarters in New York City and a human resources office in New Jersey that ran by its own rules. The main office wanted the New Jersey branch to get in line with corporate practices but its head preferred to do things his own way. The department’s number two started ingratiating herself with her superiors in the main office and modified her own work to be in line with the central office. When the company had to cut costs, it laid off the head of the division and kept that number two, who had proved she could do a better job at running the department. “The lesson is to look for alliances where your boss is weak,” Stamboulie says.
Two of my sources offer tales from academia. Marcie Schorr Hirsch, of Hirsch/Hills Consulting in Newton Centre, Mass., tells of a woman who came in as the new director of a university office with 30 employees. She was following in the footsteps of a much-loved boss and quickly developed a reputation as a very difficult manager. People in the department soon started quitting. Four left, and others became disgruntled and wrote letters to senior officers at the university. Prodded by the university, the boss wound up taking a leave and then not returning to her job. As in the case of McIntyre’s story about the sales manager, there was strength in numbers. “It takes a village,” Hirsch says.
Gary Namie, a Seattle corporate consultant, psychologist and author of The Bully-Free Workplace: Stop Jerks, Weasels and Snakes from Killing Your Organization,recounts the story of a tenured math and statistics professor at a junior college who felt he was being “persecuted” by a new dean, despite having job security and being well-liked by students. The professor collected evidence carefully, documented the dean’s attacks on him and others in his 15-member department, and approached the college’s chancellor and members of its board. Three of the professor’s colleagues felt so berated by the new department head that they had emotional breakdowns and sought psychiatric help, according to Namie. The professor prepared a report that laid out the extent to which the department head was costing the college money. One of the colleagues filed a harassment suit, and students were becoming discouraged. The college let the department head go. The lesson here echoes McIntyre’s sales manager story. Says Namie: Keep your emotions in check, and lay out a case that details how the boss is costing the institution money.
Despite these tales, the consultants, coaches and lawyer all agree: “Rather than get your boss fired, I would use my energies to find a new job,” advises New York City career coach Connie Thanasoulis-Cerrachio. Adds Atlanta career coach McIntyre, “If you can’t think of a business case against your boss, then you probably just have a personality case, and you’d better get over it.”
Interesting article. However, it really isn't hard to get the boss fired if the boss is an outsider to the company like most employees. If the boss is in any ways related to the top guy or in the "circle" somehow you can forget it as the company will go to bat for their "blood" I like to say. Or "kin". However, I had a job at a small company, it was a nonprofit and the director of my department was an young African guy. In his late 30's. Now this guy had a peculiar situation to why he was able to get terminated by his staff (of mostly black females) because he loved white women. He was a black African and he had married a white woman and had pictures of his wife all over his office. He was also very fond of the white women at work.
The problem was that he would let his hand "slip" and "slip" when he would be walking behind these white women who also worked for the company. Now this guy being from Africa didn't know that in the "South" he really couldn't get away with that type of thing. But he didn't know. He was an educated African (Zimbabwean) and he had traveled extensively and he was treated "Different" as he put it than black Americans. He felt he was fully accepted in ways that would allow him to get away with "misbehaving".
But the ladies he would let his hand slip with started complaining to the black HR Director. Then this guy started making disparaging comments towards some of the black women. He would get angry when they would ask him to repeat what he had said and commented once that he was "married to a white woman who spoke perfect English and she never had a problem understanding him". lol! This didn't win him any favors and I agreed with my coworkers in that the guy had a very thick accent and it was at times very difficult to understand him.
Well, one day (I'm not sure if my coworker was telling the truth but I believed her) my coworker, a heavy black woman, walked into his office. She suddenly ran out screaming at the top of her lungs for Human Resources and then she ran to the intercom and started screaming for Human Resources. Well, apparently the guy had called her a "Fat Ass Bitch" or something similar. Now I found that statement curious because although she was heavy, his wife was about five times her size and he had pictures of his wife looking like a big white whale all over his desk and office.
Unknown to me was the fact that these two black women, best friends, working side by side in front of his office, had had a long contentious relationship with the guy and had planned statements that they would give to Human Resources and had been giving to Human Resources far before this incident happened. What really ruined it for the Director was the fact that his hand had been slipping with so many white women that they too had complained. It suddenly became too much for the company and they sent up security that day within about 15 minutes of the incident to walk him out. They wouldn't even let him take the pictures of his "Great White Whale" and told him they would "mail it". lol!
This guy was especially a creep though because his wife had cancer and he had started to openly cheat on her and approach various females around the office (both white and black). He approached the black women however to be "side" females and gosh golly he would wife the white woman but wanted the black woman "on the side" and this pissed them off as well. Plus he looked like something that had fallen off the bottom of someone's shoe. He was the ugliest guy I had ever seen in my life.. Beat far too many times with the ugly stick.
It was a relief when they fired the bastard and yes I was thankful to my female coworkers as well for helping that along.
So yeah.. I've seen employees get their bosses fired too. But this guy pretty much got himself fired as well.
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