89 Working for a Bad Boss? How to Stop Doubting Yourself and Stay Grounded

Welcome to the Great Leader Great Mom Podcast, where we trade in Mom Guild and Burnout for courage, calm, and a whole lot more joy. I'm your host, Liz Jolly, engineer turned life coach, mom of three, and founder of the School of Courage. Here we talk about leading at work and at home. Without losing your sanity, your sense of humor, or yourself. If you're ready to drop the guilt and grow your courage, you're in the right place. To kick off 2026, I put together something very special for you. It's a curated list of my favorite podcast and videos on leadership and culture. These are resources I have come back to over and over again. Every time I watch them I take away something new. You can grab it for free at lizjolly. com forward slash leadership dash culture or by tapping the link in the show notes. This is episode 89, and if you're listening to this one, chances are you're fed up at work. You're fed up with having to manage your boss. You're fed up with the conversations that go nowhere. You're fed up with the constant feeling that no matter how capable you are, everything feels harder than it should when you go to work and be around your boss You might even be asking yourself, why does this guy or lady get under my skin so much? Why does this job drain me right now? Do I really want to keep doing this? And here's the part I want to name clearly. You're not questioning your job because you're bad at it. You're questioning your job because you've given your emotional power to your boss. You become a victim to him or her. And so today I want to show you how this works and how to get out of it. I've lived with a bad boss in my career as well. Where it was a boss that when people were in a meeting and he entered the room, they would there would be a deep sigh because everybody knew what was coming. And it was very draining. People didn't want to stay in that whole group. They wanted to get out as fast as possible and nobody would put in for those jobs. The work wasn't the problem. The leadership above all of us was. I know you, like many of me, are potentially thinking of all kinds of solutions like If I could just make them see this isn't working, or maybe I need to give them really clear feedback. Somebody help me give them feedback. Maybe I need to escalate this and go around them or to a peer of theirs so that they can give them feedback. Maybe I just need a new job and I should get away from this person entirely. Today we're not going to talk about fixing your boss. Sorry, that's really hard to do. And we're not going to go jumping straight to quitting, so bear with me. We're going to talk about how to stay grounded when the leadership above you isn't and how to stop letting their behavior hijack all of your energy, your presence, and your sense of self So first let's talk about why bad leadership can be so draining on us. The reality is it comes from our expectation of how they should behave. We have this ideal version of what good leaders should do. We expect them to give clear expectations, to have consistent behavior that models all of the leadership competencies. in whatever organization or company you work for. We have this expectation that our bosses have read all the same leadership books we have and they've seen the speeches of Simon Sinek about how to be a great leader. That your leader should provide strong values and clarity around the goals and the deliverables for the year, that they should create a vision, that they should motivate and influence people to be excited about that vision. Well here's the thing. Your brain is potentially working overtime trying to make sense of all the things that they are not doing. Here's what's actually happening. You're not doing your own job because think of all the energy you spend in your day constantly measuring up your boss against the expectations that you have about how they should behave how a good leader should be. And you're losing that battle in your brain every single day. Of course you have a great idea of what good leadership should look like. And that idea didn't come out of nowhere It came from potentially your company's values, from a leadership competencies list or books you've read or performance reviews. Maybe people have even told you that you should be like this All the things organizations say that they care about. But then when you look up, you see this person above you leading in the totally opposite way of what those things say. It doesn't match I hear this often where people will tell me, but good leaders should dot dot dot. Don't they know this isn't effective or don't they see the consequence of their behavior? Or why doesn't anybody do anything about this? How have they made it this far? But let's pause. Have most corporate systems ever consistently rewarded emotional maturity or clarity or great leadership Honestly, it's not so often. That's just not the way the system is. Let's be real. So when you hold up your boss against an idealized version of leadership that the system itself doesn't enforce, it doesn't develop, it doesn't encourage, it doesn't hold people accountable for. You end up disappointed and then you're frustrated and maybe even questioning yourself and if this is the job for you. That disappointment isn't a personal failure. It's the result of arguing with reality, of holding up that expectation and losing every single time. Here's the part that's uncomfortable But it is freeing if you let it soak in. Your boss will never change. Very unlikely. Not because change is impossible, but because their behavior has worked for them. It's gotten them to exactly the spot they're at. They've been promoted, they've been rewarded, they've succeeded inside this system. They know how it works, and they do it well, likely. So instead of treating this as a problem you need to fix, what if you treated it as curriculum, not as curriculum that teaches you how to tolerate bad behavior? But curriculum that teaches you how to stay grounded, how to stay assured and anchored and self-led no matter who you work for or how they show up. Winning here doesn't mean making them better. Winning means you don't become reactive or bitter or shrink and be small. I have watched incredibly capable women spend years burning energy on complaining, replaying conversations with their boss, drafting emails they never send. Trying to get someone to finally see how this person really is. And there's so much energy that leaks power. What we're doing instead is bringing that power back to you One of the most important leadership skills you can develop is this, the ability to separate your value from someone else's behavior, and this goes beyond your boss. Even though in this instance your boss might be insecure and acting out of that or an avoidant or controlling or emotionally immature. They might be overwhelmed and under skilled. They've probably never learned what it means to be a good leader. And that's okay, I promise. Because here's the trap. When their behavior triggers you and you want to react, you want to maybe feel the self-doubt. Your brain treats this like a threat. And when threatened humans feel that way, they don't lead. They're just in survival mode. And we all do this where we overexplained, we overfunction, we overperform. We don't act like our best self So instead of asking how can I get them to change, let's start asking how can I stay grounded in who I am regardless of what they say or do. That's not resignation or giving up, that's self-leadership. Most people aren't aware of their boss's behavior. They're emotionally entangled with it. So here's what that difference looks like. Awareness sounds similar to this. My boss interrupted someone in the meeting Or they changed their direction from what they said yesterday. They avoided the conversation. Whereas entanglement sounds like they shouldn't be like this. Or this means I'm failing. or if they were a good leader, my job wouldn't feel so hard. Entanglement comes from believing reality should be different. And if we think about your boss's perspective, they're probably thinking they're doing just fine. They've been rewarded for this. They've gotten this far and it's done great. Awareness for you is all about being fascinated. It's about observing their behavior. Almost like you have a net in between you and them where whatever they say, whatever they do, it doesn't reach you or cause you to react. You can just hold space for their behavior and whatever words come out of their mouth Waiting for a system to suddenly value a different kind of leadership is the long road to feeling better. It's the wrong to enjoying yourself in the job. So dropping the argument reality really is the way to go. It's the only way you're gonna get there. Staying grounded doesn't mean you stop caring. It means you stop getting hooked, that you stop reacting You slow down and you examine the story you're telling yourself about their behavior. When you catch yourself having the mental should list for what your boss should be doing Like they should be clearer, they should be more supportive, they should know better. Then the should flags are waving and you should stop yourself and slow down. One powerful question to ask yourself is what am I thinking that they should be doing and why do I think that they should do that? Then I love to ask myself, is this actually how they've always shown up? And usually I make myself laugh at this point and think, yep, that's actually exactly how they've always shown up. Why am I surprised? Because you have to remember there was no fairy godmother that just magically showed up and wave their wand and transform your leader Just remember that and it can make you chuckle and bring you back from being reactive. So go back to knowing this is who they've been. They're on script. Now comes the real power move. Assuming that this, whatever it is they did, will happen again How do you want to respond? How do you want to feel in this moment? Do you want to feel grounded, calm, curious, fascinated? That shift alone moves you out of being in a victim mode and back into being a leader Being one that's self-assured and your best self. A bad boss is your curriculum, not a problem to run away from This is your chance to show up as you, your most grounded self, and not let his or her behavior impact how you show up at work. Before you ever consider leaving a job, you need to see that You can be happy there and then you can decide you don't have a want match. But that's a whole nother podcast episode. So stay in your job, learn to be grounded and reassured, and question your thinking and the story you make up in all this Don't let them move you out of your amazingness. How would you show up if you were feeling fully grounded the next time when they came into your office and they did or said whatever it is they normally do on script In this leadership podcast that we're starting right now, visualize that moment. This podcast is part of a series that I'm starting on all kinds of leadership. skills and we're gonna keep building as we go so that you can lead well even if you're not a leader in title because I believe all of you are a leader you're there to influence and improve and perform and be your best self Especially when the system isn't helping to support you and make it easy. If you like what you hear and you're a woman who wants to grow and you want to end the overwhelm or the guilt you feel or the mom guilt you feel And you want to be a leader who shows up really feeling confident and grounded, even in the bad boss scenario, check out my School of Courage membership. Go to courage dothschool of courage dot com This month, we are learning about how to create joy and happiness in our lives and to stop outsourcing our joy to our bosses or our spouses or our kids or the world around us. If you haven't noticed, the world around us is terrible at making us feel great. We have a weekly teaching call where we go into the details about joy and happiness and how to develop this in our lives. We have a growing library of topics like self-confidence and ending overwhelm and access to me with questions or any help you need along the way. Hope you can check that out and I'll see everybody next week. Take care, everybody.