Taming the Abrasive Manager. Laura Crawshaw

he was generally viewed with affection by coworkers (myself included) who accepted his deficient emotional intelligence (or, as I termed it at the time, emotional stupidity). He never offended me again.

In this case Dick proved to be an annoying boss. Annoying bosses are fairly common; I suspect that most of us who have been bosses have been annoying bosses at times—I know I have. But Dick was lucky. Another person might not simply have demanded an apology for his outrageous behavior but could instead have charged him with sexual harassment. Such a charge would have disrupted organizational functioning with investigations, adjudications, and penalties, leaving permanent scars on involved individuals and the company.

      Abrasive bosses are all too common. Abrasion doesn’t discriminate—abrasive bosses may be of any age, sex, color, religion, or ethnicity, but they have one thing in common: aggressive managerial styles that damage work relationships to the point of damaging work. In the next chapter you’ll meet an abrasive boss and explore abrasive boss behavior in more detail.