A good boss is the hardest to find

Have you noticed how it’s harder to have a good relationship with your boss than it is to have a good relationship with your colleagues? I think there’s a few things at play here.

You have a few (or a lot of) colleagues, but only one boss.

You’ll keep a range of relationships. Some of them will be good. You can keep the bad ones at bay by leveraging group dynamics.

The relationship with your peers feels more quid-pro-quo.

Today I have your back, tomorrow you have my back.

Your boss has no incentive to be a great boss.

When you’re frustrated that your boss is bad, you most likely are not putting yourself enough in their shoes. From their position, how should they behave?

What are they evaluated / promoted on? Certainly not your good relationship.

They don’t need to have your back. You need to not be a problem for them.

They don’t have resources to tangibly reward your good performance.

If you would replace your boss with a robot that acts purely on incentives, do you think the robot would be a good boss? Probably not. Then, why do you expect your boss to be different? Human behaviour is heavily influenced by incentives.

So you either have to be lucky to be in an organization that has wildly different incentives or your boss has to go against their incentives to be stellar, from your point of view. It’s a rare find.