Diva Managers

The most common question I encounter as an HR Professional is ‘How to deal with Diva Managers’. By definition, Diva Managers are Managers who are mean, vain and temperamental. I would always tell people that when you join a company there’s a probability of meeting a Diva Manager. You’ll be lucky if you’ll end up with a professional and kind Manager. However, if you’re stuck with a Diva Manager, you have no choice but to ‘Suck it all up!’ like a real man.

I always believe that people resign from their managers and not from their companies. The company may be giving them financial rewards but if they are not happy with their bosses, they’ll resign and no one can hold them. That’s the reason why HR would normally conduct an exit interview in order to know the reason why an employee is leaving the company. In lay mans term, exit interview is like an AUTOPSY of a dead body. We try to find out the cause of death so that we can implement ways in order to avoid the same mistakes in the future.

I would usually tell people to ‘Suck it up!’ (Forgive me for using the term twice) because you may leave your diva of a boss but there’s no guarantee that you won’t encounter another diva boss in your next company. You can never control who your boss and the way he treats you. However, you can control your reaction to him and the things he does to you. In an ideal working environment the boss and his people work well. However in the real world, you can just hope that the manager that you are working for is not diva. You don’t have to like your boss too. It’s better if you get along well with him but you don’t necessarily have to like him. Per experience, Arab bosses particularly the Saudis are kinder than their Filipino counterpart. I’ve worked in the Philippines before and I’ve encountered not just diva but devil bosses. Its okay if they treat you badly and you’re well compensated but that’s not the case in Philippine setting. Here in KSA, I can only count on the instances where there encounter diva bosses and they’re generally Jordanians (Palestinian originally), Egyptians or Lebanese.

There are people in our organization who were STUCK with no prospect of being promoted. I’ll discuss more about them in my next postings. Most of them have encountered diva managers. Most of them suck it up, stayed in the company and saw how their diva bosses were fired. Yes, the cruel and the tyrants do not last long our company. The owners have their ways of finding out.