The Game

Over the years I've had periods in my working life where it's been difficult to get out of bed and go to work in the morning. I've generally done it because to me not doing it is the start of giving in.
Sometimes the difficult period is caused by the work itself, but more often it's caused by a particular manager.
A few years ago a mate of mine told me that when he has a difficult manager he makes a game out of the situation. He had a boss once who used to have an explosive temper. When he was angry he would be very verbally abusive and rant on about how the subject of the rant didn't care, was incompetent, doesn't know what's going on, isn't trying, hasn't checked the basics, hasn't followed up, and more. He would start off speaking a bit louder and then work himself in to a full on yelling rage. Either in person during a meeting, or on a phone conference. My mate worked at the same company in a different team. I had a few encounters with the yeller and was the subject of a couple of his outbursts. My mate told me afterwards about the game technique. He and some of his colleagues made it a game to see what would set the Yelling Man off. They deliberately wound him up and waited for him to crack.
The Yelling Man was a well known serial offender that even HR would not do anything about. They would deal with me if I was half as abusive just once. I guess that's because the General Manager effectively pays the HR staff and if not has a significant influence in their careers. Whereas they wouldn't know me from the next pleb and would jump at an opportunity to make an example out of me - good for their next performance review. So I don't feel sorry for him at all. I guess it's a bit of a risk involving other people in the game. It wouldn't be well received if someone spilled the beans.
Out of this I learned a new "coping" technique; to make a game of something negative. Often I try to guess what part of something a pedantic manager won't like. The font, colours, too "verbose", not enough detail, put it in a table, or a chart, or "I'll look at it later". When I get the feedback, I hi-5 myself and have little internal smile and walk away.
A while ago I inherited a new boss after the old one moved onto new things. He was difficult in different ways to the yeller. My game was to observe how he reacts with me and other people. His words, body language, and actions. It takes the frustration away from my job and I have re-enforced a lot of behaviours to avoid. I'm lucky enough to sit quite close to him. When I turn around I'm looking at his back so I see people as they walk up to and away from his desk. Most of them approached him as if they were creeping up on a sleeping lion. Either with fear in their eyes, or full of false bravado to slaughter the beast with their bare hands before they get mauled to death. They almost always walked away defeated. Nothing they had done, or could say, was good enough; they were useless.
I've worked for this person before and he was a large part of the reason why I changed roles at the time. For the past few years he was a peer of mine, and while he still had a few signs of old school management style, and a lot of ineffective personal skills, I thought he had improved. It turned out that our mutual manager had been keeping him under control. When he was off his lead he went back to his old ways but about ten times more extreme. After the first few weeks, his manager came to me and asked for feedback on him. I told him that he had been given plenty of feedback in the facial expressions, body language, the way people walked way looking defeated, and that he probably couldn't work out why nothing went the way he wanted it to. You don't need feedback from me. If he couldn't pick up on the feedback that I saw him get there is nothing that I can say that will make a difference. It was a very frustrating few months before it came to an end with another change in my career. The game of observation and inner laughter at his bumbling relationship destroying and completely ineffective management made my days bearable.