When Stanford’s Bob Sutton published his 2007 book The No Asshole Rule, he introduced the notion of the “bosshole” into the managerial lexicon. Such managers can be aggressive, abusive, and hog the limelight, and I’m sure many of us can recall working with such a manager at some point in our careers.

Research from Stanford Graduate School of Business explores why we put up with such leaders and fail to push back against those who seek to assert their dominance on us. This relative submissiveness means that bossholes are often highly successful, even if nobody really likes them.

Submitting to bad bosses

Some argue that we tend to do this out of fear, others that we view the confidence bad bosses have for competence. The Stanford research suggests that group dynamics also play a crucial role.

“We live in a world where there’s an expectation that dominance should be deferred to,” the researchers explain. “You’re often in a situation where you can’t understand why everyone else is acting as though they respect the person.”

This group dynamic plays a crucial role in underpinning the control bad bosses exert, even over a group that fundamentally disapproves of them and their approach.

Group dynamics

The hypothesis was tested across four experiments where participants had to think of someone who acts in an aggressive and controlling way. They then answered questions about the respect that person had from others, and this revealed that people consistently thought that other people respected that person far more than they themselves did.

It seems clear that we tend to greatly overestimate how much respect dominant people garner from our colleagues, but this misperception underpins our deference to that person nonetheless. The findings underline the important role norms play in organizational life.

In terms of bossholes, they will often continue doing their thing unless they’re punished for doing so. The disapproval of our peers is one such punishment, so a good place to start in ridding our workplaces of bad bosses is to ensure that each of us speaks up when we encounter them. Despite our fears, it’s highly likely that our colleagues will fully support us in doing so.

“People complain all the time about why it seems like people who are overly competitive and controlling tend to get ahead,” the authors conclude. “They don’t recognize that they have more power than they think they do in those situations.”