A 2009 Swedish study tracking 3,122 men for ten years found that those with bad bosses suffered 20 to 40 percent more heart attacks than those with good bosses.
Wow – glad I’m not Swedish. I’m actually looking for the complementary study that shows how bad employees shorten a supervisor’s lifespan. Maybe Hell really is other people.
So – is there any truth to the above study, or is it more silliness cranked out by academics looking to dabble in the real world by grabbing a headline? I’m sure the research would speak for itself, but what is instructional about its findings?
No one would dispute that stress will kill you, but how does a bad boss equate to stress? The obvious thing to do here is to list off all the poor qualities of a bad boss, and draw a parallel between their bad behaviour and their employees’ stress. In reality, stress merely exists, and our reaction to it makes it unhealthy.
So I am willing to believe that a bad boss will kill me, but only if I give him/her enough control over me that I react poorly to the stress they are generating. I can’t control their behaviour, but I most certainly can control my own behaviour, and my reaction to theirs.
Or I could move to Sweden. I hear it’s nice.