Not everyone loves their work. Seven out of 10 employees either despise their jobs or are totally disengaged, according to a Gallup poll. Another one in 10 are totally dissatisfied with their boss or immediate supervisor.
No one likes a boss who’s a jerk.
But what about the supervisor who’s really antagonistic to his employees—yelling, mocking them and telling them their ideas are stupid? What’s the best way to handle the situation?
Be hostile right back, says a new study from Ohio State University.
The study found that employees who retaliated against hostile bosses felt less like victims and had less psychological distress and greater job satisfaction than those who did nothing. “Before we did this study, I thought there would be no upside to employees who retaliated against their bosses, but that’s not what we found,” said Bennett Tepper, the study’s lead author and professor of management and human resources at Ohio State University’s Fisher College of Business, in a press release.
The study was done in two parts. In the first part, respondents answered questions for two surveys that were seven months apart. The first survey asked people how often their supervisor did hostile things, such as “My supervisor ridicules me” and “My supervisor tells me that my thoughts and feelings are stupid.” The survey also asked how often employees struck back by doing things such as ignoring their boss or making only a half-hearted effort to do what their boss requested.
Seven months later, the same respondents answered questions about job satisfaction, commitment to the company, psychological distress and negative feelings.
In the end, boss hostility without employee retaliation caused people to feel less committed to the employer, more depressed, and less satisfied at work. But when people were hostile back to their bosses—termed “upward hostility” in the study—the exchange didn’t affect them negatively.
This was interesting, of course, but what then? Were employees initially happy about their boss payback and later fired? Demoted? Assigned to a desk in the basement? The researchers decided to run a second set of surveys—three this time—to figure this out.
These three surveys were completed three weeks apart from each other. The first survey contained similar questions as the previous first survey—about downward and upward hostility. The second survey asked whether employees identified themselves as victims at work, and measured their feelings of negativity. And the third survey measured job satisfaction, commitment to the company, psychological distress, and career outcomes.
Results: As upward hostility increased, so did career satisfaction and career expectations. They were also less likely to identify themselves as victims, and experienced less psychological distress.
How’s that, you ask? It may be that workers who stand up for themselves impress their colleagues and feel better about their work. “We have respect for someone who fights back, who doesn’t just sit back and take abuse,” Tepper says in the release. “Having the respect of co-workers may help employees feel more committed to their organization and happy about their job.”
