Do women make b***tchy bosses – or are they just misunderstood?

I’ve long thought that women make the worst bosses in the world.  Great moms, arguably yes, great bosses – jury is out.  My first experience working for a woman was with a Fortune 100 company fresh out of college.  Granted, I’m sure I was in need of some corporate molding – but was a woman boss the best one to mold me?  Let’s call her Katharine Parker (from the character Sigourney Weaver played in the 80’s comedy “Working Girl”) and while she didn’t work in Wall Street brokerage firm, she was definitely a force to be reckoned with.  Her expectations were high, her motivating skills were low, her work product was exceptional, and she was most definitely off-putting.  She had made a conscious decision to NOT have kids (or any social life that I could see) and was eager to work 24X7--and expected everyone else’s priorities to mirror hers.  Unfortunately, at the time, my priorities were to have fun, manage my hangovers, get to work on time and do a solid job (in that order).  Clearly there was a conflict.  Getting to work  2 minutes late was grounds for a conversation.  Leaving at 5:30 to go to a SCUBA class demonstrated my lack of commitment.  Oh, she was a b**ch.  Or was she?  Did I mistake her attempts at coaching as b**chiness? 

It all comes down to delivery.  So even if Katharine’s intentions were good (and I’m reaching here) could it just have been that her delivery was off.  Maybe when she yanked me into her office to explain that our work day began at 8:30 not 8:32, she was really trying to impart the value of getting to work before everyone else.  Maybe when she took credit for my work, she was trying to teach me the value of being a team player.  And maybe her inflexibility with vacation time was to motivate me to become the boss so I could crush some other staffer’s vacation dreams.  Maybe she wasn’t a b**ch at all.  Maybe she was a misunderstood woman desperately trying to turn me into a successful executive.  Maybe she was seriously invested in my career but just couldn’t adequately express her true motivations—a congenital birth defect if you will.  Or maybe she was just really a big b**ch! 

Editor’s note – While this is based on a true story, in my years, I have also encountered some (ok, one) amazing women bosses.  If you are lucky enough to have one of these women as your boss, enjoy it, it doesn’t get any better than that.