This Is Woman's Work with Nicole Kalil - What Good Leaders Can Learn from Bad Bosses with Mita Mallick | 351

Episode Date: October 8, 2025

We’ve all had them — the micromanagers, the credit stealers, the screamers, the ones who treat “reply all at midnight” like a leadership strategy. Bad bosses are everywhere, but here’s the kicker: leadership is learned. Which means we can unlearn the toxic part and redefine how we lead. In this episode, we sit down with Mita Mallick — Wall Street Journal and USA Today bestselling author of The Devil Emails at Midnight: What Good Leaders Can Learn From Bad Bosses, LinkedIn Top Voice, corporate changemaker, and fierce advocate for fixing broken workplaces. Together, we unpack why bad bosses are made (not born), how to spot when you’re slipping into toxic habits yourself, and what it takes to build the kind of leadership people actually want to follow. We get into: The real reasons people become bad bosses (hint: stress, modeling, and unhealed personal stuff) Why micromanagement, fear, and time-hoarding are leadership red flags How inclusion, credit-sharing, and genuine presence boost retention more than hoodies and free apps ever will Practical ways to “manage up” when your boss is… less than inspiring How to stop being that boss and start modeling the kind of leader you’d want to work for Because nobody wants to be the horror story told at happy hour 10 years from now. Let’s do better. Connect with Mita: Book: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1394316488 LI: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mita-mallick-2b165822   Related Podcast Episodes Leading From The Inside Out with Dana Maor | 278 Grown-Up Goals: The 5 Pillars Of Being A Healthy Adult with Michelle Chalfant | 317 How To Build An Emotionally Intelligent Team with Dr. Vanessa Druskat | 328 Share the Love: If you found this episode insightful, please share it with a friend, tag us on social media, and leave a review on your favorite podcast platform! 🔗 Subscribe & Review:Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When you're with Amex Platinum, you get access to exclusive dining experiences and an annual travel credit. So the best tapas in town might be in a new town altogether. That's the powerful backing of Amex. Terms and conditions apply. Learn more at Amex.ca. This episode is brought to you by Peloton. A new era of fitness is here.

Introducing the new Peloton Cross Training Tread Plus, powered by Peloton IQ, built for breakthroughs with personalized workout plans, real-time insights, and endless ways to move. Lift with confidence, while Peloton IQ counts reps, corrects form, and tracks your progress. Let yourself run, lift, flow, and go. Explore the new Peloton cross-training tread plus at OnePeloton.C.A. I am Nicole Khalil and you're listening to the This Is Woman's Work podcast. We're together. We're redefining what it means, what it looks and feels like to be doing woman's work in the world today.

And today, we get to talk about bad bosses and friends. I have been waiting for this one because we all know them. We've all experienced them. The micromanagers who think hovering as a leadership strategy, the glory sealers who conveniently forget who actually did the work, the masters of the midnight email who have us wondering if it's okay to actually have a life outside of work. Honestly, we could spend the next 30 minutes just trading war stories. Toxic, ridiculous, inappropriate, pick your flavor. We've all been there. And I need to be upfront about my own bias. When I think of bad bosses, my brain usually defaults to men because statistically they're

in more leadership positions because historically workplaces were built by and for them and because, well, my lived experience. But let me be really clear, women can be terrible bosses too. Bad leadership isn't gendered and anyone can be an asshole. So the more important thing here isn't my bias. understanding that leadership is learned. Nobody is a born leader or a born dictator. If you've worked for a bad boss, you likely either mimic what you saw or you swing hard in the opposite direction. And I have to believe that most of us want to be good leaders. It just might be

harder to do that if we haven't experienced it. It's hard to be what you can't see, right? Which is why today's conversation really matters and why I'm so excited. excited to have it. Our guest today is Meena Malick, a Wall Street Journal and USA Today best-selling author who's on a mission to fix what's broken in our workplaces. She's a corporate change maker with a proven track record of transforming businesses, a highly sought-after speaker who's advised both Fortune 500 companies and scrappy startups, and a LinkedIn top voice who regularly contributes to places like Harvard Business Review, Fast Company, and Entrepreneur. And her new book, the devil emails at midnight. What good leaders can learn from bad bosses is both a title that made

me cackle, literally out loud, and what will become a necessary read for all of us. So, Mita, thank you for joining us today. As I said in my intro, we could just like, you know. I mean, Nicole, what can I say after that introduction? We're done. Thank you. Thank you so much. I so appreciate that. Thank you. Oh my gosh. Well, I love that. I don't want this to be a venting session, though it really could be. So I want to start by talking about something that you say in your book and that I basically stole and put in my intro. And that is that bad bosses aren't born. Bad bosses are made. Tell us what you mean by that? And what are you seeing or what are some of these really common ways that were learning unconsciously how to be a bad boss? So the opening of the devil

emails at midnight starts with, I've been a bad boss and chances are so have you. And I have now, I sit here in this conversation with you much more empathy for my bad bosses than maybe I did five years ago, because I've been one and bad bosses, who are they? They are usually misdirected, hurt, misguided individuals who are wreaking some level of havoc in the workplace and sometimes also in their homes. And so I've seen bad boss behavior creep up three different times that I've studied and researched. Number one is something's happening in the marketplace. Oh, we're sitting in the U.S. right now. tariffs continue to be a big part of the conversation. You have a competitor who comes out with an innovation that you didn't expect goes gangbusters. You have a merger and acquisition that's bailed that people are trying to bury. No one wants to talk about it. So that's number one. Number two, as I say in our house, poo-poo trickles down. Right. I have children and we say that that trickles down. So if you are working for me, Nicole, and I'm the bad boss, and this is your first time leading teams and people, it's a learned behavior. You don't know any better. You might

just be grabbing on to some of those behaviors that I'm exhibiting. And then number three, as I talk about in the devil emails at midnight, something cataclysmic and earthquake has happened in your personal life. You've lost someone you've loved. You've had a miscarriage. You're struggling with fertility. A divorce, breakup, move, you're sick, someone's sick. I could go on and on. And so many things happening in the world today. And that is causing you grief, stress, and you're coming into work. We try to compartmentalize these things. It doesn't really work. You try to leave it at home and you try to show up at work and whether it's you're feeling a loss of control, you're feeling angry, you're feeling sad. You were going to take it out on the people closest to you

and sometimes that is your team. Yeah. Okay. I'm so glad that you said that you have more empathy for your bad bosses because I feel the same. And I can look back at my leadership journey and pinpoint several times where I'm like horrified what I did or what I said. And I will reiterate what you said is bad bosses, first and foremost, are just humans, like all of us. And we make mistakes and we have challenging times and we're learning as we're going. And I feel like when you're in a leadership position, there is an inherent extra responsibility or it's necessary that we clean ourselves up a little bit more, a little bit faster. I always think those situations might explain it, but it doesn't excuse it. That part. Yes.

So rather than talking about all of the bad bosses, how do we start with ourselves? How do we look at what we're doing and evaluate it? Because I think it's easy to look at somebody else and be like, you know. Absolutely. So how do we begin to do that? Well, I love how self-aware you are. And I hope people listening think about this. Most of us know when we've behaved badly.

The devil emails at midnight is not for the leaders. who were so toxic and terrifying, they've made headlines, they've wreaked so much havoc on their organizations. They don't need another executive coach, quite frankly, need therapy, and they need help. It's for the rest of us. And so most of us, if you walk out of a meeting, hang up with a phone call,

come out of a big presentation, if you have the courage to sit in silence and think about what just happened, most of us have instincts that didn't land well. I'm watching how people were reacting, I'm rewinding in my head. Something's a mist there. Something's awry.

I need to think about that. So do you have the courage to sit with yourself and be self-reflecting? Now, I'm not saying that you have to do this for hours on day. I'm saying, what if you actually spent 10 minutes at the end of every week? And I'm a writer, as you know,

writing is healing for me. I used to journal a lot personally. I have career journals now. That's how I've been constructing my books. I go back through things I've observed and thought about and witnessed and research. what if you just kind of jotted down how you think you're weak when? You could also pull up your calendar to prompt different things. But think about that. That's really important. I think the second

thing we talk with Sullivan was second thing is look for the signs. The signs are there. Sometimes we ignore them. I hope companies are doing exit interviews. Maybe they're canceled. They better not be. But you know, people will tell you things. Sometimes they won't be honest, but there are signs. If I work for Nicole and I have had five people leave in my team over the last month, who's asking the question? as to why these people are leaving. I think about, am I watching the nonverbals? Are people suddenly quiet around me? Are they anxious?

Are they less engaged than they used to be? Am I the last person to know what's happening in the business? All signs of something's amiss. And then the last thing is, how often are you asking for coaching from others and feedback? And we can get into that. I think the open-ended question is the worst. I had a boss, one of my bad bosses,

at the end of my performance review. every year would say, Mehta, tell me what you think I should be doing differently. And the one time I channeled Brne Brown, I was kind and clear. He lost his mind. Of course.

That is not what happened. That's not true. And then guess what I did after that, Nicole? I just smiled the next time he asked that question. I said, everything's fine. Yeah.

All good. Yeah. I find so often when we ask for feedback, what we're really asking for is praise and we get so caught off guard and defensive when we get what we actually asked for, which is a problem in and of itself.

Okay, so you said a lot of incredibly important things in there. And, you know, there is this distinction between you need therapy and just, hey, this is an opportunity for growth. And I, again, it's anecdotal, but my own experience is, yeah, you feel bad. You're not proud of yourself. There's some instinct that, oh, that didn't go the way I wanted it to. I know a trigger for me is I start overthinking.

So if I'm still thinking about that interaction, hours later, days later, most likely there's something in me that's letting me know that there is an opportunity for repair or discussion or collaboration. Okay. I think there are a few things that we all would agree is bad boss behavior and yet it's still happening. Like micromanaging comes to mind or emailing outside of normal working hours. let's identify a few of those. So what are some of those things? If you consistently email at midnight but don't have time for your teams during the day, I'm not sure why you're leading. And I talk about that. I mean, I treat my calendar like my wardrobe. Declutter, recycle. People will say to me, I don't have enough time to meet with my teams. Yes, you do. What are meetings? I mean, listen, if you get anything

out of this conversation today, I have the courage to cancel a meeting. How many times, Nicole, we showed up to a meeting and everyone's like chitty-chatting, bantering for like 10 minutes and then you realize me is not in it she's the decision maker oh she's on vacation or actually you don't need to have this meeting anymore because the project's canceled or oh this meeting should be discussed elsewhere so this idea time is the most precious commodity that's the thing that in any relationship is the complaint you don't have enough time for me so if you were leading teams make time for your people so that's that's like one of the first things I would say you know the second is really you know micromanagement god there's nothing like

micromanagement to kill the joy at work for me. And so what I challenge people to think about, and this Nicole happens often when you go from doing to directing for the first time. The first time I managed a team, it was a circus. No one told me what to do. I never got any training. But no one taught me. It's like you're not, I'm now overseeing Nicole's career. I'm not doing her job for her. I'm teaching her how to do it and helping her and coaching her and training her. And so we hire talent and I say you hired me to do a job. Let me do the job. Don't do the job for me. Right. And there's a difference between micromanaging and accountability because people will push back and say, well, I need to know what my team's doing. I have standards. I'm like, you can still do that without doing the work for them. And then the last one I'll throw out there, which is really one that I'm still appalled about. And I think sometimes it is the exacerbated behavior, but I still people leading with fear. Fear, drive. short-term results. You know, I worked for my boss, Medusa, who I called, nicknamed her that for a reason. It's in the devil e-mails at midnight. And I had never at this point of my life had anyone scream at me,

not my parents, not my husband, not my brother, certainly didn't tolerate it from friends. And here I am working for an adult, having full-blown tantrums. This is the boss who threw a Chanel shoe at my colleague, right? I was like, how does this happen? And how do we allow someone to stay in a workplace like that when they're treating with people with so much disrespect. And so we can go on and on. Those are some of the top three. And I love that you use the word appalled because that is, it is appalling. And I didn't think about that. I'm so glad you called it out. Under no circumstances should we as adult, forget leaders, but as adults be screaming or yelling at coworkers or people in the workplace. Like this is just ridiculous. And I will tell you,

I have shouted and screamed, particularly after I lost my father really suddenly. You talk about this. I became the bad boss that I was trying to run away from. But I also, to your point, knew that I had done that and afterwards apologized. And so what happens is in moments of stress, we are drawn to fear-based leadership, isn't it interesting? Because if we can scare ourselves and each other, we might move a little faster. But long term, it has disastrous results. Because guess what?

If I come to work every day scared, at some point I'm exhausted of it being scared. I just can't. That adrenaline rush is going to go away. Yeah. My version of that was biting people's heads off. I didn't scream or yell, but I was like real snarky. And exactly what you said. I felt disgusted with myself pretty quickly.

And the longer I waited, the worse, you know, to address it or repair it, the worse I felt. Yeah. Okay. so I've seen some people do something at the bottom of their email that says something to the effective. I'm emailing when it's most convenient for me. You can respond when it's most convenient for you. I kind of like that. Like letting people know, like, hey, I'm doing this for my reasons, but that doesn't mean that you should be emailing back at midnight or whatever. Any thoughts on that? I like that. And it works if for the following. Okay, I'm the boss and I write this on my response. Listen, I have

I have young kids. I've many time done the evening shift on email. But if I put that in my note and I'm sending these notes and then Nicole starts responding who works for me and I respond back, game over. So this is often what happens, right? It's not that you just send that response. It's then, oh, and I have this like disclaimer, but then Nicole responds and I respond back and then you're in a back and forth and then Nicole feels obligated, right? Right. And so I think that's really important to think about. And I also ask, like, I've been guilty of this. I just want to get it out in my inbox onto yours. Why does it have to be at midnight? Can I write it in a notebook? Can I put it in the team's doc? Can I wait to tell you in person the next day? So this anxiety we have on staying

on top of things and overworking and being super productive. That's also what I'm talking to the devil emails at midnight. Not everything needs to be an email. Hit pause on whatever you're listening to and hit play on your next adventure. This fall get double points on every qualified stay. Life's the trip. Make the most of it at Best Western. Visit bestwestern.com for complete terms and conditions.

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have for mental health care. You know, that reminder in there for me of, like, we are modeling. As leaders, we are modeling behavior and you can put all the taglines or say all the things and be as well-intentioned as possible. And sometimes we inadvertently model something. I remember a leader gave me feedback in my more corporate days. And they were like, if you want people to aspire to leadership, we were really focused on growing leaders, you have to make it an attractive proposition. And the way you're working is not at all

attractive. Like, why would somebody want leadership? And it was like, you know, and I could not have been any more grateful for the feedback because it was completely accurate. That's great. And other thing I'd add here is that there are times we're going to drive hard. What I'm asking you to think about is this how you consistently operate as a team? Then you really have to rethink this quickly. But there are moments where you might be grinding for the weekend because you've got a client proposal on Monday. And then when your boss does ask for a late night meeting, the urgency is there. You believe it. You believe it and you're going to show up to help deliver versus this constant emailing at off hours. I want to dive into a little bit more of this making time

because I see this a lot. And it's, you know, sometimes it's not having time. Sometimes it's showing up late to everything. And I think we unconsciously often see leaders giving the impression that their time is more valuable than anyone else's. If somebody listening is being self-reflective and they're noticing that maybe they're not giving their team the time that they need or they might unconsciously be sending the wrong message, what are some tactics that we could be doing to help address this problem? Well, we talked about audit your calendar. Take things off that shouldn't be there, have the courage to cancel things that are being discussed elsewhere. If you're in a position to delegate, delegate, if you have someone overseeing your calendar, make sure my one-on-ones

with Mehta once every two weeks, do not move these. They're 20 minutes, 30 minutes. And if you have to cancel or reschedule, let her know why and do it within the week. Don't do the reschedule, reschedule. It happens like in a year, right? So that's so important. And obviously, meeting in person, having that time is really important to coach, teach, train, catch up on things. But you also can be using Slack or email as ways to show people that you know they're there. Like, Nicole, I hope your daughter's basketball tryouts went well, just was thinking of you this week, right? There are ways that you can still show people that you're thinking about them or like, great job on that project, great job on that presentation. And so the takeaway is not that

you give every person on your team 90 minutes a week. But I'm asking you, if you looked at your direct reports, how much time are you spending them with them on a monthly basis? And if you're spending no time and it's all over email, then there's a problem there. I wonder too if some aspect of this is asking yourself if you even need to be there in the first place or this is an opportunity to elevate another leader on the team. You mentioned that transition for being a doer to a leader. And I found that to be really, really hard. And I think sometimes leaders still think they need to be involved or they forget that part of a leader's job is also developing other leaders.

Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, I just said it, the number one job of leaders to develop more leaders. Right? That's like one of the biggest jobs. And it's this idea of FOMO and Jomo. It's like, I'm actually really happy Nicole's going to go lead this initiative. And guess what? That means every Wednesday's at 10. I'm not going to be in the meeting.

I'm not trust her that she's going to come back to me. Oh, wow. So, you know, later on, maybe Nicole isn't up to going to those meetings and she needs to be coached and trained, but, you know, she's in that role. Let me give her that shot. And let me tell her, practically. This is how the meeting goes. I'm going to have you go every Wednesday at 10 a.m. to represent our team. Here's the updates you should be providing. Here are the questions you should be asking. If you need me, call me. Right. If you need me, call me. Let her go and lead and sort it out herself. 100%. I'm curious to your response to this. Somebody asked me this, and I don't know if I handled it very well at the time, but it was this concept of, we were talking about that transition from doing the leading and letting other people. And the question was around, how do you reconcile that with the concept of servant leadership? This person was kind of arguing the point that servant leadership meant them doing the things, not saying this is beneath me or she was still doing. some of the, and I'm just going to put in Air Code's brunt work because she didn't want her team to think that she thought she was too good for it or whatever. And it was all sort of wrapped under this idea of servant leadership. What are your thoughts on servant leadership and still letting go and letting other people do the work? I actually think of servant leadership and I don't love

the term servant, but I just think it's in being in service of each other. And so it is more or less of a pyramid, which so many of us are still operating in, right? I'm here and everyone's down there and a circle. But that doesn't mean that you don't hold people accountable when someone's more junior. Certainly in my career, a lot of that grunt work I learned a lot from. And so you're actually doing the person a disservice. If you're not, if you're like, oh, they might perceive I'm being too senior acting like, I'm too good to do this work.

So let me take it off your plate. And actually, it's like, I know this grunt work is tedious and tiresome, but there's a reason I'm having you do it. And that's the piece of being in service each other is creating a culture of constantly coaching each other and teaching and training. Yeah. You answered that better than I did. Okay. Well, now you can go back and say we have this conversation. Yeah. It was like seven years ago, so it would be a little weird for me to go back. But yeah. One of the behaviors you call out in the book is taking credit for other people's work. I think that is a tough one. What advice do you have for those people who feel unseen, undervalued,

underappreciated, under-recognized by their bosses? Ask to get credit. It sounds so simple, but too many times in my career, also I'm the proud daughter of Indian immigrant parents. My parents taught me humility at all costs. Being overly humble hasn't served me well in my career. So oftentimes I was okay with taking the backseat. I was okay with creating the proposal, not presenting it.

But ask, ask to come to the meeting, ask to present that piece. When you're sharing things, document it. I hate to say that, but if you're creating a doc and make sure your name's on it, make sure your ideas are there, you know, I also think the more we give credit to each other, you'll see it coming back. So what do I mean by that? I'm in a meeting and we're talking about a project. And then I hear this idea and I say, actually, I just want to point out that's Nicole's original idea. She actually brought it up last month in another meeting. Oh, okay, cool. And Nicole hears that I did that for her. Nicole's going to do that for me. So part of making sure we receive credit for the things we're

working on is when we say each other's names and rooms where we're not in, you'll start to see that credit will start coming your way. And sometimes when you have an absolute credit stealer, a credit hog boss, you have to decide how long you want to work for that individual before you try to find your next assignment. Because what's going to happen is if they're not giving you credit for your work, it's going to be hard to get promoted and recognize and acknowledge for the things that you're doing if they're taking all the credit for it. Right. Good advice. I want to talk about something you mentioned briefly earlier, but it stuck out to me. I think one of the ways, maybe one of the best ways that leaders can self-assess or leaders can assess whether or not

they're doing a good job is retention. Yes. We hear so many statistics about people not leaving their jobs, but they're leaving their bosses or their leaders. Yes. And if you have constant Turnover, probably a pretty good sign that you're not doing a great job. So am I on track there? Is retention a good metric? What are we looking for? What does it tell us? How do we use that? Yeah. And you know what we're doing is instead we're giving out oversized free hoodies and another water bottle I don't need and a free meditation app when my boss is emailing midnight consistently constantly and you're like, what's happening? So retention, we're chasing the wrong things. We're trying to do Band-Aid solutions rather than actually going into the root cause.

And I would argue, you know, we've lost the plot when it comes to inclusion in our workplaces, and inclusion is tied to retention. I work for you. I feel seen, I've seen, recognized, valued. My work matters. My voice matters. I come to get a paycheck. Some of us have found our purpose.

But the worst moments in your career are when you wonder if anyone knows that you're there. Does anyone know what I'm working on? People are stealing my work. I'm being interrupted, dismissed, talked over. I'm not even in the meeting, right? And so think about that. That is what inclusion is. And that's tied to retention.

And so yet so many of us won't take the time to look at that data. And instead, what happens, go back to MediaWorks for Nicole, all these people keep leaving. And then Nicole just might call recruiting and say, we need some more job descriptions up. We need to fill these roles, right? Rather than being like, hey, what's happening on that team? And I'm telling you, think about those moments in your career where you were just so happy to be there and you were happy to make impact. I swear to you, if someone had come and asked me giving me an offer for $10,000, $20,000 more, I wouldn't have take it maybe for $100K.

But you know, it's like you can't put a price on that. You really can't, right? And so think about that. That's like the biggest retention tool we have. And we're chasing the wrong things on how to keep people. Could not agree more. It bodes well with my personal experience and all of the conversations I've had. You know, people really want to feel good and feel like they're adding value

and doing a good job. And there, I'm sure there is a price tag, as you said, but very rarely would somebody consider leaving or they're certainly not out there searching if they're happy and where they were. Absolutely. Yeah. I said at the beginning of this episode that I do have a bias and I have to be conscious of it all the time

and I've seen and heard of horrible bosses regardless of gender. I do think some of this stuff feels like it has a gender element. like the being dismissed or, you know, I think of, I hear from women being asked to take notes in meetings versus feeling like they're at the table in the meeting or maybe sometimes women feel increased sense of needing to nurture or help or respond quickly or I don't know. Any advice for when it's happening or when you see it happening, how do we address it head on? How do we look out for ourselves? How do we look out for each other? So I think of the thought came to my my head of, I heard about the women in the Obama White House, making a pact with each other

to, are there things that we can be doing in our workplaces like that? If you are going to put a label on a woman, ask if you would put the same label on a man. Mehta is being difficult. She is not collaborating. She's not staying in her lane. She's being aggressive. all of these things, would you use those labels for a man? And what I love that you're bringing up is a big question,

is that are women more often labeled bad bosses than men? We didn't talk about this, right? Context and situation matters. Someone who's a bad boss for me could be a good boss for you, right? Good point. But also, there are times where maybe I've been characterized as a bad boss unfairly because we have stereotypes. Meena's cold. Your immediate assumption is mea should be caring and warm, right? And a caregiver. Well, do you expect that of Matt as well? Because if you do, then that's fine. So we have to have an equal level playing field, which I know we're still on a journey in our workplaces. But I love that question you prompted is, you know, our own biases on who's a bad boss and not and the labels that we stick on people. So again, always for me, it's about asking open-ended questions in those moments.

You know, the classic example that I always remember in like a talent review is that, you know, Mita just had a baby, but she's up for a big promotion. And someone in the room says, well, Mita just had a baby. She can't do that promotion. It requires too much travel. And, you know, who gave you permission to slow down Mita's career? Right. That's the question I want to ask.

But what I would ask is, have we talked to Mita? Have we asked her what her career ambitions are? I don't know if you know, but Matt also just had a baby. He actually just had a second baby. So, and Matt's on the promotion list. Are we asking Matt who's taking care of his kids and family? Do you see how we're, so we're inviting in, we're asking open our questions, and we're trying to get people to self-reflect and interrupt those biases that you just mentioned?

What a simple and profoundly impactful tool. Just ask yourself, would I say this, would I do this, would I think this, if and replace the woman you're thinking of, both leader and led? Right? Yes. And I think even putting the name, not just a general, would I think this of a man, but would I think this of a male leader that you know or... The peer. Yes. Exactly. Within the subset of where you work, absolutely. Think about that way. And if nothing else, it has you in the practice of thinking inclusively. It has you in the practice

of thinking holistically. It has you in the practice of thinking openly and being curious. I mean, these are all leadership skills, and it's a great way to practice all of them. I'm so, so glad that you brought up to the, you know, bias towards the leader and that a good leader for one person may be a bad leader for another and vice versa. So if somebody is listening and they have a leader that isn't so much working for them, what is our responsibility as the person being led to communicate what? does and doesn't work for us. So if there's a situation where your mental health is being really impacted, that's a call that you need to make is how much longer can you stay there? Can you afford to

stay there? What do you need to do? What's that exit strategy? If you, I'm sorry, years ago worked for me and I was micromanaging Mita. The question is, how long can you stand to work for me? Is it six months? Is it 12 months? What are you going to get out of assignment? I'm not encouraging you every time you have a bad boss to resign. That's not going to work. But what you can do is you can pull up your resume and you can say, I have to work for micromanaging meter for six months to a year. I'm going to actually put down on my resume what I want to get out of this. Isn't that a cool idea? Like future forward, step into that. So you have an action plan. You can also try to, like, people don't like this advice. It is how the world works.

Manage up to your boss. I don't think it's about managing up. It's about helping each other be better in the workplace. And so what do I mean by that? My last example is, gosh, I had a boss who would text Nicole at 6.30 in the morning randomly often. I'm like, why are you texting? It was nothing urgent. It was like thoughts about a project, something we need to do for a meeting. And so in that case, I started to retrain her. I would never respond over text. I would wait till 8.30. I would log in, respond over email. I started a Google doc that I shared at a team meeting. And I said, if you have any fun ideas about projects or ideas, why don't we put them in here, right? And so there's a way, because you might not be in a position where your boss wants to hear the feedback. You can certainly

try to retrain them and you can try to create more processes and ways of working as a team and so they don't feel personally attacked by it. But there is a bit of managing up, have that expiration date and know what you want to get out of this moment in your career. Yeah. Mita, thank you for the exceptional advice for writing this book. It's so necessary and for being here today. Listener, definitely go order the devil emails at midnight for yourself, all the leaders you know, and maybe leave an anonymous copy for a bad boss. He really needs to read it. And you can also follow Mehta on LinkedIn.

All the links can be found in show notes. Mehta again, thank you so much. Thank you. All right, here's the thing about bad bosses. They're everywhere. And that doesn't give you permission to be one. If leadership is learned, then we get to decide what lessons we're carrying forward, what we can unlearn, and we can choose to lead differently, to lead better.

because the truth is most people don't quit jobs, they quit bosses. And most of us want to be the kind of leader others want to work with. Not the story someone shares at a happy hour 10 years later or on a podcast with a half a million people listening in. It's time to take the mirror test. Let's be willing to check our own behavior to make adjustments and to keep learning because good leaders aren't born. They're made, which tells me that part of the job, a necessary requirement of leadership is redefining what it means, what it looks and feels like to lead. And that is woman's work. Hi, listeners, it's Jack Bishop. I'm the ingredients guy on America's Test Kitchen's

Public Television Show and the host of our award-winning podcast, Proof. Proof combines history, science, and culture to tell unexpected stories about food. Every episode is filled with aha moments that you'll want to share at your next dinner party. New episodes drop every Thursday. Subscribe wherever you get your podcast and you might never look at food the same way again.