Why good people become bad bosses | Jamie Woolf and Christopher Bell

0:06You're listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host, Elise Hu. You know how sometimes great friends are actually the worst roommates? Or people who are really kind can be horrible leaders? In this talk, organizational culture expert Jamie Wolfe and media scholar Dr. Chris Bell bring this predicament to the workplace, sharing the reasons why some really good people become bad leaders. They share things to look out for, and if you're a manager or a leader, how to avoid becoming a bad boss.

0:41I knew that I had had a truly wretched boss the day I learned I needed surgery. So I was 26 years old, and they were telling me this surgery might mean I can't have kids. So I was devastated. But my strongest emotion was this surge of excitement because this meant five weeks away from a boss who had made my life miserable. And just to be clear, I have two wonderful kids. And part of why I'm here today is they have had more than their fare of terrible bosses and they're very early in their career.

1:36Jamie and I run a company that's in the business of trying to crack this bad boss problem. And it's not easy. You want to know why? Okay, let's play a game. Show of hand, how many of you have ever had a boss who made you feel not good? Made you feel disrespected? Keep them up. Disrespected, incompetent. Look around. Almost all of us have had these kinds of people with institutional power in our lives. And for you, that might not have even been a boss. That might have been a teacher or a coach. Just someone who's really bad at being in power, who gets to have power over you.

2:24So we, Dr. Bell and I, collect research on this. So a recent Harris poll found that 71 % of employees have had what they would call a toxic boss. And over half of them have had nightmares about this boss. And you know how that goes. You're out with friends, you're thinking about your boss, you're home with your family, you're thinking about your boss. and now you're lying awake at 3 a.m. and you're thinking, I need to quit. And that's an expensive problem for businesses, not just in the lost productivity and the turnover costs, but in all the brilliant creative ideas that never rise to the surface because people were too afraid to speak up.

3:15So why is this so widespread? Part of the problem is that when we rise to positions of power, we fall prey to what we call power blindness. We lose sight of how it feels to be the one with less power. And we lose sight of how our tone of voice or the quick dismissal of an idea can ruin someone's day. And just by virtue of our title, people stop telling us the truth. They don't give us the tough feedback. They don't even disagree with us. They laugh at our stupid jokes. And this creates a massive reality distortion. And I fell into that reality distortion. I fell into that real hard. So fast forward from my surgery story, and now I'm a boss.

4:13I'm 32 years old, and I'm leading a training team at the University of California at Berkeley. I have eight direct reports. We're gelling as a team. We're putting out all sorts of creative training programs. And you know what? I'm a good boss. One day, one of my employees comes into my office, and she says she wants to talk. But she's crying so hard, she can't speak. So of course I'm concerned, but I'm also a little irritated because I have this budget report due at the end of the day, and I've got to get back to it. When she finally gathers herself enough to speak, she tells me that she has been working so hard to deliver this training program, and she's invited me multiple times to come and observe.

5:08And I've been too busy to show up. And more than that, she feels like I play favorites. So now I'm thinking, holy crap, I'm the wretched boss. And that's power blindness in action. You want to talk about power blindness? Okay, let me tell you a story. I'm a storyteller. I'm also a professional consultant. I'm a professor. And I make people call me Dr. Bell. Now, that's not just ego. I have a reason. See, if there were 100 people in a room with PhDs, statistically speaking, seven of those would be black. And of those seven, four of them would be women. Black men make up 3 % of all PhDs. A black man in America is more likely to be sent to prison than have a PhD.

6:09So I make people call me Dr. Bell. For the black men who will never get to become a doctor. But I also got that from my dad. See, when I was really little, I skipped a bunch of grades, and so I was always younger than everybody else around me, and I didn't really fit in, and I didn't know why. And one day, I'm hanging out with my dad, just me and him, and I asked him about it. And he says, listen, son, you are smart, and you are black. And that is always going to make people uncomfortable. And they're not going to know what to do with that, so they're going to blame you. And I put that on like armor, because I needed it to survive.

6:56And today, when people are afraid of the power that comes with that armor, well, then they call me intimidating or arrogant, just like my dad said they would. And of course, my own brain goes, well, you ain't got to like me. I like me enough for both of us. I armor up. But that armor can make me blind to the fact that it is also covered in spikes. And it can keep people from wanting to get close to me, even when I might want them to. Like now, I manage our company staff, and I need to know how I'm landing with these young people who I adore. I don't want to be a bad boss. and so sometimes that means I have to take that armor off and be a little vulnerable even if that makes me uncomfortable and it makes me uncomfortable but that's okay there's lots to learn when you feel uncomfortable and I bet you have your own kinds of armor too and I'm not telling you don't wear it because sometimes we need it but that armor is heavy and sometimes we have to be willing to take it off, especially if we want to really see and be seen by the people we're trying to lead.

8:15So my sobbing employee, I failed to see her, but she saw me. She saw me a little too well. When she gave me that feedback, I felt this gut punch of shame. And I want to say I owned it right away. But I didn't. I did what, let's be honest, so many of us do when we get tough feedback. I blocked that shame. I built walls around me. I built a fortress of solitude, just me and my self-justifications. Well, it was the workplace, so it was a cubicle of solitude. And from inside here, my employee, she's the problem. Her accusations of favoritism, I had a logical explanation for all of that. So inside my cubicle, what's problematic about that is outside, all sorts of bad things might be happening.

9:19People might be upset, feeling demoralized, but they can't get into these walls. So inside, I'm feeling just fine. I'm a good boss. But of course, you can't be a good boss and be that disconnected. So how do I get out of here? It starts with a healthy dose of honest self-reflection. Meet the mirror. You want to know if you have power blindness? We're going to do a little self-reflection. Now, I'm not talking about one of these little compact mirrors, by the way. People say that all the time. Oh, I have a mirror and I self-reflect all the time. This is for touch-ups. This is not a self-reflection, okay?

10:09You need a mirror, like a big old hallway mirror, like a I'm going out on Saturday night, I'm trying to check myself out mirror. You have to be able to see your whole self when you ask yourself three very simple, very important questions. Question number one, what kind of armor are you wearing? And what does that armor give you? And what does that armor cost you? So when my employee gave me the feedback, That armor was protecting my ego, but it cost me the ability to be a good, supportive, humane boss. Question number two. Because of your position, people are going to be afraid to tell you stuff.

10:56So ask yourself, what might people be afraid to tell me? In my case, I sometimes got to take off my spiky armor because I don't want to unintentionally push away people I might care about. And question number three, the most important question of all, once you've thought about all that, what am I going to do different? So eventually I got it and I started to show up for my employees' trainings so I could give her meaningful feedback and positive recognition. and I started to carve out time to take her to lunch and get to know her as a person. And not just that, I also reached out to the other people on my team who I hadn't spent as much time with and I got to know them as full people too.

11:46And I'll tell you, that significantly deepened the trust, the ability for us to collaborate as an entire team. And that's how you learn. that's how you avoid becoming a bad boss. Being a leader means you have an ethical obligation to break that bad boss cycle and to see the advantages your power gives you. We have this whole industry in this culture around how to survive your boss. No one should have to survive us. The power to break that bad boss cycle is in our hands. We just have to be brave enough to look in the mirror. Thank you. Thank you.

12:40That was Jamie Wolfe and Chris Bell at TEDx Sonoma County in 2025. If you're curious about TED's curation, find out more at ted.com slash curationguidelines. And that's it for today's show. TED Talks Daily is part of the TED Audio Collective. This episode was produced and edited by our team, Martha Estefanos, Oliver Friedman, Brian Green, Lucy Little, Alejandra Salazar, and Tonsika Sarmanivon. It was mixed by Christopher Faze-Bogan. Additional support from Emma Taubner and Daniela Ballarezo. I'm Elise Hu. I'll be back tomorrow with a fresh idea for your feed. Thanks for listening.