Why Don’t We Elect Bosses?

Bring democracy into that there workplace.

Most people would probably inherently recoil from this question, but it’s actually not a bad one. You spend more time at work (at least in the middle portion of your life) than most places. Your boss does determine your work happiness to some extent; you know the ol’ saying about people leaving bosses and not companies. And, honestly, most of the time it feels like we don’t know why certain people were selected for boss roles:

Roughly half the time, we have no idea ** why ** we’re picking leaders

If I had to make a bulleted list of why most people tend to become bosses, I’d go with these:

• They deserved it.
• They’ve been there a long time and there was no other place for them.
• Proximity to the existing ownership or partner core.
• Good at one job function so got halo effect’ed into another function (i.e. management).
• Diversity and inclusion check-boxes.

Those are the big buckets of managerial advancement at most places. I neglected “dad owns the company” or…