A bad boss may be the kick in the rear you need to change your life

A bad babo may be the kick in the rear you need to change your lifeA bad boss may be the kick in the rear you need to change your lifeIts clear that having a bad boss can send your stress levels through the roof. But research suggests that it could also increase your happiness.A studypublished in the journal Work and Stress found that bad bosses make us so miserable that the situation makes us reach out to friends and find ways to improve our lives under some conditions, the process of dealing with emotional exhaustion can enhance happiness.But how?The researchers suggested that if your supervisor constantly stresses you out, you might feel better if you plan andfinding support from others. They point to coming up with a strategy to change your job and your life and reaching out to others about it.We posit that perceiving low supervisor support enhances the employees engagement in the development of an action plan, which, when paired with an active search for instrumental social supp ort, boosts happiness, the study said.How they did it The researchersused the sustainable happiness model, and conducted multiple studies. Participantsincluded81 Portugal-based team leaders working under direct supervision 177 US-based supervised full-time workers and 242 US-based employees working full-time and under direct supervision.Emotional exhaustion and what comes afterwardAnyone whos had a bad boss knows its tiring managing office life under a troublesome leader can take up enormous resources and even lead to burnout.The researchers acknowledgedbad consequences of emotional exhaustion, citing outside research- including poorer performance, higher incivility, and depression.But theres a silver lining we are more resilient than we know.Posttraumatic Growth and how we bounce backOne group elaborated onthis ideaof our resilience, called posttraumatic growth. The Posttraumatic Growth Research Group at UNC Charlottereportedly came up with the term posttraumatic growth, but ackno wledges this concept has been around for awhile. (The author Ernest Hemingway, for instance, had the famous observation that the world breaks everyone, and afterward many are stronger at the broken places.)For instance, the studysaid thatthe literature on recovery from challenging and highly traumatic life circumstances suggests that people may be able not only to overcome them but also to experience positive outcomes in their aftermath, citing outside research.The Posttraumatic Growth Research Groupsaid that this idea tends to occur in five general areas, including the perception that new opportunities have emerged from the struggle, closer relationships with some specific people, and an increased sense of ones own strength.However, not everyone is resilient, and for some people, having a bad boss or a stressful or traumatic work environment can haunt their entire careerwe most definitely are not implying that traumatic events are good, and that posttraumatic growth is not universa l, the Group said.Coping mechanismsIf youre feeling emotionally drained at the end of every work day because of your supervisor,there may be a solution if you arent quite ready to search for a new job with better management. The best piece of advice from the study is to expand your social network, and your professional one. Those human contacts can sustain you long after you find a solution.As for managers and team leaders, the best advice is to back off until an employee asks for help with a bad boss. If help comes too early, the employee may not work to improve his or her own situation, the researchers suggested it might be useful to just provide support when and if requested.Otherwise, the employee may not engage or delay the engagement in coping activitiesthat can enhance his/her happiness.