Such tink and tank and tunk-a-tunk-tunk
Have you ever wondered what goes on behind the scenes . . . at a salad bar?
Let’s visit the large kitchen of a chain restaurant—a pancake house. A teenage boy frantically shreds lettuce by hand into a white bucket. He sports a large bush of blond hair to top off his red vest, black pants, white shirt, and natty black clip-on bow tie. If his sartorial choices make you think, “busboy in the early 1980s,” that’s because he is a busboy in the early 1980s.
The counter he works at is messy, but there’s no time to clean it. Hungry customers wait for him to restock the empty salad bar, but he has a dilemma. He has to shred away while keeping the clean lettuce off the filthy counter. The busboy improvises, breaking off manageable chunks to shred while storing the rest of the head in the lettuce bucket.
Just then, without a sound, Dan the manager materializes behind him. The busboy instinctively winces. Dan’s an odd fellow—stringy dark hair, pale skin, push-broom mustache, dumpy clothes, short. He reminds the busboy of a low-rent Sonny Bono. Dan’s probably about 30, but to the teenage busboy he’s impossibly old.
Without a word, Dan reaches into the bucket and pulls out the partial head of lettuce.
“What’s this?” Dan asks with his passionless intonation.
The busboy starts to explain, but Dan just talks right over him.
“You can’t put this on the salad bar.”
“I know. I’m not . . .”
Dan rolls on, “If you put this on the salad bar, a customer’s gonna put it on his plate. Then the customer’s gonna pour Russian dressing all over it. He’s gonna sit back down with his nice salad.” Dan pauses dramatically. “Then what do you think will happen?”
“Dan, it’s half a head of lettuce. I don’t think ...”
“Right! It’s too big. You’re supposed to shred it into bite-sized pieces he can put on his fork and fit into his mouth.” Dan’s on a tear now. “So this poor customer’s gonna pick up this lettuce all covered in Russian dressing. And it’s gonna fall off his fork because it’s so big. Then it’s Russian dressing everywhere. All over him. On his shirt. On his pants.” Dan’s smug satisfaction is unbearable. “That’s an oil stain too. They’re impossible to get out.”
The busboy knows better than to fight back at this point. Head down, he’s defeated. Somehow Dan’s blasé monotone makes his absurd lecture all the more humiliating.
“Shred this lettuce smaller. And hurry up. We’ve got customers out there waiting on you. And clean that counter.”
If you hadn’t guessed, I was that busboy with the bushy hair, the bow tie, and the red vest that would have looked fabulous on an organ grinder’s monkey. Dan was my boss and a classic bossplainer.
Bossplainers feel compelled to expound on how to do everything. Their behavior demoralizes everyone around them because it starts and ends with the assumption that people don’t know what they’re doing. Every shortcoming—perceived or real—is blown out of proportion.
Bossplainers care first about—well—bossplaining. Notice that Dan didn’t let a few hungry customers get in the way of his opportunity to pontificate to a teenager. Otherwise how would I have learned so much about the oleaginous peril of oversized lettuce leaves.
What’s strangest about this tale is that I remember it at all 40+ years later. It’s not like I was traumatized by the incident, but it stayed with me as I moved into management positions myself. (Not at the pancake house, thank goodness!) It even influenced my teaching and now my coaching.
Explaining the ‘Splainers
Bossplainers are more than an annoyance. They’re noxious, and they spread their toxicity all over the workplace through three primary behaviors:
1. Striving to establish superiority: The boss craves the rush of petty power. Whether masking imposter syndrome or compensating for general insecurity, bosses seize every chance to lord it over an underling. For instance, Dan—the diminutive pancake house manager—may have been desperate to overcome a Napoleon complex.
2. Weaponizing condescension: To bossplain is to talk down to someone in order to shame them. Dan was too focused on knocking me down to notice that I was just starting my work, not finishing it. His contempt for a lowly busboy blinded him to the reality of the situation and compounded the problem.
3. Assuming incompetence: This behavior is the most insidious. The bossplainer undermines the employee by doubting them, which causes them to question their own abilities. Dan’s harangue made me wonder, at sixteen, if I’d ever do anything right. In that moment, I felt like the worse busboy/salad bar filler in history!
All this ‘splaining isn’t just limited to bosses, though. Lots of self-important bureaucrats have their version. So do some teachers. And, infamously, many men have a particularly galling habit of ‘splaining to women, a phenomenon known as “mansplaining.” Whether practiced by bumptious bosses, overbearing bureaucrats, bombastic bros, or overweening overlords, ‘splaining has two primary effects.
First, it just wastes time. Think of all those famished salad bar grazers anxiously awaiting the lettuce delivery while I was back in the kitchen listening to Dan weave his tale of hypothetical salad dressing debacles.
Second, and more harmfully, it’s simply demoralizing. Dan made me feel like crap, which was exasperated by his clownish cluelessness. It takes a special kind of bossplainer to undermine employee confidence while playing the buffoon. It was as if he were challenging me: “I dare you tell me I’m stupid.” He sure showed sixteen-year-old me who was boss!
In contrast leaders never bossplain, ever. But it’s not enough for leaders to avoid bossplaining. Great leaders actively do the opposite. Where bossplainers boost their ego, leaders practice humility by regularly committing egocide. Where bossplainers talk down, leaders lift up. Where bossplainers assume incompetence and failure, leaders show respect and expect success.
It’s the same with teachers and coaches. Bad teachers and coaches tend to ‘splain—talk down to others and tear them down. Great teachers and coaches, like great leaders, do the opposite. They go out of their way to discover the positives in others even when they’re not readily apparent, and they work to build on those positives not harp on flaws. Their job is to uplift others.
And of course they do. It’s the height of incompetence for a teacher or a coach to constantly demoralize and destroy the very people they’re supposed to help. And that’s true for bossplainers as well. What good did Dan achieve by pestering me while I was doing my job? His bossplaining sure didn’t get that salad bar stocked in a timely manner!
If you want to be a great leader, start with a revolutionary assumption: your team members know what they’re doing. Ask them questions. Listen to their answers. Build on their strengths. Elevate them. That way you’ll never feel the urge to knock them down.
Doing so doesn’t mean abandoning people to their own devices either. If they need guidance, give them guidance. If they need help, give them help. But don’t just presume that they require your intervention, and definitely don’t imagine that they’ll benefit from hearing you drone on. They won’t.
If you want to lead well you must communicate well. Good leadership communication is about observing, listening to, and serving others with respect and gratitude. It gets the job at hand done and sets you up to take on the next one too. It actively opposes bossplaining. Otherwise, you risk leaving those poor customers standing there, hungrily waiting for the lettuce to get shredded and the salad bar filled.
Have you ever been bossplained to? Have you ever been guilty of bossplaining?
Leaders start every conversation with team members from a place of respect, and I can help.
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I look forward to hearing from you.
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Bossplaining — A Most Toxic Way to Communicate