NEW research shows how bad bosses get promoted, not punished.

You have likely met them. He's mean. She's a grump. They're moody. You just want to hit the back button and restart their day and yours.

But the fact is, over 62 per cent of the study's respondents said nothing at all is done.

Worse, senior managers tend to turn a blind eye, while workers walk into dragon dens day after day. Yikes! These guys often look for fights more than solutions, defend themselves like Banshees defend water in a desert battle and stick to stubborn opinions in spite of evidence that supports any opposite views. If you know them, you are likely stung by them.

Sadly, the culprit also adds to workers's chemical hormone, cortisol. We now know a great deal more about its influence in the brain and at the workplace.

How can we reason with people whose brains are saturated in cortisol, related to stress? It is especially tough when that person complains, throws tantrums or just shows up daily with new tactics
to make life miserable.

There are brain based tactics that help, even when management ignores this problem.

While you likely won't turn a frog into a prince, you can shake off the surge of cortisol that brings you down.

The alternative could ruin your career and others's over time. How so?

Cortisol shuts down a person's ability to communicate with civility. Our brains are orchestrated by 200 kinds of cells with trillions of neural signals actively communicating in the cortex. Observed through brain imaging, brain chemicals seep through clefts in the brain and convert to electrical impulses which impact what you learn and sway your reactions to life around you.

It may be as simple as choosing a smile over a sneer. Chemicals called neurotransmitters act as biochemical messengers which generate mental well-being and act as stimuli to excite neurons or as inhibitors to suppress them.

Drugs can stimulate or block synapses, which is simply a brain based name for communication and electrical activity among neurons.

The bad boss often fights his own demons at work. But you can sidestep some of the steam.

We now know that people operating under high levels of cortisol, especially depressed people, tend to lack mental images that most people draw from to stay secure, comforted and consoled.

In contrast, the bad bosses' negative images and recriminating inner voices plague and disturb their thoughts.

It helps to see the bad boss's problem from another set of eyes. For instance, imagine yourself failing at work again today or simply rejected by most people around you.

Instead of inner mental responses that soothe and show an average worker new lessons about how to recover from stressors that hit, depression shoots darts of fear. Most encounters leave you dreading further disasters.

It doesn't have to be that way. The best key is to raise your own serotonin levels one drop at a time, which will soon replace its competitor -- cortisol -- in your brain.

At first, it is simply a matter of choice. Say the boss growls over nothing or criticises you unfairly.

After a few serotonin tactics, you will actually begin to fire your dendrite brain cells into new neuron pathways that help you cope with stressors that tend to strike us all, especially on a busy day.

This piece has been sourced from Dr Ellen Weber's BrainBasedBusiness, which suggests how to use your brain to succeed in business. Dr Weber is an internationally known curriculum leader, speaker, mentor and columnist, who teaches business executives brain-based approaches to medical professionals at the University of Rochester. She also serves on several boards and committees as a volunteer to help handicapped youth.

Illustration: Vaibav Shirke

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