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It's already been a bad week for bosses, with senior BBC figures drawing criticism for some eye-wateringly large pay rises and Marks & Spencer shareholders about to call the company's executives to account over a sharp drop in revenue. And the news is no better on the shop floor either, with a new study showing a wide disparity between the kind of behaviour that employees expect from their managers and what they actually experience.
According to the study, which focused on areas of management practice key to sustainable performance, 91% of employees responding said they wanted more help from their managers in analysing task problems, with only 47% actually getting any.
Bosses rated little better with regard to conflict resolution skills, with 80% of people wishing their bosses would take an active role in settling disputes, but fewer than half feeling this was likely to happen. A similar pattern emerged between employees who wished their managers would own up to their mistakes more readily and those who felt their bosses would actually do so.
Despite these failings in managerial behaviour, it wasn't all bad news. The survey found that 68% of people still have high or very high levels of trust in their managers, suggesting that we are willing to forgive some of our bosses' shortcomings as long as we feel they are doing a good job in general.
Does this sound like your boss? Does he or she disappear at the first sign of a problem, leaving you to sort it out for yourselves? Or are a few individual management failings forgivable so long as the bigger picture remains rosy?
