cover image Your Boss is Not Your Mother: Creating Autonomy, Respect, and Success at Work

Your Boss is Not Your Mother: Creating Autonomy, Respect, and Success at Work

Brian DesRoches. William Morrow & Company, $21 (217pp) ISBN 978-0-688-11763-4

Seattle family therapist and management consultant DesRoches here applies ``the dynamic, proven principles of family systems therapy'' to the workplace. Identifying through case histories such family role models as the superachiever, victim, martyr, rebel, rescuer and oppressor, the author shows how these patterns can carry over into adult life and, thus, to workplaces, which ``function just like families.'' Says one client: ``In every job I've had, I've ended up feeling like a bad kid.'' Others feel frustrated that they help out their peers but get none of the credit for results. The author offers a self-analysis program of questionnaires and diagrams for facing up to workplace realities: covert power games, hidden management agendas or ruthless rivalry, for example, involving sarcasm, innuendos, ``emotional bribery'' and so on. DesRoches makes no claim to easy problem solving, but his therapeutic approach combined with experience gleaned from actual business settings should improve readers' understanding of problems on the job. (Feb.)