When Managing Your Boss Becomes the Job

What happens when doing your job quietly turns into managing your boss’s ego?

In this Relationships at Work mini-episode, Russel Lolacher unpacks the real damage caused by bootlicking cultures — where praise is safer than honesty, silence is rewarded over truth, and employees spend more energy protecting leaders than improving the work.

Through a simple story and clear leadership reflections, this episode explores how fear-based leadership erodes psychological safety, engagement, trust, and culture — often without leaders even realizing it’s happening.

You’ll also hear three practical leadership shifts that help move teams from ego maintenance to mutual respect — and from performance to real relationships at work.

Because nobody was hired to be their boss’s emotional support human.

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Transcript

Welcome back to Relationships At Work – Your leadership guide to building workplace connections and avoiding blind spots..  I’m your host Russel Lolacher

I’m a communications and leadership nerd with a couple of decades of experience and a heap of curiosity on how we can make the workplace better. If you’re a leader trying to understand and improve your impact on work culture and the employee experience, you’re in the right place. 

This mini-episode is a quick and valuable bit of information to help your mindset for the week ahead.

Inspired by our R@W Note Newsletter, I’m passing on to you…

Damage of Bootlicking

I recently attended a friend's big birthday bash. Good times were had by all, and I got to meet a few new people.

One of them—we’ll call her Sara—told me about her new job, which she really enjoys. But there was one unexpected part of the role that she hated: feeling like she had to bootlick her boss.

The constant need to suck up was hurting her relationships and killing her interest in the job. Yeah, I don’t blame her.

Let’s be honest about something many have experienced but few talk about: that slow, creeping pressure to manage your boss’s emotions.

• To have to walk on egg shells before making a suggestion.
• To praise their ideas more than they deserve.
• To hide your full thoughts so you don’t rock the boat.

It’s not in your job description or performance metrics. But somehow, it becomes part of your day-to-day. You become a part-time ego manager—and it wears you down.

Why does this happen?​
Because some workplaces operate on fear, not trust.
Because some leaders haven’t done the work to separate feedback from failure.
Because conflict avoidance has been rebranded as “professionalism.”
And truthfully, because some egos are so fragile they require a cushion of constant affirmation.

So instead of speaking truth, employees learn to stay quiet.
Instead of bringing creativity, they bring safety.
Instead of leaning in, they back away.

And the worst part? It becomes normal. And it does damage. When ego-stroking becomes part of the job, here’s what suffers:

🔹 Psychological safety: No one wants to be the one who “says too much.” So ideas stay unspoken and problems stay unresolved.
🔹 Engagement: Employees stop trying to improve things when they realize the truth isn’t welcome.
🔹 Trust: If people are pretending everything’s fine to protect someone’s status, no one’s actually being honest.
🔹 Culture: Flattery gets rewarded. Challenge gets punished. And that’s a fast path to mediocrity.

This kind of culture isn’t sustainable. People burn out, disengage, or leave altogether—not because they can’t handle the job, but because they’re tired of managing their manager.

And here's the thing: I’m sure many leaders don’t even realize they’re creating this. They lack the training, the self-awareness, the situational awareness to recognize their negative impact.

The Question: How can we avoid being the bootlick boss or leader?

The Action(s):

• Reward Real Talk- If someone challenges your thinking, brings up something uncomfortable, or points out what could be better — say thank you. Mean it. Let people see that hard truths aren’t punished, they’re welcomed.Even if it stings a little. Especially if it stings a little.When you show that disagreement is safe, you open the door to better ideas, deeper engagement, and real trust.
• Shift from Knowing to Learning- Leaders don’t have to have all the answers. But they do need to ask the right questions. “What do you see that I don’t?” “What could we be missing here?” “Is there a better way?” When you lead with curiosity, not certainty, you model growth — and that gives everyone else permission to grow too.
• Separate Respect from Deference- If the only people who feel safe speaking up are your peers or higher-ups, then you've built a culture of deference, not dialogue. The most respected leaders aren’t the ones who demand loyalty — they’re the ones who earn it through consistency, fairness, and humility.

Let’s be clear: Sara shouldn’t need to manage her boss's emotions.
Sara shouldn’t have to buffer every idea to keep her leader comfortable. And Sara definitely shouldn’t have to trade in honesty for harmony.

If ego is at the center of our leadership, relationships aren't real. They are performances.

But when you build a culture where people feel safe to say or do the thing…
Where they can speak truth to power…
Where they know they’re valued for their perspective, not their flattery…
​
That’s when trust becomes more than a buzzword.
That’s when leadership actually means something. And Sara can go back to focusing on and loving her job.

Let’s stop normalizing ego maintenance. Let’s normalize mutual respect. Because nobody signed up to be an emotional support human for their boss.