Battle Of the Words: Leader Takes On Boss


Let me open the write-up admitting that I mostly have had great bosses in my career. And I consider myself lucky for that.

Colloquially, how would one ask someone who's your superior at job?
Do we first throw a probe saying, "Hey, do you have a boss at job or a leader?"
And then based on answer frame the actual question?

No. We simply ask, "Who's your boss?"

We know that content creation is bread and butter for many people, and hence while reading on internet, one should be conscious and careful. Be extra careful with decorative similes and metaphors which are often coated with exaggeration to play with reader's psychology. Roughly every one out of ten people using internet write something, someday and join the modern authors fraternity.  I appreciate the volume of talent.

It's Massive!!!

But inevitably it has resulted in a dense smog of pseudo-content spread over internet. Some popular trends among these authors are:
  • Playing with words
  • Coining new terms
  • Proposing pseudo-hypotheses
  • Hammering the topics on readers
  • Make mountain out of molehill
There are serious and severe effects of this, like it can fill your brains with loads of garbage without you realizing it. Sometimes notions are simply forced onto readers. One example of the effect is persuasion into replacing few words from your vocabulary with some jazzy and fuzzy words.

Boss vs. Leader is one of such topic I am highlighting today, which is chewed and squeezed a lot. According to their proposition for boss-leader pair, if I want to attach any positive attribute to my superior in office, I should use the nobler word leader or else I score less marks in advanced English grammar.  For e.g. following sentences have grave grammatical mistakes:
  • Thank heavens, I have a great boss at job!
  • Her boss offered her a promotion
  • My boss has crystal clear priorities.
Poor word boss for no fault of its, has been demeaned and decried a lot. I find this imposed identification with words really funny and sometimes irritating. Among the people around us at workplace:
  • A colleague is a colleague
  • A peer is a peer
  • A subordinate is a subordinate
  • Similarly, a boss is a boss
What's the problem guys? Don't be so selectively cruel to words. Or are you one of those lucky guys who have:
  • La Leagues and not colleagues
  • Seers and not peers
  • Surrogates and not subordinates
Because if one wants to play word games then limits can be stretched.

Same is the case with the hackneyed saying:

People don't leave companies, they leave managers.

For god sake, don't give me that $%^&. No one needs to leave company to leave a manager, unless one has tried working under all the managers in company. If you offer double the package on a job switch, a person will leave even the girlfriend/boyfriend behind without batting an eyelid and move\relocate to new place. Maybe these quotable quotes are from historic times when human values and ethics were really on a high.

The simple point they are trying to make at the expense of word 'BOSS' is:
  • Some bosses are good leaders some are not
  • Some bosses are good managers some are not
  • Some bosses are visionary some are not
  • Some bosses are good human beings some are not
Probability theory, as simple as that.  But no, simple is no good for them. They will try and confuse reader with mixing two separate words boss(a noun) and boss(a verb) with a skewed(read as screwed) usage.

Leaders are not coming from Mars as some angelic, toothless character as these guys present. A leader cannot be a successful leader if he can't boss at times and pronounce authority. For any organization, it is required to have a controlled, cultured and an efficient environment and so if a boss(a noun) cannot boss(a verb) when it is required, the results are not favorable.

To conclude, I want to assert that, one may not be a good leader, manager, visionary but he/she still can be a good boss in given time, role, place and situation. So I raise a toast, to all great bosses around the world,

"Dear bosses, You guys rock!"



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