When Your Boss Has the Emotional Regulation Skills of a Three-Year-Old

In a previous life, before transitioning into the work I do today, I spent several years working in the corporate world, including private equity and business consulting in Dubai.

Recently, I've been reflecting on some of my experiences during those years, particularly the behaviours I witnessed and was subjected to in the workplace.

And looking back now, with everything I understand about trauma, the nervous system and the psychology of human behaviour, I find it absolutely fucking astonishing what we've normalised in corporate environments.

Grown adults occupying senior leadership positions, throwing temper tantrums, screaming at their employees, humiliating them, and creating environments where people spend their working days walking on eggshells.

And somehow, we call this leadership.

When Your Workplace Becomes a Threat to Your Nervous System

If you walk into work wondering whether your boss is going to shout at you today...

If you're constantly monitoring their moods, rehearsing conversations before approaching them, avoiding confrontation because they’re so unpredictable, or living with the persistent fear that one mistake could cost you your job..

If you find yourself freezing when someone raises their voice, struggling to articulate yourself, apologising excessively, or becoming unusually agreeable to avoid conflict...

You’re not simply experiencing workplace stress, you are spending your working day in a survival response.

And here's where it gets particularly disturbing.

Many employees cannot afford to fight back. They're forced to tolerate these conditions out of necessity.

They have rent to pay. Families to support. Financial obligations. Perhaps no savings or alternative employment opportunities.

When confronting the person mistreating you could jeopardise your financial security, standing up for yourself is no longer simply a question of having stronger boundaries.

It becomes a question of survival.

What appears to be compliance is often just someone trying to make it through another month.

And here's what some of these bosses fundamentally fail to understand:

Your authority is conditional on the employment relationship. The intoxicating sense of superiority you derive from that hierarchy? That’s the illusion. It’s borrowed power you’ve mistaken for your own.

The Leadership Problem Nobody Wants to Address

And yet, what do we tell employees working under these conditions?

You need thicker skin.

Don't take it personally.

He's just under a lot of pressure.

That's how this industry works.

Why are employees expected to develop thicker skin instead of leaders being expected to develop emotional maturity?

To Those in Leadership Positions

If you cannot tolerate an employee making a mistake without humiliating them...

If you cannot communicate frustration without raising your voice...

If you respond to being challenged with intimidation, punishment, or retaliation...

If people are afraid to ask you questions because they cannot predict how you'll react...

You have a problem.

And your employees should not have to organise their nervous systems around it.

The more authority you have, the greater your responsibility to understand how your behaviour affects the people who depend on you.

Your employees should not have to become experts at regulating your emotions just to do their jobs.

You cannot expect people to bring their full intelligence into an environment where they're constantly preoccupied with protecting themselves from you.

And let's be clear.

Holding someone accountable is not the same as humiliating them.

Setting high standards is not the same as creating fear.

Being demanding is not the same as being a bully or abusive.

You can provide difficult feedback, address poor performance, and even terminate someone's employment when the circumstances warrant it.

None of these require you to shout, threaten, intimidate, dominate or degrade another human being.

And if an employee consistently struggles with something they haven't been adequately trained to do, perhaps the problem isn't their incompetence.

Perhaps it's your failure to lead.

Authority Is Not Ownership

Let's establish something fundamental.

Having authority over someone's work does not give you ownership over the person performing it.

An employment contract is an exchange of value. I provide my time, skills, and expertise in exchange for financial compensation.

I have not surrendered my dignity, my autonomy, or my right to be treated with respect.

Yet some employers behave as though paying someone's salary entitles them to exercise unlimited authority over that person's life.

Newsflash you power-drunk little tyrant: You’re paying for someone's professional contribution. You haven't purchased the human being.

Fear Creates Compliance. Not Psychological Safety.

But this isn't just about individual bosses who lack emotional maturity. It's also about the organisational cultures that enable, excuse, and sometimes reward their behaviour.

The domination-based patriarchal model of leadership, built on control, subordination, and the concentration of power at the top, is coming to its end.

A model in which those at the top use their authority to extract as much as possible from those beneath them, often at the expense of their wellbeing. The days where power is mistaken for superiority, intimidation for strength, and obedience for respect are numbered.

There is another way of holding power.

In Matrifocal Leadership, authority exists in service of the wellbeing and prosperity of the collective.

In domination-based leadership, the collective exists to serve those in power. In matrifocal leadership, those in power exist to serve the collective.

This doesn't mean abandoning hierarchy, accountability, performance expectations, or profitability. It means understanding that leadership carries responsibility, not entitlement.

That those in positions of authority are responsible for creating conditions in which people can perform, contribute, develop, and thrive.

And that a company's success should not be measured solely by how much wealth it generates for those at the top, but also by the conditions under which that wealth is created.

Emotional Maturity Is a Leadership Competency

We assess executives on their financial performance, strategic thinking, and ability to generate results.

But what about their capacity to regulate their emotions, manage conflict, exercise authority responsibly, and create psychological safety?

Emotional maturity should be a prerequisite for leadership, not an optional personal development exercise.

And organisations need to stop treating abusive behaviour as an unfortunate personality trait they're willing to overlook as long as the numbers look good.

That means assessing leadership conduct, establishing safe ways for employees to report mistreatment, and holding executives accountable when they abuse their authority.

Because here's the thing.

If your organisation is profitable because your employees are too afraid to say no, too financially vulnerable to leave, or too intimidated to challenge you, that's not evidence of exceptional leadership.

That's evidence of how much you can extract from people when you have power over their livelihoods.

Congratulations on your record profits.

Now tell me how many people had to sacrifice their psychological wellbeing to make you look like a genius.

Handan Darici