The Boss Without Substance

Every workplace has one. The boss who walks into a meeting with great posture, polished words, and the uncanny ability to say absolutely nothing… with style.

They are fluent in corporate poetry - sentences strung together so elegantly that you almost forget no actual idea was communicated. Think:

• “Let’s take this offline and circle back when we have more visibility.”

• “We need to future-proof the scalability of our operating model.”

• “What’s the low-hanging fruit we can pick while boiling the ocean?”

The Boss without Substance is a master of performance. Some of their greatest hits include:

• Managing upwards like an Olympic sport - They can recite the CEO’s favorite talking points better than the CEO themselves. They know the CEO’s favorite buzzwords and sprinkle them into every sentence like seasoning.

• Confusing busyness with productivity - Their calendar is a Picasso of overlapping meetings, and their inbox has 12,000 unread emails. Surely, someone that busy must be important.

• Mistaking detail for depth - Why say something in two sentences when you can bury it under 20 slides?

• Taking credit with acrobatic grace - If the project succeeds, it was their “strategic vision.” If it fails, well… someone on the team dropped the ball.

• Mastering the art of presence - Need a decision? They’re in back-to-back calls. Need accountability? Suddenly, it’s a “team effort.” Need visibility with senior leadership? They appear like magic.

The thing about bosses without substance is that, for a while, they can fool people with optics. But eventually, teams notice. In the end, the Boss Without Substance is a lot like cotton candy at a fair: big, colorful, and impressive from afar. But once you take a bite, you realize it’s just air and sugar, leaving you with nothing but a sticky mess.