Alexander Proud

Becoming a boss is a bit of a male rite of passage, says Alex Proud . “As a man, you probably assume it will happen immediately, but you seem to spend years and years slogging it out as a bottom feeder, before one day in your early or mid-ish 30s you get a middling promotion and suddenly your colleagues are your direct reports. It’s a crash course in relationship skills. You need to gain the respect and a degree of deference from previous drinking buddies and if you want them to listen to you, you need to separate business from pleasure and quit bitching about your own workload. You also learn that walking around saying “Who’s the boss?!” will get tired.