Four stories, head to head. You pick the winner.
None of the stories below is drawn from a specific member, client or submission, since our mailbox has not opened yet. That will change next month. Until then, we offer four bosses and ask you to choose the worst.
Below is the method our Cincinnati chapter applied. A bad boss is a repeated pattern that drains your money, standing or sleep, and that better performance on your side could not fix. Each case gets a cost attached, because the most damaging manager is the one whose behavior ends up costing the organization the most.
Option A. The Credit Converter
Nothing he says ever comes across as cutting. He just converts. Her analysis turns into "our thinking." An idea she offered in a meeting he skipped appears in his note to the CEO by Thursday, under his name. When she brings it up, he looks puzzled and a bit wounded: "We're a team." The cost: two promotion cycles where the committee could not point to a single thing she had accomplished, because all of it carried his name.
Option B. The Weather System
She is brilliant on Monday and dangerous by Wednesday, and no one knows which version has arrived until she walks through the door. The team keeps a private chat to warn one another and spends the first hour of each morning reading the room instead of the work. The damage here was a senior team in Covington that quit flagging problems, and that silence is why a $4 million forecast shortfall became a $4 million shock. Treat that figure as illustrative. The pattern itself is real.
Option C. The Sponsor Who Wasn't
Whenever they meet for a review in Blue Ash, he assures her that she is "next," and for three years she believes him. In year four a peer lets her know the role went to an outside hire, and that he sat on the panel and never once said her name. Per McKinsey and LeanIn's 2025 study, the promotion rate to manager runs 93 women for every 100 men. Support that never gets spoken aloud does not count as sponsorship. He is a delay.
Option D. The Twenty-Four-Hour Clock
His most pointed proposals arrive around 11:40 p.m. and expects a response before his 6 a.m. run. He never states the expectation, but he notices who replies. For two years she replies, until her doctor asks about her sleep. What it cost her in Hamilton was a medical scare, a career frozen on one job title far too long, and a phone she still glances at during dinner with her family.
What experienced executives recommend
Senior women who have lived through all four rank them differently than younger colleagues would. The Weather System is the most unsettling and the easiest to walk away from, since everyone can see it. The Clock does the most damage to health and is the simplest to stop, because the fix can be a single sentence: "I'm offline from 8 p.m. to 7 a.m. For anything urgent, call." The Credit Converter and the Sponsor Who Wasn't cost the most, because they are hidden from outsiders and courteous to your face. Only years later do you notice that nothing he promised ever became something real.
The verdict
The right answer hinges on the thing you decide to track. When the yardstick is income and tenure, the reserved colleagues come out ahead. When the question becomes which person you would caution a friend about first, pick the one who is loud. Women who have endured all four give the same answer: the most dangerous boss is the one you keep defending.
Vote
Pick A, B, C, or D and forward your answer to your chapter in Southwest Ohio. Results will go out in Ohio next month. If you have survived an experience like this, share it with us and change the names. The stories for next month's issue are yours to contribute.