James, I hear you. I don't think we're that far apart on this, but I do see it a bit differently. I know those kinds of managers exist, I just think they are a smaller percentage compared to the ones who don't know how to manage!

I've never had the perfect boss or client. Sometimes they have strengths that offset the flaws. Sometimes the team makes up for a bad boss, or perhaps the benefits do. Same with true customers. For the short term my stance is do what I have to to do to pay the bills, but mid to long term if it's not working as an employee or consultant, then I make a change. Over the years I've grown to understand that changing is no guarantee of better, only different - but hopefully better!

It's ok to fire a customer. If you're going to keep a customer then you have to figure out what matters to them. For some it's never being late. For others it might be filling out the TPS report correctly. Then you do the things that makes the customer happy, even if you think it's less important than they do.

It's mildly transformational. Too often boss/employee relationship is close to parent/child, wrong paradigm. What I'm trying to see/coach to is changing the view from the employee perspective, removing the victim aspect, and maybe trying to change the perspective.

It's also, so far at least, not a simple topic, hard to tackle in small bites, hard to do in big bites too!