10 Bosses Who Proved Good Leadership Starts With How You Treat People

I was eight months pregnant when I went into labor at work at a financial-services office in Phoenix. A week earlier, I’d had a false alarm, and my boss John joked that I should schedule my labor around meetings. So this time he rolled his eyes and told me to stay for the 1 PM meeting first because “important clients can’t wait.” Afraid I’d lose my job, I stayed. The meeting was a quarterly presentation with three clients joining on Microsoft Teams. It lasted two hours. My daughter was born that evening at 7:42 p.m.
I reported John to HR, and he got suspended. When I came back from maternity leave 12 weeks later, my coworkers were furious. They said I overreacted and almost ruined his career.
There was also Margaret, a senior coworker who had barely spoken to me in five years. She would look at me over her glasses whenever I walked by. She’d been with the company for nearly 9 years and sat two rows of cubicles away from me.
What I didn’t know was that John had emailed the whole office while I was in labor, complaining about my “lack of commitment” and hinting I was using my pregnancy to get out of work. Most of my colleagues had laughed. HR told me they weren’t on that email. During the investigation, someone forwarded it to them with a note: “This is unacceptable.” It was Margaret.
When I thanked her, she said, “I didn’t do it for you. I did it because he had it coming.”

My manager, Nicole, was disliked and avoided by everyone at the insurance company where we worked in Minneapolis. She never said good morning to anyone. People called her stuck-up and talked about her behind her back. I felt bad, so I sat with her at lunch in the small cafeteria on the building’s fourth floor. Someone behind me muttered, “Ice queen number two.” I turned around and knocked my drink all over Nicole. I apologized over and over, but she just hissed, “Get out of my sight.” Everyone laughed. I left, mortified.
After that, the gossip turned to me. Tasks started piling up on my desk, many sent straight from upper management without going through Nicole. One Friday alone, I received three end-of-day reports and a 60-page client file that normally would have been split between several people. I got blamed for mistakes I didn’t make. I was convinced she was getting back at me for that lunch.
Then I found a note from her on my desk: “Start packing. You have 2 weeks.”
Without this job, I couldn’t pay for Mom’s surgery, so I stormed over to her desk. She looked at me sternly. “Management wants to cut staff without paying severance. They’re trying to make people quit, and you’re the newest. You’re leaving either way, but you’re leaving with severance. I’ve made sure of it.”
She’d kept records of every dumped assignment and false accusation, including copies of emails, task timestamps, and corrections she had saved in a folder, and told executives it looked like forced resignation. They backed down and laid me off properly, with severance. She’d even recommended me to an acquaintance who was hiring at a medical-software company across town.
I apologized for doubting her. She shrugged. “I snapped at you so they’d think you weren’t on my side. They were looking for any excuse to use against you.”
Her acquaintance hired me a month later, and I’ve been there ever since. Nicole and I lost touch years ago, and I think she never wanted to be thanked anyway. But thank you, Nicole.

I used to work as a pet groomer at a small salon outside Denver. My boss, Diane, barely talked to me. She usually left sticky notes on my table like “nails too long.”
One day we had two golden retrievers in, both named Ruby. One was Ruby Henderson and the other was Ruby Parker, but at the time our kennel cards only listed first names. One was getting a bath and brush-out. The other was getting shaved down because her family was going on a trip with sticker bushes and ticks.
I shaved the wrong dog.
Diane came in, looked at the dog, gave me this long cold stare, and left without saying anything. A few minutes later there was a note on my table: “Do the other Ruby. Stay in the back.”
I was sure I was getting fired. I could hear the owner yelling up front, and then Diane talking, and then everything stopped.
After closing, she called me into her office. Turns out she told the owner it was her fault for booking two Rubies with no last names. She refunded the owner the $85 grooming charge and offered free grooms until the coat grew back. She kept me in the back so he wouldn’t go off on me.
The next day, all the kennel cards had the owners’ last names and what needed to be done on them written in thick black Sharpie.

I started a new job at a property-management company in Raleigh in July. I’m not using this as an excuse, but I’d just left my cruel husband of almost ten years and moved 900 miles away with my kids. We were living in a two-bedroom apartment with most of our belongings still in cardboard boxes. By October, I’d already missed a lot of days. My son got hurt, then my babysitter ended up in the hospital, then my youngest got sick with a fever that kept her out of daycare for four days.
Every time I texted my boss, Julie, she’d reply with two words: “Noted. Okay.” She never brought it up at work. She never smiled at me either.
Then she called me into her office and closed the door. I figured that was it for me.
She slid a paper across the desk and said, “Single moms are a risk. That’s what HR told me when I hired you.” I felt sick.
“I told them they were wrong. Don’t make me a liar.”
The paper was a new schedule with Mondays from home and a later 9:30 a.m. start for daycare drop-offs. Turns out she’d also been covering some of my shifts and told HR not to count my absences during probation.
“I did it alone too,” she added. “Two kids.”

I just helped my boss sell his commercial printing company. He was already wealthy, and now he’s extremely wealthy.
The day after the deal closed, his assistant called me to her office. I knew how this usually goes. New owners come in, and people like me get let go. My wife and I had just bought our first house with a 30-year mortgage and were saving up to start a family. We’d spent most of our savings on the down payment, and a new furnace after the old one broke down two weeks after closing. I walked in already doing the math on how long our savings would last.
She shut the door behind me and told me that by the end of the day, I’d get a $10,000 transfer. A personal gift from him, to thank me for my years of work and for helping sell the company. I had worked there for seven years and spent the final three months helping organize contracts and financial records for the sale.
I’ve never had much money in my life. I teared up right there in her office.
That money means my wife and I don’t have to wait anymore. We can start trying for a baby pretty much now.

My boss goes the extra mile with the employees.
We had a guy who suddenly disappeared. My boss tracked him down and found out he was in the hospital. He fell and hit his head on cement. He couldn’t work for months. My boss kept him on payroll until he could work again. It was almost a year, and the guy got a check each week. Once he was working, he paid my boss a small amount each week (like $75) to pay off the loan. He would have been homeless if my boss hadn’t done that.
It backfired on my boss because eventually he had to fire the guy, with him still owing my boss $30k. I think my boss would still do something like that, but he’d probably be way more cautious.
We’re seasonal, but last year he kept a guy on payroll during the winter to help the guy get a mortgage and buy a house. He’s a genuinely good person.

In my first big job (IT intern for a large manufacturing company), I worked for probably the best boss I’ve ever had. I lived over a “mountain.” The travel time over the mountain was very inconsistent. One time, I was late every day for one week. Mind you, I stayed late every day to make sure I hit my required hours, and I was never more than 5–10 minutes late.
My boss’s boss brought me into the office to fire me, but my direct boss and the rest of the team threatened to quit if she fired me.
She lasted another year before she thankfully moved, and both my boss and I moved up.

Years ago, I got the call that my father had passed. I went over to my boss, who was one of the owners of the company, and told him the news and that I wouldn’t be back for a few days. His immediate and honest reaction was, “That’s terrible! Of course, you just go and don’t worry about it, but come to see me in my office before you leave today.”
I went to his office before leaving, and he gave me his condolences and then told me, “I know we have 3 days of grievance leave, but you take whatever time you need, and we’ll still pay you.”
Then he handed me a corporate credit card and said, “Take this with you, not for the basic expenses, but just to help with anything unexpected while you’re gone.”

I have been working so incredibly hard at my job this past year, and I’ve never been sure whether I lived up to my boss’ expectations. He’s very busy and pretty reserved, so he hasn’t given me much feedback, positive or negative. I’ll be moving on in a few short weeks, and I asked him to write me a recommendation.
He just emailed me a copy, and it blew me away. He said he and my coworkers knew they could count on me for anything, and that my “positive attitude” made a “lasting impact on the community.” He listed some very specific examples that showed he has recognized my effort all along. I started crying. It’s so nice to feel appreciated. :)

I started this job last May and had to move out of state for it. I don’t know anyone and haven’t been able to meet many people. My girlfriend and I are also doing long-distance because of this job. So, needless to say, life has been hard being alone a lot of the time. There are a lot of entitled people who work in my building, so when they ask for things from me, it usually is followed by “This looks terrible” or “Can you hurry up and do what I asked you to?” You get the idea.
So when my boss came into my office and said, “I know it’s been hard for you, but I want you to know you’re doing very well and I’m proud of you,” believe me, I almost broke down.
It definitely gave me some hope that was starting to fade, and I feel more motivated to keep going.