I am founder and CTO of a growing startup (Comufy) and I very much see where you are coming from.
The truth is that managing people is hard. Every person is different and you need to understand the personality of each one of your staff and it is not easy. The way you communicate with each person is a reflexion of your understanding of their personality and sometimes you get it wrong.
Suppose that you just realised that despite your best efforts, what you have been working on for the past year will not sell. Your board is maxing pressure on you and you decide to explore a new avenue. You now need to communicate the news to your employees, without making them panic, and to try to get them onboard to your new vision. Well I can tell you it's hard, and it happens! It certainly happened to us more than I wished for. You are going to have to be a politician! You need to minimise the failure while painting a beautiful and bright future ahead, even though you don't know yet whether it will work. This is probably what you refer to as "Bullshit".
And then that's just managing people. Managing a company is so much more than this. You make a ridiculous amount of decisions daily, and some of them will not please everybody. And some of them you will come back on.
Finally, remember that your boss is human too, and if he appears to be an arse at times, it is probably because he learned over time that being the best friend of his staff is a very bad idea. When a staff member is not performing, you are going to have to fix this. And pushing a staff member to improve is a lot easier done if that staff member thinks of you as his boss, and not his mate!
The truth is that managing people is hard. Every person is different and you need to understand the personality of each one of your staff and it is not easy. The way you communicate with each person is a reflexion of your understanding of their personality and sometimes you get it wrong.
Suppose that you just realised that despite your best efforts, what you have been working on for the past year will not sell. Your board is maxing pressure on you and you decide to explore a new avenue. You now need to communicate the news to your employees, without making them panic, and to try to get them onboard to your new vision. Well I can tell you it's hard, and it happens! It certainly happened to us more than I wished for. You are going to have to be a politician! You need to minimise the failure while painting a beautiful and bright future ahead, even though you don't know yet whether it will work. This is probably what you refer to as "Bullshit".
And then that's just managing people. Managing a company is so much more than this. You make a ridiculous amount of decisions daily, and some of them will not please everybody. And some of them you will come back on.
Finally, remember that your boss is human too, and if he appears to be an arse at times, it is probably because he learned over time that being the best friend of his staff is a very bad idea. When a staff member is not performing, you are going to have to fix this. And pushing a staff member to improve is a lot easier done if that staff member thinks of you as his boss, and not his mate!