Working for a Human Tornado

There’s a certain kind of boss who defies the usual categories.

You can’t call them a micromanager because they’re never in one place long enough to micromanage. You can’t call them distant either, because they appear suddenly, energetically, in your doorway. Sometimes three times a day. Sometimes not once in weeks.

They live permanently at the intersection of charming and unmanageable.

They’re magnetic. They’re smart. And then they’re gone.
Usually mid-sentence.
Off to make something else happen. Somewhere else.

I’ve worked for that boss.

They’re the kind of leader who inspires loyalty not because they’re predictable or methodical, but because they’re real. Ideas don’t arrive one at a time. They arrive in clusters, like fireworks. Some are brilliant. Some are unworkable. And some you nod at politely and quietly hope they forget.

That’s also what makes working with this kind of boss uniquely demanding, in the best and worst ways.

You don’t want to let them down. You don’t want to be the person who clips their wings with timelines, budgets, or logic. You want to say yes. You want to keep up. But you also want to stay upright. And maybe, just maybe, finish one project before another one drops from the sky like a flaming javelin.

They talk fast. They think faster. And you’re pretty sure they’re having a completely different conversation in their head while they’re talking to you.

They don’t read emails.
They don’t answer calls.
They respond to text messages like they’re optional homework. Sometimes five hours later. Occasionally never.

Here’s what I’ve learned, not from management courses, but from survival

First, the doorway is their office.

Forget email. Go old school. They will not read your recap. They will not open your deck. If you need a decision, you catch them standing up, halfway to somewhere else. You summarize in thirty seconds. You underline the one thing that matters. You keep a Sharpie handy.

Second, make peace with the silence.

Stop interpreting it as disapproval or disengagement. It’s not. They’re probably somewhere else already, creating another tornado.

Third, learn to filter.

They’re full of big ideas. Great ones. Impossible ones. Ones that directly contradict the idea they had yesterday. Your job isn’t to execute all of them. It’s to spot the one that matters, pull it out of the whirlwind, and make it real.

Working for a human tornado means translating energy into action. Turning sparks into something that actually lands. You don’t get a map. You get momentum.

And yes, some days you feel lost. But you’re not lost. You’re just in a forest without a trail map.

Most importantly, you stop taking the chaos personally. It’s not about you. It never was.

If you’re honest, you don’t really want a different boss. You just want better shoes for the chase.