Dare to piss people off

To be a successful pointy haired boss, you have to be willing to step on people, use your employees, and plain piss people off. It's just par for the course to be an effective leader.

"Trying to get everyone to like you is a sign of mediocrity." -- Colin Powell

The first thing you have to realize to be a successful pointy haired boss is that your employees don't have to like you. If you're trying to be on friendly terms with all your employees, you're not being an effective boss. You're letting your employees control your actions, which is not the way the boss-employee relationship is supposed to work. As boss, you have to call the shots. You employees are probably not going to like most of your decisions because it means they have to work. If your employees actively dislike you, it's a sign that you're being effective at getting their lazy butts into gear to get things done.

"If you are really effective at what you do, 95% of the things said about you will be negative." -- Scott Boras

Remember that as a boss, you are a leader and leading from the front. The losers watching you from behind are jealous and will try to drag you down. Negativity is to be expected. You have to have supreme confidence that what you're doing is right in order to effectively boss your employees around. If they have negative feelings towards you, so be it. There's a reason that they are just worker grunts and you're the head honcho.