This is the first episode of Unmanaged The Podcast. (00:00:01): Hi, I’m Elizabeth. (00:00:02): Welcome to Unmanaged Workplace Strategy. (00:00:05): This is going to be a little bit of a longer episode. (00:00:07): I’m testing out kind of moving to longer form podcasts, (00:00:11): so please let me know what you think after this episode. (00:00:15): I’d love to hear from you. (00:00:18): Today I want to tell you about a version of myself that I’m not embarrassed about anymore. (00:00:24): I’m not embarrassed to talk about it, (00:00:26): but it was a version of me that I spent a really long time not understanding. (00:00:32): And I’ll start my story here. (00:00:35): I was an HR director at a new organization. (00:00:37): The interviews had gone really well. (00:00:40): My boss seemed funny and kind. (00:00:44): My colleagues seemed affable and kind. (00:00:48): It was an organization that had been through a lot. (00:00:53): And from my interviews, what I heard was, we’re turning over a new leaf. (00:00:58): We want you to help drive the accountability, (00:01:00): the management, (00:01:02): training, (00:01:02): and all of that so that we can change the culture. (00:01:06): And I’m all up for a good transformation. (00:01:10): That’s one of my favorite things to do. (00:01:13): So I was all in on that. (00:01:17): Then a few months in, (00:01:21): I was in a meeting with my boss and we were just talking about HR stuff and another (00:01:26): director walked in and they were talking and then suddenly they were both yelling (00:01:33): and my boss was like slamming his hand on the table and the other guy was yelling (00:01:41): and he was yelling and then suddenly the other director said okay thanks and he (00:01:47): turned around and he walked out (00:01:50): and my boss turned back to me and said okay where were we like just like nothing (00:01:55): had ever happened I need a little bit more transition time than that to go from (00:02:02): yelling to regular conversation it was unbelievable I had never seen anything like (00:02:10): that before um (00:02:13): So it was off and I started noticing other things were off but I kept justifying (00:02:19): them so another time he told me how much he hated a specific employee and I thought (00:02:27): that is strange that he uses the word hate and that he says it so without regret I (00:02:38): hate this person and (00:02:42): I justified it in my head by saying, okay, well, I’m building trust with him. (00:02:47): So maybe this means that I can trust him. (00:02:53): Maybe this means that he trusts me. (00:02:54): And why I thought that justified it, I don’t know. (00:02:59): But that’s what I did in my head. (00:03:03): So another time he... (00:03:08): I was walking out to my car and he caught up with me and he was asking me about a (00:03:13): specific situation that had happened that day. (00:03:16): And I said, oh, you know, better late than never. (00:03:18): I don’t know. (00:03:19): It was something like that. (00:03:22): And he said, I am pissed. (00:03:25): And it was just the way he said it with a stoic face. (00:03:29): And, you know, I (00:03:33): Often try to break tension with humor. (00:03:35): And so I think I cracked some kind of a stupid joke. (00:03:38): Anyways, he didn’t say anything in return. (00:03:42): He just walked to his car and drove off. (00:03:46): Anyways, I started dreading his moods. (00:03:49): I never knew what version of him I was going to get. (00:03:52): Like, (00:03:53): are you going to be the brainstorming version or the two word answer version or the (00:03:57): volatile one? (00:03:59): The one that is silent and you just walk away. (00:04:01): Like, which one are you today? (00:04:05): So I overprepared. (00:04:07): I brought data. (00:04:08): I brought plans. (00:04:09): I brought structure. (00:04:10): And he would look at my work and literally toss it aside and tell me that I only (00:04:17): wanted to do the fun stuff. (00:04:20): And I’d heard him say that about other female leaders. (00:04:22): And to be clear, I don’t know that this is a gendered comment, but (00:04:26): And that was the only context in which I heard it. (00:04:30): He actually drew me a diagram to explain to me how I only wanted to do the fun stuff. (00:04:38): So he had three columns like ideas, approval slash implementation, and then fun stuff. (00:04:47): And he put this X in the fun stuff column and was like, this is where you want to start. (00:04:55): And he’s like, (00:04:56): you have to go all the way back to the beginning And I was like, (00:05:00): that’s what I gave you That’s what I handed you I handed you the plans, (00:05:06): the structure The risk analysis I handed that to you And it didn’t move him at all (00:05:17): He was just like, (00:05:19): you know, (00:05:19): you don’t get to work on the fun stuff yet Go back (00:05:23): and create a better, you know, time off request form or something like that. (00:05:28): Like he wanted me to do the manual work, even though I had a team that was doing it. (00:05:37): He felt that I should be completely entrenched in that. (00:05:41): So, okay. (00:05:43): But I started getting just really... (00:05:46): Nervous around him. (00:05:47): I would see him in the hallway and if he scowled, (00:05:49): then I would spin out and try to figure out what I did to cause it. (00:05:55): Every time I executed something and it got any type of negative feedback or (00:06:00): anything like that, (00:06:01): which is always standard, (00:06:02): right? (00:06:02): You’re always going to get feedback from people who don’t agree with what you did (00:06:06): and you can use that as data, (00:06:09): right? (00:06:09): And improve it and move forward. (00:06:11): But every time something happened like that, he would (00:06:14): Come and talk to me and say, remember when I told you this wasn’t going to work? (00:06:18): And look what happened. (00:06:22): Excuse me. (00:06:24): He would say, like, remember when you said this was a great idea and now we have this mess? (00:06:31): And it was always about one or two little things that didn’t go the way I had planned. (00:06:36): Things that were recoverable, easy to adjust to because things change. (00:06:43): Sorry I got a tickle in my throat there but anyways every single time I got (00:06:48): something negative feedback or even just like ways you could improve this he (00:06:53): decided that that meant that it was a failure and that he had been right all along. (00:06:59): So like a frog in boiling water I was slowly being destroyed by my environment (00:07:06): And the moment I finally noticed it was when I was in my office. (00:07:12): My boss had come to talk to me about something. (00:07:14): The door was shut, and he was pacing back and forth in front of the door. (00:07:18): Now, for anyone who’s been through traumatic experiences, that may trigger you. (00:07:23): It certainly triggered me. (00:07:26): Inside of me, I was screaming, I can’t get out. (00:07:30): Like, I need a path to exit. (00:07:34): But I couldn’t say anything because he was yelling and he was sneering at me, (00:07:38): which is something that I hadn’t experienced ever in a professional workplace. (00:07:43): But he actually said to me, blah, blah, blah, and then some other things. (00:07:49): But I had never experienced that in a workplace. (00:07:56): Was totally shocked and then he I asked him to leave and he yelled and sneered and (00:08:02): then slammed the door behind himself and that’s when I finally said to myself I (00:08:09): don’t think this is normal but by that point I was crying every day like people (00:08:16): would walk into my office and say how are you and I almost couldn’t stop myself (00:08:21): from crying like that’s how (00:08:24): It was constant brain fog. (00:08:27): I would go home, (00:08:28): maybe grab some crackers to eat for dinner and go straight to bed because I (00:08:33): couldn’t actually handle talking to my husband or anything else. (00:08:40): It was just too much. (00:08:44): It wasn’t until I left many months later that I could start to see what had (00:08:50): actually been happening. (00:08:52): And a really interesting thing happened when I left is my former colleagues started (00:08:57): reaching out and sharing their own experiences in the same workplace. (00:09:03): And hearing someone else’s story, (00:09:06): I started seeing the patterns that I had completely missed while I was inside of (00:09:12): that workplace. (00:09:13): The manipulation, the gaslighting, the way information had been used as a weapon. (00:09:21): I started kind of zooming out and looking at this as a big Jenga puzzle, (00:09:29): pulling out the bad pieces, (00:09:30): pulling out the noise, (00:09:31): right? (00:09:32): And what was left standing was the truth of what had happened. (00:09:38): And at the top of it was my competency, (00:09:41): my skills, (00:09:42): my track record, (00:09:43): the thank you notes from employees that I’d helped through hard situations, (00:09:48): the managers (00:09:49): who told me that their conversation with an employee was a success because of the (00:09:54): work that we had done together prior to the conversation. (00:10:00): I hadn’t failed, and the problem wasn’t my competence. (00:10:04): It was that I kept delivering messages that they didn’t want to hear. (00:10:10): So as an HR director, it’s my job to bring (00:10:15): Risk, People Risk Situations up, right? (00:10:18): And let them know, hey, this is a risk that is being created in this area. (00:10:22): You may want to do something about it. (00:10:25): And so I would do that as part of my job. (00:10:28): But whenever I had to report something about one of the executives, (00:10:34): my boss would take it personally, (00:10:38): like I had just called him a na
