BLOG – Part One
Hi, I’m Susan and, over the past year, I’ve navigated some of the toughest professional challenges I’ve ever had to face. It actually started several years previously and looking back the red flags were there, clear as day, but I missed them – perhaps because I didn’t want to see. I’m sharing my story with you now, with all the clarity that hindsight provides, hoping you might spot what I didn’t, should you ever find yourself in a similar situation and avoid the pitfalls I encountered. It really has been a journey, and it’s not over yet…
…so, a little bit about me – to set the scene if you like. I’m 56 years old, university educated, and I’ve worked all my adult life, always within the charity ‘third sector’. My training was in wildlife and conservation and for much of the time I have worked in that field. I stayed with my first employer for 26 years, albeit in a number of very different roles, moving over organically into communications and training during that time. In truth, I probably would have stayed there indefinitely but these days, of course, it’s almost impossible to have career progression in one small organisation. Dead Man’s Shoes it is. I’d gone as far as I could, and I was becoming bored.
When another conservation charity approached me with the temptation of a Communications Officer role I jumped at the chance and off I went. I learned a lot – jack of all trade and master of none – as I was single-handedly the entire comms and marketing department! I had two great years but, sadly, I was then made redundant. It happens to a lot of us during our career and, let’s face it – shock though it is – it can open new opportunities or inform a change of direction.
I tackled this step along my career path with a positive approach, and within three months I had secured a new job as a Senior Media Officer. It should have been the beginning of a new chapter for me: a pay rise, more responsibility and a perfect chance for me to throw myself into an area of comms that I had only really dipped my toes into before. From the start I knew I didn’t want this to be my ‘forever’ role, as a media-only role was my least favourite part of the wider communications industry, but I looked forward to learning what I could and hopefully having successes, and a bit of fun, along the way.
Perhaps now is a good time to reveal a bit about my temperament and personality which will give you some explanation for how I reacted at each step along this journey. We all vary in our temperaments, and they explain a lot about how we deal with the challenges we meet in life and work. If you are reading this and recognise yourself in what follows though, then hopefully this will have been a useful exercise for me and will help you to recognise and navigate through any sticky time in your life.
Unflappable, steady and sensible. There. It’s out. I’m not wildly ambitious, I just want to do a good job. I care. And caring definitely helps when working in the third sector because you certainly don’t do it for a vast salary! You do it because you believe in what the charity stands for. It does mean, though, that when things aren’t going so well you tend to take it personally.
If the task I’m working on is not brilliant, I believe it must be my fault. Some call it Imposter Syndrome, and for me any less-than-ideal situation I will almost inevitably take on board as my own fault. I’m old enough and experienced enough to have confidence in what I do and the quality of my work on some levels, but in others I lack confidence, its lurking there under the surface all the time, bubbling away. And I’m not one to blame other people either. When other’s work is below par it would be better if I did, but I don’t and therein lies one of the reasons this sad tale got to the point it did.
And so, to details. I was employed as a Senior Media Officer for an animal charity. I started as a member of a small, established team, five people being directly line-managed by one of the directors. My role had been empty for almost a year and I kept being told how brilliant my predecessor was. It was early in the year, and that year was 2020 so you can probably guess what came next in this tale – Covid. I had only been at work for a few short weeks when the first lockdown happened and we all found ourselves working from home. I had everything set up and we discovered as a team we worked well from home, in that novel environment of Zoom – and then Teams – calls.
There were lots of meetings with my colleagues and, at least professionally, everything seemed to be going well. As I settled into the job the team were being told that we were all doing well, adapting to the challenges and producing good work. There were only two distant clouds on the horizon for me at that stage. I was aware that although I’d developed good professional relationships with my colleagues, there was none of that banter and natter that you get in an office, I didn’t get to know any of them outside of formal meetings and at that stage would not be able to call any of them friends or confidantes. Things are now changing for those who work remotely and, of course, there is much improvement but remember that we were sailing on uncharted waters at this point.
The other cloud was the growing realisation that my director was not an easy person to work with. It soon became apparent that she only wanted solutions. Problems and issues arise in any job and I’m actually pretty good at dealing with them, but she was not even available to bounce ideas off or discuss options, all she wanted was to see a problem dealt with. And of course, there will come a time when a situation needs to be escalated ‘up the food chain’. She was quick to point out errors but never gave any positive feedback and was also a micro-manager, albeit one who was very stressed and very short of time. An interesting combination! Again, I thought I’d do my best, learn what I could and then in due course move on, but when all the feedback you do get is negative you begin to question your own ability. The rot had already set in, even if I didn’t know it yet.
My six-month probation was fast approaching, and we had a rare face-to-face meeting – suitably socially distanced, of course. It was a really positive experience, starting with me being told that we didn’t really need this meeting as I’d surely realised that I’d easily passed my probation and was a valued member of the team. Wow, I hadn’t seen that one coming!
Every job has its ups and downs, it’s triumphs, disasters and periods of tedium. One of the key life lessons of being in the workforce is learning to deal with all of these states with equanimity, but how do you recognise when things get out of hand? Beyond what level of positive and negative should things be considered unacceptable? And when constant negativity is being thrown at you, should you always accept it, take it on board and move on?
Life and work returned to before and on we went. Things took a slight twist one day as I was working and my Teams chat ‘rang’. It was my director, and not a scheduled meeting either. She did occasionally call me, and I her, about things so there was nothing immediately unusual in that. But when I answered it was obvious that she was really angry about something and barely holding it in. She gave me a severe dressing down about something, which I will own I probably hadn’t got round to at that point, but even if it was justified, I felt her level of ire was somewhat out of sync with my supposed transgression. It all came as a bit of a shock to be honest, and I certainly didn’t have anything to push back with as it had come out of no-where and taken me by complete surprise. Worse yet, I was told that other members of staff had also complained about my work and this was serious.
To say I was knocked sideways would be an understatement! I was horrified, as you can imagine, and didn’t sleep well that night. But, as quickly as this had appeared on the scene, it disappeared and was never mentioned again. The next time she called me a day or so later she was lovely and friendly. Not a mention was made again of this failing.
It’s amazing what you will tolerate when things become normalised. There is real truth in that adage ‘familiarity breeds contempt’, and life working remotely returned to an isolated existence, working with my colleagues and sadly ever-so-rarely receiving another ‘boss-from-hell’ call from my director out of the blue, in a rage over something I had or hadn’t done. But it had become normal, and it was interspersed with much more time trundling along quite happily, getting stuff done and enjoying working with my team. Looking back this should have been my first big red flag, but the unusual working conditions meant I failed to recognise any of this.
RED FLAG 1 – Taking a less than ideal job. This could have worked when treated as I intended, but in combination with other red flags, this became a factor.
RED FLAG 2 – An erratic, unsupportive and negative line manager, with unexplained ‘rages’ during which you can do no right. Looking back this was a significant thing, the negativity eating into what confidence I had, in a job I was not 100% comfortable with.
The new ‘normal’ in place, I continued, seemingly able to counter the occasional unexpected negative moments by burying myself in my work, keeping my head down and doing my best. As Covid dragged on, we began to return to the office, and another big chance, and more red flags were on the horizon…
The second blog post will be posted next week.