Sick of being criticised at work all the time

[barrykite]

I had a client call today and my newish boss asked to be included. He’s trying to get up to speed with things and understand how we / his team work.

I am also reasonably new at the company (5 months).

I am also still learning every day at my job and don’t consider myself an expert yet. I have two other colleagues who also started at the same time as me and we are in a similar boat. I have the most experience out of the three of us.

anyway my manager really slated my performance today on the call and also on the entire process that I’ve had with this client. My manager has followed along and we’ve been working on it together - again, he’s doing this with all three of us to enable him to get up to speed / understand where any gaps in our process and I guess our performance are.

anyway, it just felt a bit uncalled for. I thought the call went quite well actually overall. It was one of those more difficult calls where the client had asked for something we can’t really deliver and I came up with other solutions. I guess if I really think about it, I could have framed the solutions a bit stronger. But to then slate the entirety of the engagement, was just a bit too much I thought.

and it’s not the first time, I feel like everting I’m doing is being investigated. From how I’m doing things, to how many things I’m doing. It doesn’t feel nice or fun at all and it’s getting me down.

I work in a business development role in tech, if that helps. I’ve been doing this for 10 plus years, but have never felt quite as criticised and under the microscope before.

I can’t leave, so I just need to stick it out, but it’s really getting me down.

If you work for a business, OP, does your manager also have a manager that you can speak to about his attitude towards you?

Putting down team members is demoralising, and could lead to MH issues or people leaving. Has he been the same with others in your work team, just with women, etc.?

If he's new, he might still be on probation...

My manager is famous for being hard work. I spoke to another, higher up, member of staff. She could not believe her ears at what I was telling her, and asked why nobody else on our team had said anything. Anyway, HR got involved and he would have been sacked, had anyone else interviewed been brave enough to back me up. Although we didn't succeed that time, his new manager keeps tabs on our team, and others are coming forwards with issues with our manager.

Good luck!

I think your first action should be to ask your manager for proper constructive feedback as you haven’t mentioned this , just that you were slated - you have acknowledged yourself you could have framed the proposed solutions more strongly so perhaps there are other areas which you might do differently next time - spend a little time reflecting and write down your version - the good elements and the areas you feel could have been better so you have a clear view in your mind about the client meeting and also the feedback you received post the meeting so you don’t go blank when speaking to their manager / HR. You need to understand what the issues are before going to their boss / HR as you need to provide factual evidence and context. As a manager myself someone coming to me saying someone was horrible / awful doesn’t help with managing the individual and dealing with the issue - these words are subjective without context.

If you can say they were horrible / awful because all the feedback they gave me was you handled the call poorly and called me useless I can do something with that or they were horrible / awful because they gave me the following feedback 1) xxxx 2)zzzzz 3) ddddd. Which you disagreed with because you actually did 1) ddd. 2) ssss 3)zzzz

The process you describe is not unusual in a sales relate role i.e. managers sitting in / observing but it’s how the feedback / coaching and discussion post the meetings is conducted is important and it sounds like your manager might need some coaching of his own to develop their own skills so perfectly valid to discuss with their line manager.

@Aligirlbearthanks for your comment.

the reason I perceived it as a ‘ slating ‘ is because it was a pretty long rant.

when manager started, his feedback was quite fair, kind of like 2 good points and one bad point or sometimes - no bad points.

as time is going on and manger is also coming under increased pressure, he’s now starting to go off on one. Which is what he did in the feedback after the call we had.

he didn’t say ‘ this was good - point 1 and 2 ‘ ‘ this could be improved - point 1 and 2 ‘..

he went straight in : ‘ well this wasn’t framed well, you should have said it like this ‘ ‘ and overall the process here has been a bit of a mess from the start really. We shouldn’t have done this and this and this and this ‘.

he just went off on one. And I actually completely disagree with everything he said- except that I could have framed the part of the call better he referred to. The rest of the rant, I don’t agree with and it was disheartening and not necessary.

anyway I am not going to complain to anyone about it. I’m just increasingly feeling like the onus is very much on my incompetence and not the actual situation we find ourselves in. There are many factors that contribute to our success, but of course it’s always our performance that’s the issue- not the other MASSIVE factors.