I started a new job a few months ago at the head office of a big retailer. I work in a department that covers two separate but related product lines - let’s say Home and Garden. I work on Garden.
There was nobody covering my role for Garden when I started, with the Home team having to cover the work, so they were very keen to hand things over. My training was mostly done by someone at my level in the Home team, the task having been delegated by his manager. He’s seen as a bit of a rising star, and I picked things up very quickly, so it’s potentially a bit of a feather in his cap.
The company has a very strong “shout about your success” culture (i.e. make sure management knows you’re working hard and doing well). My colleague really talked me up over the first couple of months - emails to the whole department praising how quickly I’d got to grips with things, highlighting how good my results were and so on. I get that this was good for him as it implied that he was a good trainer, but I genuinely believed he was being supportive too.
However, something has begun to change over the last month or so. He’s been saying things that, on paper, look helpful, but which in reality are critical and undermine me. For example, I’ve become more comfortable sharing my own results and have highlighted a couple of strongly performing campaigns to the wider team. His responses are positioned as positive, but there’s always a “but” or a sting in the tail. He’ll say something like “Brilliant, Story! Just make sure you have checked with the Electronics team that they’re happy for you to target their customers” or “Fantastic! Just bear in mind that you’ll need to step up recipient numbers in July, so keep your eye on the unsubscribe rate”. This is stuff I learned in my first couple of weeks! It all feels like he’s saying “Don’t get too proud of yourself”.
I looked at when things had started to change and it became pretty clear what the problem was. Results for Garden were fairly average when I took over, which everyone put down to a lack of dedicated resource. I improved them quickly and my colleague praised me. But then my results became as good as his, and eventually better. The first passive aggressive email came the first week my results surpassed his. It’s all clear now. When I was doing nearly as well as him, he looked like the star trainer. Now I’m doing better than him, I’m no longer useful to him; in fact, people might now be thinking I’m just good at the job, rather than being his success story.
I now feel on edge all the time; like he’s going to drop some new verbal hand grenade every time I have some success, and that I’ll have to justify every decision. And what if I do make a mistake and he picks up on it? It happens - but now it’s like he’s lying in wait for it.
I was visiting my parents at the weekend and was telling them about it. My mum said I was probably imagining it and worrying about nothing. My dad’s eyes narrowed and he said “Watch him like a hawk”. My mum is probably the kinder person, but my dad ran his own business for 25 years and I feel like he’s the one with good judgement in this sort of scenario!
What do you think? Should I be watching my back?