I lied

[Smile03]

Before I get any hate I want to say I know I am in the wrong.

We had a virtual away day booked in for the whole organisation and I had a meeting which overlapped by 15 minutes.

My manager was unaware about the first meeting and I lied and told her it was about HR/ date protection.

She has then investigated this and has been told no I was not in a HR meeting.

I then repeated I was.

My manager has said she will be getting HR advice now.

I am planning on going in and telling the truth tomorrow but want to know can I get fired for this?

I work for this Civil Service

HR will support the line manager, they are not there to support individual staff in cases like this.

In the civil service HR won't even be involved unless a case is opened, even if the line manager tried to I seriously doubt HR would be interested in this at all.

Perhaps she’s a micro manager, never a good thing in my opinion.

Or perhaps she's inherited a team, or even been deliberately placed in managing a team, that are problematic. I've certainly had experience of that - good managers (and that means fair, but not always easy going) being put with difficult teams. I've been there myself. It doesn't mean the team is "bad". Nor does it mean they're "good". It may simply mean you need a manager to figure out what is going on and "fix" it.

You won’t get sacked. I’ve worked in government on contracts and was told if you killed someone you’d still keep your job!

As you've lied, you've broken the civil service code so the best thing to do is apologise profusely, explain you were embarrassed and didn't feel you could say what your meeting was about, that you then felt you couldn't come clean so repeated the lie when your manager called someone else in. You have reflected on this and want to apologise for not telling the truth.

I work in Civil Service as a senior manager - different dept. I would be notified if one of my direct reports had signed up for mentorship to ensure I made them available for the programme. I would also prioritise a mentoring session for one of my team over 15 mins missing from a remote team call.

You won't get sacked but it will be uncomfortable. I'd take the approach that you felt self-concious for 'needing' support (mentorship) and panicked. Apologise.

do not give up your place on the programme, gently, I'd say you need it, work on your resilience and confidence. Colleagues with niche skills tend to be the ones who keep the show on the road, and you are never 'only' an HEO.

TBH i'd be more concerned that you are potentially working in an environment where you do not feel you can be open about your development needs.

Maybe, but it creates a bad environment in my experience when a manager is checking a persons every move. I think there’s far better ways of bringing up the performance of a team other than micro managing. I’ve been under many leaders in my 20 odd years experience, including some micro managers and they were definitely the most unsuccessful long term. You can’t always create a culture of trust if you have a problematic team, but chasing up the whole team for being 15 mins late to meetings is a bit OTT in my opinion.

Everyone manages differently and it can be a culture shock sometimes when you go into a different environment. I’ve had many people say to me they’ve been in very strict departments and it’s a breathe of fresh air to come to our department where staff are trusted and given flexibility to manage their own working days as long as targets are met.

But did you imply there was an issue with a named member of staff?

This!!! Glossing over the lies won't work if you have involved/named someone else

No - no names involved.

I’m a bit taken aback by people saying your manager shouldn’t be checking on you. I’m in the private sector and this definitely would be part of my manager’s job. They have to check you are hitting all your various targets -and that would include time where you are having “meetings” -they are a marker of low productivity and tend to count against you. People are sacked regularly for not hitting targets. Mind you, any sort of “away day” would never be approved.

I'm a bit taken aback by that! What sort of job do you have?

You made a mistake, personally I don't think its a huge one. It was also a HR type thing.

Was just going to suggest to carry on with the mentoring. I'm a mentor and particularly if your manager has bullying tendencies (and 'never going to allow anyone to be late again to team day' sounds like she does) it can be super helpful.

Good luck

Why have you quit the mentorship programme?

That's just another really bad decision.

You had an away day scheduled which was mandatory and you didnt reschedule your mentorship meeting. The mentorship meeting does have to come second to your actual job and associated meetings. That was a bad choice.

You then lied about it. Bad choice.
Doubled down on the lie. Bad choice.

Have now quit the mentorship programme. Another really bad choice.

Just stop. Breathe. Take a minute.

You made a mistake in not rescheduling your mentorship meeting. You wont do that again.
You made a mistake lieng and you know that, you're going to explain that you were embarrassed and wanted it to remain private rather than talk about it during a group chat but realise that was an error of judgement and there is nothing embarrassing here so it wont happen again.

Quitting the programme does nothing. It doesnt undo what you did, it doesnt change your response and it doesnt improve your future. Why are you quitting?

Honestly, you really sound like you could do with guidance and help. Stay in the programme. Quitting doesnt help you in anyway.

I would argue that being mentored is an HR issue

I can't believe the level of vitriol being lobbed at the poor OP who is already suffering so much more than is necessary over what is essentially a lie brought about by a bit of panic. She has not injured anyone except herself so let's be a bit more understanding I find it very difficult to believe that all you chivvying posters have never told a lie or done something out of character due to embarrassment. Op, you will come through this but I noticed the lovely poster from the civil service mentioned counselling or CBT. If you can, I would definitely give it a go. I had CBT and it was immeasurably helpful and something in the tone of your posts remind me of me before I sorted my anxiety and sometimes to others, my baffling behaviour. I wish you the very best of luck.

I work in a large global communications company. There is a lot of monitoring of staff. Targets are strictly enforced. Not a minimum-wage-type job. But I can see from this thread that the civil service must be different.

I think if you explain it well like you have here @Smile03 they will understand.

When you say your anxiety is at an all time high, are you saying you have a clinically diagnosed anxiety disorder? Because you are making some very strange decisions here. Like it would have been easy to move the meeting, it would have been easy to tell the truth and the obvious thing to do is not to leave the mentor programme. Is this outside your normal range of behaviours?

Honestly, I think this entire episode demonstrates that you could actually do with support from a decent mentor. You did something a bit daft. Because you were embarrassed. About something that isn't at all embarrassing. I think you could do with working with a mentor on your self confidence in the work place. You could of course explain that you had recognised this, which was why you had signed up in the first place...

Well, ypu lied and got caught. You could always tell another lie and say the mentee wanted to talk about na HR issue, but personally I would fall on my sword for this one.

There is evidence the manager ONCE checked where their team were. And found at least one of them wasn't where they said they were. How does one VALID check constitute micro- managing? It says more about posters that they assume that a manager catching staff lying is micro- managing rather than doing their job. There is no evidence at all that the manager had done anything wrong. Even the OP admits that they did something wrong! Assuming the fault lies with the manager is assuming facts not in evidence and doesn't help the OP.

OP how has it been going generally with your performance?

I ask because the manager sounds very micro managing and I’m wondering if that’s just her way OR if you’ve had difficulties with your performance/reliability and she feels has she has to really keep tabs on you.

I used to be a senior civil servant. If anyone who was otherwise straightforward and unproblematic did what you did, I wouldn’t bat an eyelid. But if it was part of an overall pattern of pisstaking, then I might be inclined to look into it.

Don’t quit the mentorship! Ask if you can rejoin.

You’ve made a daft mistake. It’s not the end of the world. You’ve not hurt anyone or damaged the company.

Me too. Seriously - if you were organising a meeting and people said they were going to miss it or part of it because of other meetings, you'd check they were telling the truth? That sounds like an awful work culture.

I would also say that good managers don't need to micromanage.

There may be times when someone isn't very good at the job and needs extra support.

But then on the other hand, you have the managers who think everyone should figure everything out for themselves, even when it would take them 2 mins to explain something that it would take the underling hours to work out.

There is a happy medium. But checking the "stories" of your staff when they say they are in meetings doesn't sound like that happy medium to me.