Am I overreacting? Can't decide

[Overreacting]

I was asked into a meeting a few weeks ago with the manager a couple of layers above me, and his PA. He tends to talk before he listens but is generally okay.

He had the wrong end of the stick about a project I was working on and I did my default thing of listening while he talked himself out a bit. That was probably a mistake but he does monologue and doesn't like interruption.

So we got about 15 minutes in. I'd had a couple of minutes to explain my position. At that stage he said, he didn't understand why I hadn't accepted his position without dispute, he was too busy for discussion, but possibly the fact that I didn't just accept that and move on was down to cultural differences. (Paraphrasing as best I can but the key phrase there for me is cultural differences).

I wound the meeting down after that but I am still a month later flummoxed by that comment. He's a middle-aged white man. I'm a middle-aged white woman. We are in the UK. He's British. I'm Irish.

He has a fairly top down management style and it's by no means all peace and harmony here. So the disagreement, though annoying, isn't unusual. Meeting was absolutely polite and calm.

I need to go into other meetings with him, with the people I manage, and I just don't know how to address or get past this. I have no idea what degree of (dissent? comment? request for clarification?) might trigger this kind of comment again and I don't want it happening in front of people I manage. He's quite a loose cannon so it could.

I'm not thirsting for blood or anything. I had an informal chat with HR who are helpful but recommend not going back to him on this (and I think must think I'm overreacting). Am I? And what if anything would anyone else do about this? Nobody I can tell in real life and I am feeling very alone with it so maybe getting out of proportion. Or underreacting! Would be glad of people's thoughts.

Where do you fit? And your peers - mixed? Or heavier on one gender

I think you have made a good call op

I’m really struggling to understand what this is all about. Is this what happened?

• you and big boss have a meeting
• he monologues about something that wasn’t your fault/didn’t happen
• you eventually point out it wasn’t your fault/didn’t happen
• he ignores what you said
• he says the reason for the problem must be cultural differences

You are trying to work out if he is being racist or sexist or ageist.

Everyone else in the company thinks he is a nob.

My conclusion is that he is indeed a nob.

If I’m getting the right end of the stick here: He’s a monologue kind of guy, he monologued (from a perspective that turned out to be incorrect). You allowed him to monologue then gave him the correct perspective, he was annoyed that you allowed the monologue because it wasted everyone’s time. He doesn’t understand the power and cultural issues that would mean you (and presumably others) don’t interrupt the monologue?

If I’ve got the above correct then unless it’s impacting your career in anyway I would forget it. Men like that never understand power structures and cultural issues that make it hard for women to speak up. It sounds like he does it with everyone and is not singling you out. It’s what he does. Forget about it and carry on. It sounds like your doing a good job.

You've said several times you 'can change' and 'need to work on it'. But he's not actually asked you to change or do anything differently, or made a specific complaint. So there's nothing to work on.

Yes that's my problem. I have no idea how to communicate with him in future without triggering this sort of reaction. But I suppose that with no new instructions that I can interpret constructively, I can't afford to give that too much headspace.

I mean if there was a work culture difference as some on the thread have suggested, I'd like to fix it. It's giving him the benefit of the doubt to interpret that way but I'd like to - he is not a nightmare manager or anything. Just has the faults of a lot of senior men, on a bad day.

Still, he's given me no reason to give him the respect of taking his comments, on this occasion, seriously. Thanks for the perspective.

That made me laugh @CrapBucket. Thanks. I agree on the whole @DarkWingDuck - except if I'd interrupted him all hell would have broken loose. Maybe I should have done that anyway. Thanks for the encouragement, and for your advice too @Paltrypam . I will carry on and detach myself a bit more and keep an eye on opportunities elsewhere without rushing things.

It is a relief just to bounce things off other people away from work - appreciate everyone's contributions very much.

Sounds to me like he was irritated & sniping because he felt intimidated in some way.
That's what I took

It sounds to me like a big part of the problem is your own line manager. My boss’s boss, although I get on well with him generally, can be a bit of an arse, not dissimilar to the man you describe, although he wouldn’t be quite as rude as your guy and I’d be a fair bit ruder than you in response if he was. But if he did say something that unsettled me and I didn’t feel able to discuss it with him directly for some reason then I’d pick it up with my own manager, his direct report, and she’d discuss it both with me and with him. All three of us would see that as part of her job, and similarly if she upset one of my direct reports I’d expect them to raise it with me to support them. Your manager gets paid more than you because they’re expected to manage team issues. It’s not really acceptable to say ‘I find that bit of my job hard or scary so I won’t bother doing it’.