How would you handle these situations at work?

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I endured a horrendous role which destroyed my confidence. I started a new job on Monday, and I find myself second guessing my gut. I experienced a lot of sexism before and I guess I’m wary now. So, I’m just going to describe a couple of scenarios from today - and see how you would handle them?

Colleague with autism & social anxiety, 30 minute introduction meeting took double the time. It was difficult to steer the conversation. He jumped from his health, relationship history, past addresses, redundancies, legal issues, all his family, deaths in the family, political views, favourite scientist etc. He’s friendly but I just don’t know how to end an off-topic discussion without causing offence given his conditions, as he gets a bit stressed and stuck in his thoughts.

My new role is causing a bit of controversy as senior management haven’t defined it, it’s a new role for the business and I seem to be inadvertently stepping on toes and obviously have no credibility doing that as a newcomer. I have raised it with senior management but they’re taking a fluffy, sort it between yourselves approach. It’s totally unclear what my role is supposed to be and who is doing what. I’ve even tried to book handovers in with the person I am replacing but they said no as they want to await a description of what my job role is from their boss. It just seems a bit dysfunctional from the managers, who haven’t fully communicated with their direct reports what the allocation is. So I’m left twiddling thumbs as I’m being blocked in progressing work.

My boss arranged a 1 hour show & tell meeting for a business analyst team to introduce themselves to me (boss wasn’t there). The team prepared nothing. It was weirdly awkward/silent/frosty. They weren’t really engaging with any discussion and seemed annoyed to be there. I asked one of them what their work day is like, he told me to Google their job title. I tried to gather who their stakeholders were, they told me to setup my own stakeholder mapping exercise and others chimed in to say it’s the first thing they would do in a new role etc as if to say I’m inexperienced and shouldn’t leech of them. Whole conversation went like this. I was only asking the questions to get to know them/ice break but it ended up being a difficult meeting. Again, I think it stems from their management being unclear with them what my role is and I’m just bearing the brunt.

Congrats on the new job! In my experience when you move from a negative environment you’re kind of on high alert for a bit. I’ve been in my new job for about 6 months to a now and I’d say I’m just relaxing from my last job which was quite toxic. You’ll be on the lookout for the negativity you experienced before, but consciously give them a chance, they aren’t the same people. Be kind to yourself too, toxic workplaces have a big impact.

on your scenarios:

1. I have a friend at work similar. What I’ve done is try to learn how to speak his language in terms of noticing things like if I send him one question I’ll get an answer and if I send 3 I won’t, so I send them one at a time. He won’t necessarily pick up your attempts to end a conversation so you’ll end up not knowing how to get out of it. If it’s 30 min meeting give him a 5 minute warning after 25 mins, then end the meeting on time regardless. But try learning about how autistic people communicate, it will help. There are things my friend loves to talk about that he has told me sooo many times because they mean a lot to him, these days I just listen but at first I found it frustrating. He gets treated quite badly quite often though, many people make fun of him and call him boring, tiresome, long winded and he’s often the butt of everyone’s jokes - bear that in mind, your colleague will most likely be experiencing the same. You don’t have to martyr yourself, but be mindful - it’s taken a very long time for my friend and I to get properly comfortable with each other. (There is no obligation to befriend your colleague of course, just sharing my experience!)
2. Ive been in this situation myself - I’ve never waited to be told. If no one quite knows what you should be doing - ask what outcome they want and then invent your role.
3. they are very rude and unprofessional by the sounds of it. I’d have a chat with their manager/ your manager and say how disappointing it was. No need to cover for them or suffer it.

it sounds like you might need a thick skin to get through to an easier place. But it will come. I’ve had a turbulent 6 months as I had an undefined role, an impossible set of objectives, a team with lots of interpersonal crap, capability and lack of experience, and a manager who thought sorting it out would come easily in my first 2 weeks. I’ve had to be quite bloody minded and forthright to deal with it all - managing upwards sideways downward into the 7th dimension everywhere! I finally feel like I’m ready to get started!

Thanks so much, this is so useful.