18 months ago I was promoted from within my team to manage said team of 8. Let’s just say there is a diverse range of characters from ones who are happy to backstab, plodders with no go in them, another one who is the strangest person I have ever met in every way. They all snipe and watch one another to make sure one doesn’t have a single benefit or advantage over the other. One has mental health problems and the whole team feel depends on how they have arrived in the morning. They do get the work done but it’s usually with plenty of griping about workload, what others in the team are doing and our customers.
The team was like this when I joined it 10 years ago and back then I wondered if this was the right team for me as I’d come from a smaller, nicer team where everyone looked after one another. I stuck it out as the work is far more interesting and my salary has increased much faster - in fact I’m on almost double the salary I was on 10 years ago now.
It’s quite frankly exhausting and as a mid 50’s person I am at the stage in my life where I have no time for shit. I had hopes that as I’d worked in the team and knew people I could make it a nicer team. I ironed out a lot of the little issues that we all used to have, provided lots of training opportunities, put a few simple things in place to make the job easier and tried to show I would be a kind and supportive manager as the previous manager was absolutely awful and was no support at all. Some of them seem to have forgotten that they are there to do a job that they are being paid to do. Seems the longer people work somewhere the more entitled they become.
Went in yesterday and about 3 out of the team are using their slack time filling in development plans - even this has become a competitive thing between them as they all ‘want out’. Trouble is there’s nowhere for them to go so then that causes more annoyance as there are one or two that think that as they’ve been there so long they should be handed new roles on a plate.
I don’t have support from my manager much, he just expects me to get on with it, my team know he’s a pushover and they have no respect for him as he’s hardly ever here and again, he was a promoted person up from their team so some members actually remember and think of him as a sideways colleague rather than a manager. They think the same of me hence little real respect. I have one or two (who were there longer than me) who will make decisions over my head or butt in and try directing / organising things as I’m standing in front of them.
I think the real issue is promotion from within a team, it never works and to be honest I’ve had enough of it all, mixture of perimenopause probably and having had enough of working altogether and a difficult mix of characters to manage.
I just need to move on and leave them get on with it but my salary is great and I genuinely enjoy the content of the job. Any tips from experienced managers? Or sometimes has it gone too far to be salvaged?