Leading from the rear

[venisonpasty]

The 'boutique' media/ coms/ PR company that I work for merged last year with another small company. There were redundancies and reorganisation and I and the small team I lead are now being managed by a woman from the company we merged with. I thought at first that her lack of leadership or involvement was about us all adjusting to the new set-up but it's now clear it's her style. She's on the defensive, won't take decisions, won't put anything in writing and has now, for the second time, put me in the firing line when things haven't gone according to plan because of her inability to lead or communicate.

My previous manager was involved at the ideas stage of things and used to take an active role in what me and the team rolled out. He used to invite me and sometimes the team to meetings where we could suss out the client and get a feel for them. The new manager has cut me out and I have to work to a brief she gives me, a brief that changes all the time but she doesn't keep me updated on. She always briefs me verbally and I summarise and then submit it to her in writing. She'll respond with 'I'm not sure that's exactly what I said' and 'I wouldn't have interpreted it like that' — but she won't say what she thinks she actually said and she won't identify what the problem is. I have asked several times for a written brief from her and she ignores my requests.

I've started recording her briefings and putting everything in writing, so that I have evidence of her failure to engage. Her boss is from her old company and I don't get positive vibes from him. I am trying not to get paranoid but wonder whether I'm being set up to fail.

If the economic climate wasn't so awful I'd have already jumped ship. I'm looking for opportunities but, in the meantime, does anyone have experience of this and suggestions for ways of coping with it?

make notes times dates ect as best as

This is a really stressful situation and having a boss that doesn't know in any way what they want is a complete nightmare.

I would come clean with her, that because her instructions are always verbal and vague it means that you are unable to ever meet them so you propose a range of ways forward.

Then list the range of ways that would help you:

Attending the client briefings so that you can make notes and then put forward your plans to her

Have a briefing after her client meetings so that she can brief you which is openly recorded so that you do not miss anything important that she requests

Produce a plan for her prior to doing any work on a brief so that she can respond and shape it to what she wants

and list any options you have to try and mitigate her requirements.

I think if it was me I'd set up a ' Briefing Document' document in a shared drive for each new client or proposal so that i could get it written down as to her proposal and clear up what she wants, then document the work Ive done, send it to her daily to get her to check and any comments she makes either copy and paste them in; or record them and write them down with date stamps and send back to her for approval. I don't know what IT system you have obviously but I did this with various teams when we got a range of microsoft packages and I used the one that was like a Trello board for each seperate agency I was working with to track everything and so that the team all knew what was going on with what.

If she says 'I don't think I said that' say 'can you please write down what you think you did say and I'll pop it on my Briefing Document thanks'.

I called it Upward Management when I've had bosses like this, and basically you have to back yourself up in writing and timestamped for your own sanity; for the grievance that you end up making or for the tribunal you end up having to go though. Them having to put it all in writing shouldnt be an issue if they aren't incompetent or trying to screw you over.

Also, find out from her what exactly is the problem. I am reminded of starting a new role, being handed a 78 page report full of charts that made no sense and being told to redo it. It was a document that went to the Board and the Trustees and set in stone the available funding and when I looked at the data that informed it, it was all completely screwed up and nobody had noticed. The projects were randomly assigned regions, the forecasting was all just split equally over project years not in actual spend and the amounts were often wrong. The accounts team were baffled by it.

I found out what it is they actually wanted to know, so funding in regions and by fund title, money committed over the next 5 years by year, always round up or down to the 100k and never have a table that didn't add up exactly. Also, ditch all the charts!

The rest was just make it look good.

After loads of wrangling with the data and writing a bunch of 'sum if' stuff I got it all automated and literally just had to copy and paste it, and jiggle with the round up and downs to make it all add up properly.

So sometimes, honestly just ask 'what is it you really actually need here?'

This kind of thread makes my blood boil - who are these people? Wtf are they doing in leadership positions? Do they not see the detrimental effect that they have on others?

They get there because often they interviewed great and said that they ticked some boxes better than the other people that day.

This is giving me the rage also! I used to have a boss who had no clue..would communicate verbally and then follow up and totally contradict themselves. I knew what I was doing so would just do it my own way and then got critised. Document it all.