In one of my roles, we had a team firing on all cylinders. My boss was excellent. My team was excellent. Our little division was taking names and gaining market share. What could go wrong?
Our executive leadership team met monthly for strategy, project updates, and operations reviews. I was responsible for creating reports for these meetings, along with my peers. Every month, my reports received kudos and praise from the executive leadership. They would often stop by for clarifications or additional information as needed. Every other month, I would personally report on major milestones or ROI numbers. My team was receiving a ton of positive press.
One of the downsides of success is that you get noticed. Executive management starts trying to spread the wealth, especially when other divisions are being downsized.
My excellent manager was promoted, but I didn’t have the tenure to take his place, so I expected a new manager. In their infinite wisdom, the leadership team appointed a manager who was a friend of the CEO to lead our division. His previous team was struggling and hemorrhaging money.
I received an email from my old manager introducing my new boss. It was a heads-up.
After a couple of weeks with no communication from the new boss, I set up a meeting with his admin. I didn’t know him, and the monthly executive leadership meeting was approaching. When we met, he was unaware of the upcoming meeting. Trying to be supportive, I told him I would coordinate getting the reports from my peers and provide them to him the week before the meeting.
Normally, each section leader’s name appeared on the “compiled by” line at the top of their section. This allowed leadership to follow up with questions or clarifications. I added the new division leader’s name where my previous boss had placed his info.
During this time, I was in the critical phase of a product launch, buried in final preparations, prototypes, and acceptance testing. This intense period involved a lot of travel.
About a month later, I ran into one of my peers on the road. She mentioned that the new boss had called and wanted a download on her project. He asked questions typically posed by the executive leadership and requested basic information that was already in her monthly reports. We wanted to give the new guy the benefit of the doubt, but this was a red flag.
We continued submitting reports, and about four months in, the new boss called me for additional information on the recent successful launch and potential new agreements and contracts. Again, this information was in my previous reports.
Later that day, we received news from the CEO praising the manager and sharing a sample report that represented best practices. The announcement made no mention of the teams that supported him, which was a departure from previous announcements.
If you haven’t guessed by now, our new manager had been removing our names from the reports and presenting them as his own. He had been fielding questions on the data and making up answers when he couldn’t reach us in time, instead of letting us answer the questions directly. It became a classic game of telephone.
By the time we returned to town for a team leader meeting with the new boss, the executive leadership team was confused by outdated and inaccurate data. I was called before the executive team, who were anxious about the next contract cycle. I had all my data in a folder and on a zip drive—this was before SharePoint. My new manager asked that all questions be directed to him first.
It was brutal. Over the next hour, leadership would ask a question, my manager would hem and haw, and then direct it to me to answer. This happened repeatedly. It was clear he didn’t have a clue what was going on. How could he? We had only met twice in five months.
After an hour, the CEO dismissed him from the room. My peers and I presented the current state of the business, fielding questions with expert knowledge. Fortunately, the state of the business was still strong. The executive leadership team apologized to the team leaders and followed up with a company-wide kudos announcement.
The new manager found a new opportunity elsewhere. We got a new boss, and we made it a point to meet with him immediately, creating a cadence for weekly meetings until everyone was comfortable with the new team dynamic.
