Biggest fuck up
I put my trust in a manager who didn’t understand or respect my job.
I worked for a small company – about 350 people. The first year was fantastic. I was hired by a manager who had worked with me at a PR agency a few years before. Even though we hadn’t worked together at the agency, we were friends, and she trusted me to lead projects. Together, we created a unique cross-functional, program that drove a lot of PR results, and we executed it in 48 hours with an in-market event 7 days later.
A few months later, my manager left as the company began a project to split its core product into two services: one paid and one free. In the interim, while I was charged with managing our corporate communications, exclusive content releases, government relations, and crisis work, I was asked not to promote the brand itself. The rationale was that we didn’t want to put money into a brand that would no longer be the company’s cash cow.
Over the next four months, I went through a succession of three managers in four months until they hired a new head of marketing. I didn’t realize it at first, but she wasn’t a fan of PR – or me. My first hint was that she decided that me and a selection of others in the department should do a 360 review*. That would be fine, but it wasn’t part of the company’s review policy.
I picked the people who challenged me the most to review me. I figured, “sink or swim.” I also had the first instinct that my new manager wanted to get rid of me. This is when I decided to update my resume and started looking for a job. Anyway, the review happened, and it was neutral to positive.
Shortly after, the new manager asked me to stop any corporate and executive positioning stories. I didn’t think anything of it at the time, but in hindsight, it was an odd request. The company was gearing up for an IPO but wasn’t in a quiet period. I also knew that when I was reporting to the CEO (one of my four previous managers), he wanted business stories.
A few months later, the company had its normal review cycle, and I received a very positive review, which included the maximum raise and maximum bonus payout. I assumed I turned a corner with my manager and was no longer on the chopping block.
I was wrong. As we moved closer to splitting our brand into two, my manager let me know that we weren’t planning to execute any marketing or PR plans to support the new brand for our first year. I questioned that strategy. From a PR perspective, it would be too easy for the media, competitors, or consumers to control the narrative. I pushed to create a proactive PR plan.
In the timeframe before launch, I was on a call with the CEO and my manager. The CEO asked about business stories to support the new brand’s launch. I basically said I’d get back to him. On my next 1:1, I asked my manager if our CEO forgot that we weren’t doing business PR. She said she’d remind him.
And that was my mistake. I didn’t realize in time that the CEO wasn’t aware we weren’t doing business PR. I was being sabotaged since I wasn’t getting results, and it was part of a plan to eliminate me and a few others.
In trusting my manager to care about her team and give us proper direction, I found myself without a job less than a year after she started.
Lesson learned: don’t assume your manager is taking care of your interests.
On the bright side, she was let go a few months after me. I assume it was because the new brand launched and due to a lack of PR and marketing, tanked.
* For those of you who don’t know what a 360 review is, basically, you choose 3 people you work with to provide feedback to your manager. In a perfect situation, your manager then combines that feedback with their own to get a better picture of your abilities. In an imperfect situation, they just use the feedback from the others and don’t include their own. Guess which situation happened here.
Rant
I understand that multitasking is a really solid skill to have, but most people are incredibly bad at it. It’s not always obvious but comes to light after group calls. The number of times I’ve had to tell a junior employee that they need to pay attention in a call is more than I’d like to count.
It generally goes like this: We have a call agenda, the call happens, and tasks are updated based on it. For clients, we send a recap of action items.
Nine times out of 10, I can tell if someone was paying attention by how they update the action items. If they miss one or two small items, I give it a pass. If they don’t properly update items that we had a five-minute conversation about, I question whether they were paying attention or doing other work.
I like working from home. But sometimes, the work suffers because if you’re not in the same room, you can’t tell who’s writing emails instead of focusing on the conversation.
Useful Advice
Step away from the email machine.
If you get an email that makes you angry, and you want to respond in kind, go ahead, but don’t actually do it. What I mean is write out the email. Get your aggression onto the page. But, instead of sending it, delete it. Then wait until the next day to read it again and decide if you really need to respond. You’ll find that second email no longer has the emotion, giving you a measured response.
Also, if you go back and forth with someone three times over email and they still don’t get what you’re trying to say, pick up the phone. Email lacks nuance. Your voice doesn’t. So many issues can be solved with talking things out. And you’ll find that the other person usually isn’t angry – just confused.