In the past, I found myself working remotely. The company I was working for had allowed me to work remotely after I worked in their home office for a year. While the job was going well, it was tough to be in a new place working from home. At times, it felt a bit isolating. My coworkers were super friendly and the work-remote situation was in many ways a gift, but it also came with its downsides.
I started looking for jobs in the area I was living to see what I could find. I figured having coworkers would be a good way to start getting to know people there.
After interviewing at some companies to see what was out there, I found a fast-growing technology company via the Indeed job search engine – I’ll refer to the company from here on out as Menden (company name changed to protect the privacy of the company I’ll be telling you about). The job opening was for a Digital Marketing Manager position. Having worked in SEO and paid search for many years since a digital marketing job I had in Budapest, Hungary in 2010, I thought I’d be a great fit for the role. It would be a challenge, but definitely something I could do.
After a phone interview with the CMO Thomas and a thorough screening process through a series of online tests, I was called in for in-person interviews. It wasn’t easy, but I got through all the interviews and received a solid job offer. It was not only a good career move, but it was also a company culture that I resonated with. After thinking about it for a few days, I happily accepted the job offer.
Some Challenges, But Not Yet Any Red Flags
When I started working at Menden, there were no doubt some challenges. I had to get used to people being blunt, as well as people unexpectedly emailing you with a lot of people unnecessarily copied in.
In terms of Menden’s unique atmosphere, everyone is encouraged to speak up, share their opinion, and add value in their own way. Receiving an email with a lot of people copied in is not necessarily a bad thing, it’s just someone sharing an opinion. With that said, it can also be intimidating, especially being that I was new to Menden. I came in with high energy ready to make lots of positive changes for ecommerce, and it was almost like people were claiming their territory and saying in a subtle way, Hold up, not so fast.
I viewed this as an opportunity to learn to grow thicker skin, but being transparent here, the truth is I was struggling a bit with the transition. I’m far from perfect and make mistakes, and this experience was no different.
With that said, there weren’t any major red flags in the very beginning. It’s completely normal to have difficulties when doing a new job, as starting a new job is commonly rated as one of the top fears for most people. On top of that, I don’t want to share with you the negatives without sharing with you the positives. Menden has a fast-moving startup atmosphere that can sometimes be fun. As I can’t stand the corporate culture that stagnates, in some ways I was a good fit for Menden. They have interesting company events and I was glad to be a part of them at times.
Menden has Friday drinks, which I love. A lot of companies say they will have Happy Hours and company drinks, but never follow-through. Menden consistently has Friday after-work drinks and it breeds a culture of friendship, “work hard play hard”, and enjoying the ride.
In nearly every company I’ve ever worked for before Menden, employees and company leaders didn’t live their values. There wasn’t even an effort. This motivated me to become an expert in authentic leadership, which is the basis of many of my books and speeches. As I talked about in my book Reach Your Mountaintop, one follow-through action is infinitely better than endless amounts of false promises. While Menden employees sometimes make mistakes just like me, the feeling I had as I started there is that the employees put the company values into practice. You’ll see later in this chapter that the reality was different and in some ways I was deceived, but I do want to let you know that I was feeling positive in the beginning.
I lived these values – for example, acting energetically and enthusiastically – and not everyone seemed to like it. But no matter where you are, not everyone will like you and you can never please everyone. On the whole, it was a place where I could be myself, and that made it better than some of the previous companies I worked for – at least, that’s how I felt in the beginning.
Red Flags, But Not Yet a Crisis
Time moved on and a few months passed. I noticed a few red flags, but nothing that was making me too unhappy or causing a crisis. For example, ever since I got interested in personal development in my late teens, I’ve been applying a productivity hack of working through the typical lunchtime (noon to one in the afternoon) and then taking a late lunch. This allows me to get more work done, finish big tasks from the morning, avoid long lines, and take my lunch with peace of mind.
At Menden, on Monday through Thursday the company pays for your lunch by providing it in the company cafeteria. Most employees go to lunch sometime between noon and 12:30 pm. Some employees said they thought it was strange that I got lunch so late. I would eat lunch with my colleagues sometimes, but the moment I wanted to do lunch on my own terms, people judged me for it. I found that to be strange.
Remember, this is a two-way street. People can say it’s strange that some days I like to do lunch on my own. But I equally find it strange that some people always do things in groups and never strike off to do something on their own.
I’m an independent, free spirit. I’m also introverted in terms of the way I recharge. Socially speaking, I’m outgoing, enjoy speaking to others, and will accept invites when I’m invited places. At the same time, I need at least a couple of lunches each week to myself. It helps me to recharge and keep my sanity amidst a hectic week and heavy workload. Do you relate to this at all? To have people questioning my desire to get lunch in the city of Rotterdam on my own some days instead of always going to the company cafeteria was to me ridiculous. I was still getting lunch with the group plenty of times each week.
I also sometimes use lunch breaks to work on my next book, like this one. When I’m on a break, I like to use that time to the fullest (focus and strong time management are two of your greatest assets to achieving success). I say this respectfully, but I don’t owe an explanation to my Menden colleagues’ why I sometimes need to step away from the office during lunch. And yet it wasn’t a few questioning glances – people were straight-up judging me for it. I felt so judged that I was afraid to bring food to eat back to my desk, so I always finished my food before returning to the office whenever I ate in the city. At all my previous jobs, I frequently brought lunch back to my desk to eat without thinking twice about it.
This was nothing major but is best labeled as a red flag. It’s almost like Menden is a fraternity/sorority, and if you don’t play by their rules they start questioning you. To further this point, I also had people criticizing me because I missed one of their 5 pm champagne celebrations because I was busy meeting with a developer about an important project. Quite strange.
To emphasize what I said above, this kind of structured, “join the clan and become one of us” environment suits some people, and I completely respect and acknowledge that. Never having really felt like I fit in with others throughout my life, I did appreciate that Menden was welcoming me with open arms. I enjoyed it to an extent – it just felt a bit quirky at times.
Another red flag is the unusually long working hours. From the bottom of my heart, I’m all for hard work and I’m one of the hardest workers you’ll meet. At the same time, I know work-life balance is important. Contrary to what some of the quacks out there say about the importance of working yourself to death, work-life balance is not a myth. It’s a crucial part of your long-term success.
At Menden, I’d get in at 8:30 or 9 am, leave at 6 pm, and sometimes be the first (or one of the first) people to leave the floor. In the companies I worked for in the United States, I had a reputation for being one of the hardest workers on the floor and often being one of the last to leave the office. At Menden, it was the other way around. Around 5:55 pm each day I would begin to feel super uncomfortable, being ready to leave for the day and noticing not a single person had yet left the office.
Thomas, the CMO, said to me directly, “You’re not exactly the hardest worker on the floor.”
I was working nine, nine-and-a-half, sometimes ten-hour days and still getting this feedback.
Sorry to say this, but that’s not normal! First of all, working lots of hours is the old way of working. The new way of working is to focus on results. This means that six hours of focused work is more valuable than ten hours of work filled with pointless meetings, long coffee breaks, and idle chit-chat with coworkers.
Second, Menden’s culture book talks about, “autonomy and duty.” I was working hard and responsible for my results, yet I didn’t really feel the freedom that Menden so passionately espoused. Nothing major, as there was still some degree of autonomy, but something I noticed.
I would vent to my girlfriend about this, and she said, “This is ridiculous. Working nine hours a day should be more than enough.”
Even with some warning signals turning into legitimate red flags, I was still able to focus on some of the good parts of being there and salvage my sanity. But nothing could prepare me for what was about to come next.
Game Over: Crisis Time and The Week From Hell
The Friday before the week from hell, I had an email exchange with the CEO of Menden, Berry. The email was centered around creating a strong digital marketing strategy for the upcoming year. In the email, Berry specifically said that he’s giving me all the freedom in the world to create a great strategy. My plan was to dedicate the whole following week to creating an awesome digital marketing strategy.
Word-for-word, here’s a part of Berry’s email to me on a Friday at 12:23 pm:
I think it will benefit all of us if we have a super detailed and spectacular digital marketing plan. You have all the freedom to create the best plan ever and to maximize digital marketing revenue hugely. It is our top priority.
The following Monday, I unexpectedly received a task from my boss, the CMO Thomas. He was creating revenue projections for our investors. He wanted me to justify the projections he came up with by providing him a detailed explanation. He explicitly said, word-for-word, “The investors are coming on Wednesday.”
I already had a huge task on my plate (the digital marketing strategy I had emailed with Berry about). But Thomas wanted a separate detailed justification for his own projections, that was apparently for the investors. And he gave me a two-day heads up.
Short deadlines aren’t ideal, but they happen sometimes in business. Fine. I accommodated Thomas by focusing on his project, instead of the other strategy project I had planned on focusing on.
I spent the whole Monday struggling through it. Thomas told me he needed “something quick”, but he missed the boat in describing the task because the revenue projection justification project was far from quick. It was a confusing situation and some thoughts went through my head:
I was already working on a big strategy – why was he requesting something separate? Isn’t it his job to justify his own projections, which weren’t even matching with my own projections?
I gave him the benefit of the doubt and worked throughout the first day of the week to come up with a good justification for him – something felt off, but I didn’t listen to that intuitive nudge and did what he asked, emailing him at the end of the day (quick yet important sidebar: always do your best to listen to your intuition; it usually gives you the right advice and actions).
That night I felt very stressed out and anxious about my overwhelming priorities. I know how to handle stress, but the amount of competing high priorities was insane. That night, our company won a big award with many of Menden’s company employees at the evening ceremony. In the company group chat, as I was lying on my bed feeling overwhelmed, I saw a picture of everyone celebrating and happy about the award.
For the record, this was a huge accomplishment and well-deserved; Menden employees work hard and earn their success. At the same time, I felt like no one cared about what I was experiencing, which to at least some extent was probably true. I’m not blaming anyone here, just pointing out that I felt isolated.
The next morning Thomas really put down and criticized my justification document. He said it was nowhere near where it was supposed to be. I was expecting a request for minor tweaks and was surprised by this from Thomas, after bending over backwards to accommodate his unexpected request. I had already added in more detail than I thought I had to, as Thomas originally said he needed something “quick”. He was now directly contradicting himself in his demand to add in even more explanation.
There’s nothing wrong with being criticized or being given constructive feedback if there’s at least some degree of truth to it. My confusion here came from the fact that Thomas’s feedback was not based on the reality of what our CEO wanted the team to focus on.
I spent the Tuesday morning accommodating Thomas’s additional unreasonable request and sent him the revised version by lunchtime. On his way to lunch, we bumped into each other and he was visibly upset. He said I completely missed the mark and “didn’t get it”. I felt inadequate.
It’s not acceptable for your boss to treat you poorly. Yes, your boss can give you constructive feedback, and yes, your boss can be blunt with you, but it’s not ok for your boss to demean you and put you down with no real reason for doing so.
As I said earlier, Thomas made it clear the investors were coming to our Menden Headquarters on Wednesday (the next day). I was dejected, but I felt that Thomas must have been so stressed because the investors were coming the next day. I wondered if I was being too understanding, but again gave Thomas the benefit of the doubt.
I spent the whole afternoon working on this ridiculously long task for my boss, the CMO Thomas. I not only pushed off the digital marketing strategy plan, which is where my time really should have been going, but also said no to a lot of other tasks and requests that were coming in. At this point, it’s safe to say I was bending over backwards to make sure Thomas looked good in front of the investors.
One of the challenges with some aspects of digital marketing is that it’s an educated guessing game – the key word in there being educated. Does it bring results? Heck yeah. At the same time, at the end of the day, it’s not an exact science. I used every digital marketing tool I had access to, every digital marketing experience I’ve ever had (ten years of experience), every article I could – and nothing seemed to be good enough for Thomas.
It was now Tuesday at 6 pm and I was nowhere close to being done. This wasn’t a two-day task – it was more like a one to two-week task. It was unreasonable that my boss gave me so little time for such a big task. With that said, in my career, I’ve never been one to shy away from difficult deadlines and I’ve always risen to the occasion.
But I had a dilemma. I had important plans with my girlfriend that evening. We were really looking forward to seeing one another and these were plans that mattered. I had to choose between my girlfriend and finishing the task for Thomas.
In nearly any other circumstances, I would have chosen my girlfriend. Though in this case, the investors were coming the next day. I felt the need to rise to the occasion. I cancelled plans with my girlfriend. My girlfriend said to me in a message response, “There’s always a reason to stay late at work. Don’t stay too late.”
She’s loving and supportive. Her point was that work can always seem incredibly urgent and high priority, but it doesn’t mean it should always be the number one thing in our lives. After all, I moved here to be with her, not to work for Menden.
As I was working and sipping an unhealthy energy drink, a coworker of mine who is usually one of the last people to leave the office left around 7:30 pm. She said to me on her way out, “Don’t work too late!”
I ended up staying close to 9 pm. At my previous job, I had one evening where I worked until 4:30 am in the morning, so this evening was by no means a record breaker or something incredibly insane in terms of total hours worked. But at the end of the day, I still had cancelled plans with my girlfriend. I promised myself that I would avoid cancelling plans with my girlfriend at all costs in the future.
This was not a priority issue, as for the most part my priorities were in good order. It was more about wanting to rise to the challenge in this specific situation.
On the way home, I was proud of myself for rising to the occasion and getting a huge task done in a short period of time. But nothing could have prepared me for what I was going to experience next.
The Dysfunction Continues and Gets Worse
The next morning – now Wednesday – I looked around, wondering where the investors were. I didn’t go out of my way to look for them, but I casually looked around while going through my day. I didn’t see any of them. I assumed the best, thinking they were either on the highest floor or in the building on the other side of the street, where we also have people from our company working.
Around late morning, I received feedback from Thomas that the revenue projection justification still wasn’t enough. Now it was getting ridiculous. I had cancelled plans with my girlfriend the night before to please Thomas. I had switched my focus from a huge strategy project to this justification document.
One of the big issues with Thomas’s continuous negative feedback is that there wasn’t any substance to it. When you give feedback to someone, it’s important for it to not only be constructive, but also based on something substantial. Vague, general criticisms don’t help people move toward solutions and they often make people feel demotivated and badly about themselves. I don’t say this as a personal insult to Thomas, but he was missing the boat when it comes to leadership and inspiration.
I figured there must still be time for me to make last-minute changes before they showed it to our investors, so I scrambled to make even more changes within the vague guidelines of Thomas. As the day wore on, the investors were nowhere to be found. I definitely wasn’t stalking Thomas or making it a point to find them, it was just something I had in the back of my mind to be on the lookout for. Our buildings aren’t huge and the investors were nowhere in sight.
At this point, now mid-afternoon, I thought perhaps they were meeting with the investors offsite at a local coffee shop or something. But Thomas specifically said they were coming into our offices, so something felt fishy. I remained positive and thought perhaps the investors were meeting with our company leaders in our other company building across the street.
Near the end of the day, after I continued looking around for these so-called investors, I had the feeling that the investors didn’t actually come to our offices. I tried to shake this feeling off, but it kept coming back. I had shifted the actions and priorities of my week on both a personal and professional basis to accommodate Thomas’s request – up until now, I hadn’t even considered that he might have been inauthentic and untruthful.
Like I just said, it was possible that they met with the investors offsite, but the entire day felt like a normal day at the office and I didn’t hear one employee or company leader talk about or even briefly mention any kind of important meeting happening today. I wasn’t trying to prove Thomas wrong – it’s just that the whole day felt like a deflated balloon.
I felt dejected, discouraged, and overwhelmed. I wasn’t living the week true to myself, I was living it to please Thomas, yet nothing was even close to good enough for him. Part of me wanted to push back and stand up for myself. But I let it go. I submitted yet another revised version to Thomas, and went home. I decided to let it go and start the week fresh the following day.
Although there were now only two days left in the week, I felt like that was still plenty of time to focus in and do strategy preparations for the CEO Berry.
The Straw That Broke the Camel’s Back
The following morning, I got in and felt off. I overworked myself the past three days, but I pushed through the exhaustion so I could focus all-out on the big project for my CEO – the project that actually mattered.
I spent the first hour of the day getting set up for my research and focus, and also typed a few emails and messages to temporarily deflect the never-ending stream of requests and demands from other team members. At 10 am, I received a message from one of the managers (the same level I was at, job title wise) to come up to a meeting room one floor above.
The manager Evan who unexpectedly called me to the meeting wasn’t my boss and I didn’t report to him, though he was a little bit higher than me in the hierarchy because he had been at Menden longer than I had. Also, he had a team working for him and I had no one else on my team at that point, so hierarchy-wise my role was sort of floating in-between everything at once.
I got into the meeting room and was excited to see the CFO Larry (the CFO gave me permission to share his real name, but I changed it anyway), the CMO Thomas, a manager Evan, and another manager Lucas. I’ve always had a good connection with Larry, which is why I was glad he was in the meeting room.
The meeting started with a reasonable one to two-minute explanation from Lucas that we were in need of updated keyword tracking and rankings. For the record, Lucas stated this respectfully. This request was an incredibly lengthy process because I needed to manually add in more keywords for each category in all of our countries. At best, this would take the rest of the week to do and it was not something I felt I needed to drop everything to do.
Lucas said we needed this urgently for our investors, who were coming soon. He confirmed the investors hadn’t come to our offices yet and were coming next week.
Thomas lied to me and had made up an artificial deadline to get more out of me.
I took a deep breath. I was upset, but I knew I had it in me to stay cool.
Out of nowhere, the CMO Thomas jumped down my throat, demanding that I spend the rest of the week updating our keyword tracking tool. He raised his voice and was nearly yelling, similar to the way he had been demeaning me all week.
This was the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back (with me being the camel). The keyword tracking project was something we specifically talked about earlier, based on my initiative, and Thomas said in the recent past it wasn’t a priority.
In this moment, he was once again contradicting himself. He said that this keyword tracking was something I should have already prioritized and completed. I specifically had a dated document that Thomas marked up himself showing that the keyword project, while important in the long-run, wasn’t as urgent of a project as other priorities.
Thomas couldn’t even keep track of his lies anymore. Not only was he a horrible boss, he was without exaggeration the worst boss I’ve ever worked for in my life (and I’ve worked for some pretty bad bosses).
Thomas pushed me over the ledge. It was time to stand up to him.
Standing Up for Myself
I said, “This is fucked up.” I raised my voice, but I wasn’t yelling. I’d like to describe this objectively, so here’s the truth: I wasn’t going ballistic or out of control, but I also wasn’t asserting myself in a fully calm way. I was somewhere in the middle of these extremes. With that said, make no mistake: I was upset, and rightfully so.
I’m not someone who swears a lot, but this whole situation became so dysfunctional that it was time to speak my mind without sugarcoating it.
I shared the truth of how I felt after one of the most messed up weeks of my life. I was saying all of this directly to Thomas, as I didn’t have a problem with anyone else in the room.
“I’ll show you what bluntness really is,” I said to Thomas. “I don’t have to take your crap.”
I looked Thomas directly in the eye, man-to-man. I could definitely tell he was caught off guard, as he was used to walking all over me without me saying anything back to him.
“I’m still friends with the CEO of the previous company I worked at,” I said. “I could easily go back there at any time. I don’t have to be here if I don’t want to.”
I was waiting for Thomas to tell me to just walk out of the company then. I wasn’t bluffing and I was completely prepared to walk out.
I continued on about how this situation wasn’t right and that Thomas was creating his own reality of last-minute frantic situations. I also called him out for lying to me about when the investors were coming to the office.
Even worse, Thomas couldn’t own up to his lie. If apologized for his mistake, that would have helped to diffuse the situation. But the truth is, Thomas is not the best when it comes to self-awareness (no hard feelings here, I’m simply stating the truth). He judges and criticizes others while rarely, if ever, taking responsibility for the projects he’s involved in. Thomas said something about how the Wednesday deadline was an internal deadline and justified.
A colleague of mine later confirmed they also heard Thomas saying that Wednesday was the day investors would actually be coming to our offices, so this comment that Wednesday was an internal deadline simply wasn’t true. Thomas wasn’t being truthful.
Amidst this disaster of a situation, I’ll never forget the look on the CFO Larry’s face: it was one of compassion. I could clearly see he felt badly that I was struggling and wasn’t happy to see that I was miserable.
Could I have been more peaceful in my approach? Yes. Do I regret what I did? Absolutely not. Standing up for myself wasn’t fun or easy, and Thomas didn’t agree with what I was saying, but I said what I needed to say.
I’d rather be judged for speaking up than be accepted for being a doormat. When you speak up for yourself, you will get judged, but speak up anyway.
As a self-aware, self-reflective human being, I can share with you what I could have done differently. Sharing this with you doesn’t mean I was wrong to feel the way I felt or to stand up for myself. In the past, a less-evolved version of myself would have been apologetic for speaking up, always deferring to other people’s opinions. But I’ve realized that it’s not sane to apologize for being true to myself. And standing up to Thomas – someone who wasn’t being very genuine, to put it diplomatically – was someone I needed to stand up to. This was the truest and most authentic thing I could have done in that moment.
What could I have done differently? One, I could have shared my honest thoughts without getting really upset and emotional. Was I yelling and screaming? No. But I wasn’t speaking calmly either. This situation was the cherry on top of an incredibly challenging week, so even though I could have been calmer, I don’t blame myself for getting upset because it wasn’t right the way Thomas had been treating me, right up to and including this moment. (No joke: during the past week, leading up to the confrontation with Thomas, I was having severe anxiety as I struggled to juggle a number of priorities.) With that said, there are things we can learn from this situation.
Two, I could have avoided this entire situation by aligning with the CEO Berry sooner, as in my experience Berry was supportive of the channel (Digital Marketing) that I was working on. I’m sometimes too trusting of others, and I made a mistake by trusting Thomas’s word. But I can’t really blame myself either, as Thomas was my boss. As far as I know, Berry wasn’t even aware of half the stuff Thomas was doing on a daily basis.
Another thing I could have done is to just get up and straight-up walk away, without explaining myself for doing so (or calmly saying something quick before I left the room, like “I’m going to leave the room now, bye.”). In a different setting, walking away is often the best thing you can do. In this situation, I’m glad that I confronted Thomas as his behavior had gone far enough. Please know that in the situations you deal with, you must always do what you feel is best in your heart. You always have the power to walk away, and you always have the power to speak your mind and stand up for yourself. It’s up to you what action to decide upon given the particular situation you’re in.
I could have also taken out my frustration outside that room, like going for a long walk or calling my girlfriend.
I said what I needed to say, and I’ll leave it at that. As I said earlier, no regrets. And no matter what I did, Thomas would have likely criticized it because that’s the kind of person he is. At the same time, it’s good to keep in mind that there are always multiple ways to handle a given situation.
At the end of the day, apart from my feelings on the matter, the fact is Thomas didn’t take any kind of responsibility for the situation. That’s poor leadership. The best leaders take the blame and give away the credit.
Standing up for yourself is healthy. It’s also good to walk away from people and situations that bring you down. Holding both of these methods in your arsenal will allow you to deal with a plethora of workplace situations.
I’m proud of myself for the way I handled the situation and can also learn from it as well – both of these reflection points are true at the same time.
For the record: no situation is ever black and white. There are times when walking away is not necessarily your best course of action, and it’s better to say what you need to say. Trust your intuition and do what you feel is best, regardless of what other people think, say, and do.
Feedback From Others About Standing Up for Myself
I’ve always been one to be open, so after this confrontation with Thomas I messaged Berry to let him know that I needed to speak with him. I didn’t feel that I deserved a slap on the wrist or reprimanding, but I did feel the need to share with Berry what happened and why it happened.
In a heart-to-heart conversation with Berry at the end of the day, I explained how Thomas said the investors were coming on Wednesday, and how I changed my week and personal plans to accommodate this last-minute request.
Berry said that the investors weren’t coming for another week.
“Lying to you wouldn’t have been my approach,” Berry said.
A few days later the CFO Larry and I chatted about the situation and he said something that surprised me.
“You spoke your mind,” Larry said.
The reason it surprised me is because I was expecting to hear that my reaction was bad, wrong, or over-the-top.
Feeling surprised about this positive feedback had nothing to do with Larry. It was a reflection of my dysfunctional past in which people always put me down for standing up for myself, including family, coworkers, and even people I considered to be friends.
While I did nothing wrong, in my psyche the little kid in me was somewhat waiting to be reprimanded. This comment from Larry meant the world to me because it caused me to realize that it’s ok to share with others how you really feel.
In a later follow-up conversation (not about this situation, but more of a general check-in), Larry shared with me that you can gently push back against people right away, instead of letting things build up over time. This was the first time someone ever taught me that.
Earlier on in my life, I was always taught to “let things go” and “be the bigger person”. While this can sometimes be a mature solution, it’s also healthy to assert yourself the moment something dysfunctional happens. If you let things build up, it becomes all-too-easy to come off as over-the-top.
Lucas, one of the other managers, later said he understood that things came to a culmination for me in that moment, and that I wasn’t the only one baffled by the sudden need to focus on category keyword tracking.
Evan, the manager who first called me into the meeting room, later told me that he thought I was intense in that moment. I felt judged by him because he never really took the time to understand my point of view. It happens and it is what is – some people will like you for being yourself and some people won’t. Evan would have preferred for me to stay in the box of not speaking my mind, but on a good note there were other people who understood where I was coming from.
Larry later said to me, “People are always judging. They will judge you for the rest of your life, just like they’ll judge me.”
Passive Aggressive Insults in a Christmas Card
Thomas and I later had a conversation to sort things out. Neither of us apologized to one another, but in a calm setting we both explained our points of views. Thomas’s perspective didn’t make a lot of sense, as he said he was worried if I could handle the workload or not.
Yes, I can handle the workload. What I don’t like is when people lack transparency. That’s not effective leadership.
Yet in our follow-up conversation, I didn’t speak my mind as much this time. I remained respectful and calm, realizing that no matter what I said or did, he would likely not change his ways. Some people will never change.
There were other people in the organization who didn’t have a good experience with Thomas either. Several people told me how Thomas brought bad energy to the team and how he didn’t work that hard. He also didn’t have the best interests at heart of the people who worked for him. You don’t have to become friends with your boss, and it’s ok to have disagreements. But past all of that, the core of the matter here is that Thomas routinely manipulated facts to make himself look better. He went behind people’s backs and caused employees to struggle.
Objectively speaking, Thomas wasn’t a good fit for the role and perhaps would be better off elsewhere.
Later that year, Thomas wrote me a Christmas card, which he gave to me at Menden’s Christmas party. At the end of this party, Thomas was drunk and he told me how he thinks I’m an enigma. He said he’s puzzled by me. I later realized this was smoke and mirrors for his own pain, as he was leaving Menden after a bad experience as CMO. In essence, he was projecting onto me his own problems. As we’ll see later in this book from other dysfunctional workplace stories, what goes around comes around.
In the Christmas Card, Thomas wrote about how I had a challenging experience with him and others at Menden. He didn’t outright insult me, but he passive aggressively nudged me by implying that all of this was my fault. Ironically, this kind of passive aggressive behavior is what caused people at Menden to dislike and distrust him to begin with. No hard feelings here, but I felt like his true colors came through even in a Christmas Card.
I felt hurt by the Christmas card, as it was one final way for Thomas to put me down. I eventually let it go, understanding Thomas to be a bad manager.
Lacking the Right Kind of Competency
To objectively show even further how Thomas lacked the right kind of professional competency, let me explain something to you. On numerous occasions he told me there’s no way Menden will ever get a content team. As I write this now, Menden has four people on the content team – and the team is actively growing, just like the rest of the digital marketing team is.
All of these roles emerged from the evident value they offer to Menden, and these are all roles that were later filled – after Thomas left Menden. These content roles were a big part of my Digital Marketing Presentation from Menden’s December strategy days; ironically, the very presentation I originally put aside to please Thomas’s unreasonable requests during the week from hell.
The point of me saying this is not to take credit for Menden’s growth, as the credit for that goes to the team as a whole. The point is that Thomas didn’t really have a vision, something that is crucial to an executive at the C-suite level. I know that’s blunt – I say that not so much to put down Thomas, who was doing his best given his limited skill set, but rather to remind you of how important it is to have vision in both your personal and professional life.
When you have a vision that compels you, the vision starts to pull you toward it and you inspire others. No offense, but Thomas had this all backwards:
- He thought in terms of limits
- He constantly criticized others
- He wasn’t interested in growing as a team
It’s good to discuss this because there’s so much we can learn here. Sometimes the best way to learn how to do something is to learn how to not do something. Flip these three behaviors of Thomas on their head and we begin to see what authentic leadership is all about:
- Think in terms of possibilities
- Encourage, uplift, and inspire others – when you need to provide feedback to someone, do so in a constructive way (and remember to praise in public while providing constructive feedback in private)
- Often be interested in growing and developing both on an individual and team level
Are you a growth-oriented leader or are you more interested in protecting the status quo? Leaders aren’t always consciously intending to be destructive – what’s happening is their beliefs and mental operating system are misguided. Once you embrace the core principles of authentic leadership, the right mindset and behavior will follow.
What does the workplace need now more than ever? Leaders who live their values and have other people’s best interests at heart. People like you.
The tough truth here is that for a long time, I thought Thomas was doing his best to help me and look out for me. We need to be mindful that there’s sometimes a difference between how people portray themselves and how they really are.
Once we have this awareness, we can lead by example and continue being authentic leaders, despite how others may choose to act.
Quitting the Company
Near the beginning of the following year, a little less than six months into this crazy job, I sat down my boss (the new CMO, now that Thomas was gone) and told him directly that I was quitting.
Why was I quitting? I had a falling out with one of my other coworkers. I decided to stand up to him and not tolerate his unacceptable behavior as I did with Thomas; people took sides, and it was an ugly situation. I had let it all go, but everything got unexpectedly brought up again after the wounds were starting to heal. In this unexpected conversation, several of my coworkers said some really nasty things about me that didn’t make sense, both behind my back and to my face.
I’ve been encountering dysfunctional people my whole life and this was no exception.
These are people who would rather judge someone before understanding the full depth of the situation. Yup, some of these people sucked.
Knowing that these people were never going to change, I knew I had to quit.
It’s important to point out that there were more reasons why I quit. Choosing to resign from the company was not an impulsive decision – it was something I carefully thought through. And as bad as the conflicts were with my boss and one of my colleagues, they were far from the only things that were wrong with this place. There are always going to be people who don’t like you and who you don’t get along with, that’s part of life and the workplace – but when the cons far outweigh the pros, it’s time to make some hard decisions. Here are more of the reasons why it was time to go:
- Absurdly long working hours: no focus on efficiency
- A lot of people there didn’t live the company values: it’s more of a show to them than a day-to-day practice
- A high gossip and unsafe atmosphere: as you’ll see in the last chapter of this book, one of my colleagues here ended up trying to sabotage me and prevent me from getting a new job
- Lots of pointless meetings: Ok, this can happen in any company, but it gets bad in digital marketing, and it’s especially bad with a company that thinks working extra-long hours is a badge of honor
- A generally chaotic atmosphere where everyone criticizes each other and no one takes no for an answer: here, everything was taken to the extreme
The CEO Berry then sat me down a few days later, after my resignation was officially processed and I was planning on leaving and says he would do anything to keep me at the company. I never in a million years expected this to happen.
Over the following weekend, I made a list of everything I was unhappy about and everything I wanted to be changed if I were to stay at the company. I was open, in a respectful way, about all of my dissatisfactions. The CEO not only granted every single one of my requests but gave me a raise and offered me work from home days each week. He kept me at the company on completely new terms and I started reporting to him directly.
I couldn’t believe this happened.
I stayed at the company seven months longer than anyone would have ever expected. Over the last several months, both the new CMO and CEO helped me find new jobs and consulting opportunities WHILE I still worked for this company.
The CMO referred me to companies and agencies, and the CEO has given me references over the phone to others. They helped me with speaking opportunities, too.
You can’t make this stuff up.
I have no idea why the CEO likes me and helps me. I’m grateful.
You don’t ever have to tolerate dysfunction. You’re only as free as your willingness to walk away from something.
If you’re going through hell, stay strong. Even the most dysfunctional situations can have a happy ending. I left Menden on good terms.
Applying Larry’s Advice
I obviously experienced some crappy and troublesome situations at Menden. With that said, one of the positives I can take away is the awesome advice I received from Larry, the CFO I told you about.
By realizing how common judgment is, I was able to begin taking judgment from others a bit less personally. For example, in my next job (which you’ll hear more about at the end of the book), I did not have a good manager again. He was mean, chaotic, unpredictable, and sometimes disrespectful. I took his behavior less personally. I ended up standing up to him, but in a more nuanced way.
Larry encouraged me to be a bit more selective with my battles and find a better balance between letting things go and standing up for myself. I knew this truth, but I found it difficult to apply in my life at times. In my younger years, I often let people walk over me. Now, I’ve gotten so sick of dysfunctional people that I default to standing up to them. There’s nothing wrong with this approach and there’s a lot of benefits to standing up to people – something I encourage you to do. With that said, I’m learning to get better at knowing when it’s best to let things go.
Authentic leaders seek to find the balance between letting things go and standing up for themselves.
And as you’re about to see, Larry’s advice helped me in other social settings as well.
A Chance Encounter at the Bar
Here I am now editing this book and getting ready to publish it. Less than a month after leaving Menden, leaving on good terms, and moving on with my life, I recently met up with a friend from Menden (who also had left Menden) at an Irish pub I enjoy going to. This is someone who is a great guy and who I enjoy speaking with.
Right before we were about to leave, a large number of people from Menden showed up who we knew.
One person came up to me – a woman who I worked with for a little more than a year – and told me that she doesn’t like what I’m doing as an author and speaker.
It’s not a big deal to have haters (something we all experience) and that’s not the purpose of mentioning this. I share this because this woman was SO kind and friendly to work with. In all seriousness, she came across as a very pleasant person. That’s why it was so unexpected for her to come up to me and put me down in this chance encounter.
I realized that you see someone’s true colors when they no longer need something from you. With a lot of people, their resentment is boiling just beneath their fake smiles. You may think you know someone, but you really don’t.
Instead of feeling the need to stand up for myself, I told her that I enjoyed working with her. I ended the discussion with her very peacefully.
Yes, her words hurt, but I changed how I viewed the situation. Instead of feeling walked over by her, I realized she’s not worth my energy. Larry’s words of wisdom were starting to sink in.
After we left, I had a good laugh with my friend about the situation. He said to me, word-for-word, “Often people take off their masks when they aren’t dependent on you anymore and you don’t contribute to their goals anymore. Sometimes nice people turn out to be weak selfish people unexpectedly.”
This chapter was about how I stood up to an unreasonable boss, and how you can use these tools when finding yourself in a similar situation. At the same time, there are also moments where someone isn’t worth your time and energy. Everything is nuanced. Everything is situational. Look at each situation you’re in and do what you need to do based on that particular circumstance.
If someone is completely out of control in your workplace with their lies and lack of integrity, it may be time to speak your mind. If someone is annoying but not having a big negative effect on your day-to-day workplace, perhaps there isn’t as much of a need to stand up to them. It’s your call. You are the one in charge of your work life, and no one else in or out of the workplace.
I’m grateful for my time at Menden. I shared some extremely difficult encounters I had with some people at the company, but that doesn’t mean everyone at Menden is like them. I made some friends at Menden and also have good memories from my time there.
I shared my challenges there with the purpose of extracting valuable lessons and helping you.
This is all for your benefit, and there are no hard feelings anymore as far as the people I had conflicts with. I know I shared that with you in the introduction, but I wanted to remind you of it here because of how open and direct I am. This sentiment applies to this chapter and all the remaining chapters and stories in this book.
Prevention
Things like this can’t always be prevented. As the saying goes, shit happens. With that said, there are things that can be done to reduce the likelihood of fires like this from happening:
- Teach and demonstrate to your colleagues and employees the importance of strong communication. Some degree of judgment is inevitable, but huge misunderstandings and severe judgments can be prevented when people really communicate with each other. Simple communication can prevent an incredible amount of dysfunction. Equally important is taking the time to care about and listen to others.
- Make sure the right people are working and collaborating together. This isn’t always going to be perfect, but you can make teams more effective by pairing together the right people.
- I can’t believe I actually have to write this, but a lot of leaders still don’t get it: don’t lie to your colleagues and employees. It will end up demotivating your employees and biting you in the ass.
- Hard work is good. A steady pace is excellent. Expecting results is needed. But don’t overwhelm your employees to the point where they collapse and break. Remember that they have a life outside of work. This doesn’t mean you cut them unfair slack or let them cut corners, but it also doesn’t mean you put so much work pressure on them that they drown in stress. Create more realistic demands; stress is not natural or normal. Your colleagues and employees will perform even better when they’re not stressed!
- Be careful who you trust. Trust the right people, yes, but don’t trust everyone.
Address and Solve
Sometimes you need to take life as it comes. Not everything can be prevented and you can’t predict how certain things will work out. When shit has already hit the fan, there are things you can do to address and solve the challenge:
- As a leader, be willing to hear both sides of a given story. Instead of looking to point the finger of blame, make it a goal to understand every perspective.
- Get to know your colleagues better and see what their preferred method of working and leadership is. Treat each person as an individual and be willing to customize your solutions for different types of people.
- Don’t write someone off just because they made a mistake. Yes, some kinds of mistakes are worse than others, but we’re all human and we all deserve the room to make mistakes, learn, and grow. Equally importantly, don’t belittle someone because they’re imperfect or not meeting expectations. Instead, work with them to help them improve.
- If there are people who are working together who aren’t a good match, don’t be afraid to split them up (regardless of their titles/positions). It’s not a big deal and these kinds of things happen all the time.
- Grow up and stop judging people. You’d be amazed how much more understanding takes place when you stop making surface-level snap judgments and instead take the time to understand the full reality of the situation. Thomas was making judgments of my work based on unclear and false instructions, which didn’t even make sense.
- Stand up for yourself in a nuanced way by keeping your cool and not raising your voice. I definitely don’t regret standing up for myself one bit and there wasn’t anything inherently wrong with my approach based on the situation. At the same time, as mentioned earlier, I could have stood up to Thomas in a little bit more of an even-keeled way.
Even the most dysfunctional of circumstances have their way of working themselves out, one way or another. You’re only as free as your willingness to walk away from something. Don’t ever be afraid to choose yourself and do what’s best for you, even when most people are judging you for it. Take the lessons from this chapter and run with them.
Actions
- Do you have a boss who is unfairly walking all over you? Might it be time to respectfully (and/or boldly) stand up for yourself?
- Are you in an extremely messed up job situation with people who refuse to change? Is it time to go to a higher-level leader or your CEO and ask for a change? Is it time to quit?
- You don’t ever have to tolerate dysfunction and you’re only as free as your willingness to walk away from something. If all else fails, remember that you’re not a prisoner in jail. You have the choice and power to walk out on the spot if you see that as the best option.
- What can you learn from the dysfunction? As you step out of it, look for the silver lining, lesson learned, or insight gained. It sucks, I know, but what can you learn about yourself? What can you learn about more effectively responding to dysfunctional people?
