Why I've decided to stop towing the company line

I’ve been working in my field for nearly 30 years. Before you say it, yes I agree, I don’t look that old either.

I consider myself a professional, I like to think of myself as a good leader, although I think every leader thinks of themselves that way. I have had aspirations to go higher, or at least I did until recently. I started writing today as part of my self-care, and an exercise in mindfulness, this article is where I landed.

Over the last few weeks, I have escalated a few things up to senior management, and because of the hard work of my team, a few things have come back down from senior management. Some of them are quite logical, informed by evidence, and just make sense. Then there have been the others…

I have sat in my boss’s office over the last few weeks and heard about decisions made by senior management that were reactionary, fool-hardy, and just plain dumb. I struggle sometimes with keeping my mouth shut, so I would question my boss and why such a decision was made.

Her response I found triggering because it immediately reminded me of an incident, I found myself in a few years ago.

Her advice to me was:

“You know as a leader that there will be decisions made and even though you don’t agree with them or respect the decision, you still must cascade that decision down to your team and let them know that you support it”.

In essence, I was being reminded that it was my job to tow the company line. To make sure I played like I agreed with the decisions made, and that they were the right ones.

So, you might be asking, why is that triggering? Well, let me tell you the story.

I was in a similar situation a few years back, working for a boss. It had been a rough year for me as it was, but my boss certainly wasn’t making it any easier. His style and mine were completely different, some of the ways he managed I didn’t align with, and some of the ways I led my staff he didn’t agree with. But you are always going to disagree with people, I figured that’s the reality.

Then we got to a point in the project where my very experienced and knowledgeable team would raise issues that needed to be addressed. I would then take them to my boss who would completely dismiss them, decide to do the exact opposite of what was recommended, and then I would have to go relay this message to my team.

It was not that I would sit there and acquiesce. Quite the opposite, I’d have some fairly awesome arguments about the decisions, about how it would affect my team, and how it would have a terrible effect on the team morale.

My boss would stand his ground, and say it was his call because his “neck was in the noose” for this project. He would then follow up to remind me that it was my duty to let the team know what “we” had decided.

This went on for about six months. Slowly I watched my team’s morale dwindle, but worse I saw them start to lose confidence in me. It was becoming evident that they thought I agreed with these ridiculous decisions. They thought I wasn’t supporting them, they thought I was throwing them under the bus.

Then one day, I had a meeting with my boss and one of my team came along. He presented and spoke about something that he had put a lot of work into, I agreed with him, and it needed to be done.

My boss started to run down the idea with my team member in the room. I jumped into defensive mode and started to argue that it was a logical decision, and it would benefit the organisation. Our conversations ended up getting quite heated, as if both my boss and I had forgotten my team member was in the room. No sanitized version was shown to the team, it was clear that I agreed with my team member and disagreed with my boss.

When the meeting was over, my team member and I went back to my office. The team member closed the door and said, “Look, I’m really sorry”.

I replied, “Oh it’s ok, it’s nothing I haven’t been through before in the last 12 months”.

But then he went on to say, “No, I’m sorry I’ve made your job so hard this past year, I didn’t realize how much you’ve been fighting for us, and it’s been to your own detriment”.

From that one meeting, there was a shift in the team, they had my back 100% because they knew I had theirs. They knew that I wasn’t gaslighting them (because I finally found out what that word meant and how my boss had been doing it to me and several others), more importantly, they knew I wasn’t as bonkers as some of the decisions that were being made.

How then will I respond to another situation where I’m told that I need to sell these ludicrous decisions to my team? That’s easy.

I told my boss that I don’t think our values align anymore, and it’s probably best for both of us that I look at going somewhere else.

So either find a new job or this story gets 1,000,000 reads per day for the next few months, or everyone on Vocal tips me $10.

I think for now I’ll just focus on the new job.

Thank you for reading, and if you do want to tip or like or comment, that's all very welcome too.