Submitted by Anonymous (not verified)
in

I am facing a rather serious situation at work:

I am a marketing manager in a biotech company with about 700 people, leading a team of 5 directs and my whole team (assistant to specialist level, aged early twenties to mid fifties) complained to HR about a variety of problems they allegedly have with my leadership.
Among others, my team complained about not doing „actual marketing work“, that too many tasks come up on short notice and that they have lost trust talking with me about these issues.
The last accusation is the most serious to me as I do have weekly O3s, a weekly staff meeting and an “open door policy” according to the trinity, so I would think enough opportunities to bring up any issues. I am continuously asking for feedback whether there is anything to improve with all of my directs.

Anyhow, the complaint ended up with our CEO (whom I report to directly) and he delegated a first meeting to be held to a senior department head involved in „internal development“.
The meeting was set up within 2 working days notice and included my whole team, this senior colleague and myself. The senior colleague was allegedly supposed to function as mediator.
I thought it was an awkward setup as all accusations of course appeared as being voiced by the complete team even though I think there were very nuanced things voiced affecting individual directs, which would have been way better discussed individually. I also suspect that two people staged the thing and sort of persuaded the others to join in. We left the meeting without any results.

My personal impression is that my team is overwhelmed with their work, in my opinion for lack of experience but also lack of work attitude. I covered for my team on numerous occasions, which might have been a grievous mistake looking back. The work is neither very easy nor too demanding but my very own complaint with every single member of my team and that I gave feedback about on multiple occasions is a perceived lack of willingness to think on their own, bring up own solutions to problems and not only asking for solutions. That was often received with push-back that I failed to address immediately.

So what I would like to know foremost for now is what to do in such a situation. There will be a meeting soon where potential solutions are supposed to be discussed.

I am definitely willing to improve. At the same time my directs need to improve and I am not sure whether they are willing to. I fear that the wrong things might be on the table due to my team running to HR behind my back.

Submitted by Brett Engineering on Wednesday January 8th, 2025 12:15 am

Hi SCN10A,

"My personal impression is that my team is overwhelmed with their work" I'd be asking directs to show me the data or finding it. My manager finds this data

"I gave feedback about on multiple occasions is a perceived lack of willingness to think on their own, bring up own solutions to problems and not only asking for solutions."
The feedback model includes paths of escalation. My manager would have an unscheduled 1:1 for immediate feedback. Don't wait until Monday.

"I am continuously asking for feedback whether there is anything to improve with all of my directs."
Feedback goes down. Only 'humble submissions for consideration' should go up. It's in the Feedback Model- 'Don't use it on your manager'
When i suggest up, i say 'May i please submit that, ...' Sometimes my manager says 'no!'

If you're a licensee, i'd be writing to the MT team directly- it's a privilege as part of your license.

The manager remit is Results, retention, plus a little of risk, reward, revenue. 

The results you are seeking come from setting expectations from 1:1s and then taking action from there.

These are my thoughts anyway, it's how my manager would treat me. I'm fortunate enough to have the best manager in the world, and he doesn't use Manager Tools! 
I'm fortunate in that he does all the right things without the benefit of Manager Tools.

Mutiny at work is a career limiting decision- they've wasted their vote, big time. 
Not achieving retention for a manager is also difficult to navigate.

I think that the 'The Effective Manager' book details the order of priority- the reason of why it's Results and retention, rather than retention and results!

Make sure to work on trust- do what you say you are going to do.

Sorry that no one responded to this for the past three months. I hope things are improving.
Brett