I Don’t Work for You: Transforming Painful Experiences at Work

If you, like me, get to the point that you’re crying in the parking lot screaming I don’t work for you in your head, something’s gone off course. If you’re there now, there is hope. Never been there? Read on to be sure you avoid it. To move forward intentionally you have to remember where you started. If I go way back to when I first started taking on leadership responsibilities, I knew then I would intentionally lead others. Not just anyone either. Leading a bunch of people who were happy to follow your direction is fine. It just wasn’t enough for me. I wanted to lead people in a way that encouraged them to think for themselves, to lead people and change in their own right, I wanted to lead leaders.

When you’re young, you don’t have all the preconceptions of what leadership means. You lead on the court or field. You’ll influence instructors and business owners to be part of groups or events. You can impact social change by leading from scratch new organizations that will benefit others. There are all sorts of options. I was intentional in all of them. To lead in a certain area I dug into it and understood their mission and the vision for the future. Then, I’d work toward that whole heartedly. After a while, I got really good at leading by working for someone else. I could help people do impressive and impactful things. Now, that doesn’t sound like how I started this post does it? Working for someone else’s dream is not the leadership I aspired to. So, I was fortunate to go through the experience had me saying, I don’t work for you.

Who was I working for?

As a reminder, I am good at working for other people. When I align with the mission of a person, organization, or company, I get things done. I get things done well, quickly, and I recruit a group of people that will do the work alongside me. Now, it just so happens that I was blessed to have worked for organizations and managers that I really did believe in and want to succeed. I was putting everything I had into my work to help them achieve their goals. Top that off with the fact that almost every manager I had was better than the last. It was great.

Then, there was an organizational restructure. That happens in corporate America; I wasn’t worried. I didn’t mind at first when my team changed, my boss changed, and a bunch of people around me got promoted. The mission hadn’t changed and my role in it hadn’t changed.

Business as usual started to change

It was a little naive of me to think that nothing was changing for me. So many people were promoted around me that by default I was essentially demoted. My ego took a hit, sure. Worse than that though, the change impacted my ability to get work done. Let me explain. Projects and work product that were previously my decision, now needed approval from others. Those people hadn’t bought into the overall vision and weren’t accustomed to being consulted on it. So, they would intentionally or unintentionally throw up blockers. I went from being encouraged to get work done to needing to get several people on board with their permission. This really slowed things down. Worse yet, each person had competing agendas of their own that they would try to insert into the details.

Then there was another shift in my manager. A person I had previously thought of as my friend, now seemed determined to undermine me. They removed me from meetings I was previously closely involved in and excluded me from communications noting that information would “trickle down”. They even went so far as to rewrite my job description to remove any specific callout to my involvement in planning, strategy, or execution of goals.

The talk that changed things

It got worse. One day after a particularly frustrating interaction, my boss pulled me into their office. They sat me down, smiled, and said they wanted to give me some advice. The advice went something like this:

You aren’t really a leader. These things you do, any individual contributor can do that. I know you want to ‘lead leaders’ but you’ll never get there this way. People are mean. You think they’re your friends. They might even say they are. You think they like you, but they don’t. It’s going to be hard Kelly, you weren’t ready for the role you’re in and you peaked too early. We made some changes to help you, to support you. So, you can learn but you have to embrace them. You need to learn to listen, learn to communicate, learn to influence people’s decisions. From now on, you stop trying to do everything and just learn your job.

All of this was after I’d been in my role for more than a year with excellent reviews. I’d accomplished major projects and even won an award for my leadership abilities. I had been influencing decisions of executives, temp employees, and everyone in between. What really got me though was the use of the works ‘you peaked too early’. All of the rest of it, true or not, was something that I could improve. Peaking meant I’d already reached the height of my career and was on my way back down the mountain. It was so limiting.

It got worse from there

After the initial shock and sting from these words, I verified with a few very close mentors. Those mentors, all of them, agreed that this was wholly untrue. They cited evidence I couldn’t see myself with these new limiting blinders on. (The accomplishments I cited above.) These leaders did what leaders do, they used objective info to restore my confidence. I decided that this current manager just had a different style. I could learn a new style. Flexibility is just another piece of leadership, and I don’t have to agree with them (or adopt this style for myself) to calm their fears. So that is what I set out to do.

I came to my next meeting with my manager with a list of take aways to improve on and how I planned to grow in those areas. While my manager was glad I took the feedback, they denied all requests for development. They said that there was no budget. I pointed out that none of the requests had a cost associated with them. They responded that I needed to focus on learning my job. Well, that was a deal breaker. You can’t give me terrible feedback, with no examples, and then refuse to let me learn. I just won’t allow it. It took me lower on the Value Hierarchy than I was willing to go.

Know who you do work for

For weeks I carried the weight of these conversations with me. My manager added multiple reminders each week that I wasn’t measuring up. They never did give me anything specific to do to improve. I couldn’t take it. I dreaded going to work each morning. One morning, walking into the building before dawn, I just started crying. I silently screamed; I DON’T WORK FOR YOU!

I’ll admit that while it felt great to have made that proclamation, I had no idea what it meant. I wasn’t exactly quitting; I just couldn’t put my eggs in that basket anymore. So, I decided to consider who I did work for. If it wasn’t that company, and it wasn’t my boss, who was it?

With time I discovered exactly who it was that I worked for. I worked for my kids, so they could see what an inspired, focused mom looks like. I worked for my husband, so he could depend on a fulfilled and successful wife. Working for myself to prove that I could indeed do hard things was critical. Finally, and most importantly, I worked for God, as I was clearly called to do. When I really dug into it, I realized that putting together who I do work for, meant that I also needed to work for the ‘me‘ who was still silently screaming but couldn’t find the words. I wanted to work for the less than confident leader who just needed some support and development.

And now, I work for you

It’s been a long time since all of that went down. New management, new teams, new roles, new projects, and more years than I care to count. Since that time, I’ve worked with hundreds of new leaders who want to manage teams, lead projects, influence people, and grow in their careers. Through an incredibly painful experience I learned who I did not work for, which helped me develop who I did. Like any good leader, I developed myself to better serve those I worked for and help them accomplish their goals in alignment with their mission. The best part is, I’m just getting started.