Countering negativity from your Boss - help required

[worldtraveller04]

Hi

This might not be the right place to post this question, but it does have an emotional content as you will see. So, if you bear with me, let me tell you my problem. I apologise for its length in advance.

I'm a 48 yo manager for a family company with only 9 staff. I've been with them 28 years. I was primarily trained in a technical role, and moved into production management, then quality management, health and safety and IT, all for the same guy. I enjoy the job, enjoy the people I work with, and feel I do a decent job.

From a management point of view, with my quality management skills, I feel I am very proficient. I can only think of twice in 28 years I didn't come up with the goods. The boss can half the available time, double the work required, hide the goalposts and somehow I still come out on top. So far so good. And mostly this goes unnoticed and unrewarded (in terms of thanks, praise etc). I'm not on my own in the way staff are treated. But do one little thing wrong, and a tonne of bricks drops on you.

Unfortunately the boss is now 65 and retiring, and his two young sons have come on board, neither have had a senior management role. The boss is getting nasty in his old age and seems to revel in finding things to give you a roasting over; it's not just me, its everyone, and we get it in rotation. Everyone in the company is close to breaking point, and there's a lot of negativity in the place - complaining (and getting caught complaining quite often), depression and general unhappiness. Most people are seeking alternative employment.

Now, his two sons are no better. They are both clever people academically, but one has built a reputation for gossiping about his staff to other staff, shooting first and ask questions later, he never has the full facts and he's always going off half cocked then having to go back and apologise later (even to our customers), and he is a total hypocrite - most of the things he complains to us over (he has taken this trait from his father) he actually does himself, with a much greater frequency. He is everything a bad leader could be. I'd love to work alongside him and help him mend his ways but he's perfect in his eyes and won't accept he's causing any problems. The other son is very blinkered, has developed favourites in his key departments and just keeps piling on work on to others with no consideration on how they will cope. If anyone tries to address the issue he shrugs his shoulders and walks off, and his dad just says we're whining.

Now, am I perfect? Nope. I have two or three flaws I can think of straight away, and probably some more besides. Firstly I am intolerant of people who don't want to play the game. I have a manager who refuses to follow health and safety rules, and when faced with a person like that my tendancy is not to coach them along (shes quite abusive with it anyway so its not an option) but I tend to bring the full weight of my health and safety system to bear in order to bring them to 'justice'. I know I do this simply because the other staff all work as one team, happily working towards a safer environment for all, and I feel its unfair that this particular manager isn't putting the same amount of effort in. But this manager is one of the favourites I mentioned and can do no wrong. I know that I'm having a knee-jerk reaction to her and probably not doing myself any favours by hitting her with the big book everytime I catch her stepping out of line.

The new directors do not understand punctuality and timeliness, and the first one I mentioned excelled himself last month by return a magazine article to me exactly one year after I'd passed it to him, with some suggestions for action. So, to speed up the process, I sometimes have to semi-complete a quality or health and safety form for him in order to ensure it's returned in good time. He doesn't like the way I do this - fair enough, I'm just very reluctant to go head to head again, because a long delay is what inevitably happens. But I've been rumbled so I can change this aspect of management myself.

Next I find myself easily drawn into the negative atmosphere and joining in with a moaning session. I don't like this in myself but with 9 people doing it its hard to isolate yourself from it.

I don't like conflict, so I would rather leave a note or memo on someones desk if theres a major issue with them, rather than sit and discuss it. Why is this? Because the only people I actually ever need to leave a note for are the manager above or one of the two new directors, who constantly break every part of our quality and HS systems repetitively.

The whole family of bosses have a bad opinion of me, whenever I try to do my job, they see me as trying to cause obstacles or rock the boat. I don't quite understand why they're employing me; and I can't just be a cosmetic manager, making it look like we work safely while work goes on in a hazardous manner at times. In other words, I take my job seriously and like to do a good job. I'm here to protect the company's interests, not to stop them doing stuff for the fun of it. They have the opposite view of course.

In the face of all this, they have decided to hold staff appraisals, although none of them are trained to do it. The second son held a meeting and discussed the process. Its identical to Steve's questionnaire, hence how I stumbled on this site. We're going to acknowledge and appreciate employees achievements, in a supporting and positive way. So I filled my questionnaire in, and having been given a complex about being negative, I refrained from putting anything in the "what dont you like about work" sections, although I could have written a book.

The first son I mentioned replied to my questionnaire and immediately gave me examples of what he considered bad management. One of them he cited that I had not gotten the full facts in an accident report. In fact, I had the full facts and one of his staff had lied on their statement. HE does not have the full facts because his brother changed the report to lessen the impact on the bad manager. Another instance is that I misinformed fire and rescue during a fire that broke out one evening at the works. I came out in my own time (9pm)and dealt with it to the fire and rescue#s satisfaction. After I had left, another staff member arrived and misinformed various people as to the contents of some storage areas. In other words, it wasn't me and yet again this director has not got his facts straight. On another occasion we were burgled repeatedly and another employee who is in my team told the director that he'd seen a man he thought he recognised hanging around the day before. The director told me to call the police, but on questioning the employee he decided he couldn't be sure about the identity of the man. I fed this back to the director and now he says that I deliberately got the employee to change his mind. Seeing as the burglary hampered me directly I'd have loved to catch the guy and had no reason to put a spanner in the works. He says these all are examples of me not taking the bull by the horns and he wants me to be more proactive??? In my view they are nothing of the sort. I would also point out these happened 18 months ago and this is the first time I knew he had a problem with me. And all this before we've even sat down for the appraisal meeting!

To finish with my question then. I don't want to enter into this process with a negative attitude, I don't want to spend the whole process defending myself and your site suggests that every negative should be changed into a positive. I don't mind developing and if I'm doing something wrong then I 'll fix it, but who is going to fix the directors? And should I just sit back and take this unjust criticism so as not to appear once again to being negative?

It has really got me down, which can't be right.

I look forward to your views on how to handle the situation.

[Lauxa]

It sounds like you are in a tough situation and one that I have no experience with.

The first thing that came to my mind was a speaker I heard, Aman Motwane, during a podcast. I looked up the podcast for you, it is produced Unity Church of Phoenix, the name is Change Your Relationships: Change Your World, the date on it is 10/21/07, and it is 27:30 in length. Here is the link to their webpage, I think you have to subscribe to the podcast and then you can download the particular talk:

Streaming Sermons |Spiritual Messages | Rev. Richard Maraj

Part of the talk is about some challenges he had in business working with a difficult person. In his case, he was the boss, but it might still have relevance to your situation. If you decide to listen to it, let me know what you think and if it was any help to you.