I inherited a team from a terrible manager, job application asked about how anxiety affects your work, and more

It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go…

1. I inherited a team from a terrible manager

Thanks to your help, I have a shiny new job. I’ve inherited a team where the last manager, Jane, was a true chaos agent. I’m getting stories of her ignoring staff, not communicating on projects or workload at all, putting the blame on staff to senior manager when projects didn’t happen, drinking too much at work events, inappropriate behavior. All her behavior went unchecked for some years until she was suddenly let go.

The team are generally exhausted. There is some anger that they escalated complaints about Jane and nothing was done (until it was). At least one openly says she has PTSD.

I am trying to support the team and be an aggressively good manager. I’m being transparent about what I’m working on and how it involves them, consulting with them on planning, giving them clear guidance and timelines and so on. They are being super receptive to everything, and bringing good attitudes to the table because they seem so relieved to have a normal manager.

Every single day I’m getting multiple team members say, “Wow, it’s not like it was before” and “Wow, Jane would never have done that” or “Jane always did XYZ, it was awful.”

When they say these things, I want to acknowledge what they’ve been through but also not have meetings turn into group therapy sessions. And when the flush of me being not Jane has worn off, I’m sure they fill discover some things they don’t like. They won’t get to do whatever they want all day anymore (like they were before) for a start.

So how do I best support this traumatized team to get the most out of them and help them move on, and what do I say when they start in on the Jane stories?

Visibly being an aggressively good manager (as you’re doing) and time. It’s going to take a while for them to viscerally feel and trust that they’re working in a different situation now and for the stability of that to feel solid.

In response to the comments about how things used to be under Jane, try to keep things moving forward in a reasonably upbeat way: “This is what I’ve found to work well” … “I’m always open to feedback if you have it” … “I’m glad this sounds better to you” … “Let’s see how this goes!” … etc.

I do think you can be open to some one-on-one venting about what happened in the past — and it might give you useful insights into some of the clean-up you’re going to have to do — but it shouldn’t be a group activity that takes over team meetings; that tends to go off the rails quickly and can keep people mired in the past longer. If you see that happening and redirection doesn’t resolve it pretty quickly, it might be worth addressing directly: “I know this team has had a rough time of it. I’m seeing our meetings start to derail on how things used to be, and while some of that is understandable to process the changes this team has been through, I also want to keep us focused on what we’re doing now.” (That said, if people are really struggling with it, there might be value in one discussion to process it together, for anyone who wants to participate, with the understanding that the team needs to move forward after that.)

2. Application asked about how anxiety affects your work

I was filling out a teacher job application and it had a questionnaire that included this question:

“In the last period of time, how much has anxiety interfered with your interaction with your team mates?” The answers you could choose from were:
* None
* Mild; some interactions have been strained, but no serious problems
* Moderate, we have complained or accused each other of minor insults or work slip-ups
* Severe, I am concerned that anxiety has made it difficult to work effectively as a team
* Extreme, I am concerned that my anxiety makes it impossible to work with others on this team

Is this question illegal?

If you’re in the U.S., it’s illegal. Employers can’t legally ask questions that are designed to suss out the existence of a disability. They could certainly ask questions about your relationships with coworkers and how effectively you’ve worked on a team, but they can’t ask, as they’re effectively doing here, “Do you have anxiety and, if so, how does it show up at work?”

3. I did a huge amount of work to save my team’s butt — and no one has even thanked me

My office was changing to a new system in a month after working toward it for over a year, and my manager called me into a meeting, near tears, and told me that the new system had not been set up to create important reports that we desperately need. Our work runs on these reports. We report to auditors and the government using these reports. We track our own data using these reports. Not having them wasn’t an option.

She asked if I had any ideas as to what could be done because I’m good with Excel, and if I knew any formulas that could organize this data in the way we needed.

I spent weeks designing a sprawling framework that automatically mapped all of our data into six wildly different reports, including some that were requested after the initial meeting as a “want” rather than a “need.” I learned new skills to make this happen and put aside my own work to get it done. I worked late. I analyzed and picked apart the old reports to correct the mapping, even identifying errors in the old reports that needed to be corrected moving forward. It was a ton of work and no one else in my department could have created this, including my manager. It felt like a miracle when I pulled it off. It is now being utilized by all levels of management in my division due to how useful it is.

And I never even received a thank you.

Now, six months on, it is invariably “my” file when there is an update or correction that needs to be made, but “our” file in every other context. That’s it.

I’m not expecting a parade or a promotion, but there hasn’t even been a conversation highlighting that someone at least understands that I pulled our butts out of the fire in a major way. I’m wondering if I’m being too sensitive? I work here. It wasn’t volunteer work; they paid me to do it. But without me, they would have had to delay launch and pay the system designers a whole lot of money to get the result I basically handed to them. Is it wrong to expect a ‘thank you’ for working, even if the task was this far outside of my normal purview?

No, you absolutely should have been recognized for going above and beyond and solving a massive problem! That would be true even if it were a normal part of your job; it’s extra true because it wasn’t.

You should ask for a raise, and make this a centerpiece of your argument for why you deserve it — both the creation of the system itself, and your ongoing role in keeping it working.

4. My boss’ personality changed after brain surgery

I’ve worked for the same boss at the same company for 16 years. During that time, my boss needed brain surgery. It’s been three years since his surgery, and his personality and management style have taken quite a turn for the worse. Instead of the demanding but fair boss I worked with for so many years, he is now harsh and downright mean — to the point that other colleagues will contact me privately after an undeserved public dressing down to ask if I’m okay. Executive leadership has been present for some of these meltdowns and have not intervened.

After three very difficult years working with him, I’m looking for another job and it looks like I’m about to get a very welcome offer. But I’m wondering how honest I should be in my eventual exit interview. Should I highlight these personality shifts to HR as a reason for leaving? It doesn’t seem quite fair to my boss, because it is very possible and even likely that these personality changes are due to the brain surgery itself and therefore there is little that can be done to change for the better. All the same, I’ve been shielding the rest of the more junior team from his mercurial moods as best I can and feel guilty quietly leaving them to deal with him in this state.

I want to approach this both honestly and compassionately, and any advice is appreciated!

Yes, tell HR. Your boss is in a position of power over other people and being abusive to them; it’s not a question of whether or not he can help it, it’s a question of the fact that it’s happening. You can certainly present it through a compassionate lens — specifying that it’s a change since his surgery and you realize it might stem from that — but it would be a significant kindness to the people left behind if you make someone aware that it’s happening. (And while executive leadership has seen some of it, they don’t necessarily know the extent of it.)

5. Leaving after I successfully pass a performance improvement plan

I’ve been on a performance improvement plan (PIP) for the past few months (it was paused for a long while) due to poor performance that ended up being caused by a sudden onset of a pretty serious disease.

Now that I’m recovering and back at work, my PIP is active again and … well, I’m progressing fine. No major issues, hitting KPIs and not feeling terrible after the work day. Barring any major hiccups, it’s looking like I’ll pass it.

I want to relax and get into the groove again but on the other hand, the way the middle levels of the company treated me while I was ill (grandboss and HR), up to and including open mockery in meetings. I still want out.

I really love my team but I’ve lost trust in the company. I also have wider issues with the workplace that are more of “we need to all join the union” problems but those don’t really factor into my PIP, they just piss me off.

I’m dealing with guilt from wanting to leave, anger from how I was treated, exhaustion from fighting an illness that impacted my life for the better part of two years and the longing to leave to see if I can get a better deal in a new workplace (likely outside of my current high-stress field). Obviously there’s a lot of parts at play here, but is it common to pass a PIP and leave anyway? Is it ethically questionable?

It’s no way ethically questionable to leave after passing a PIP. It would be in no way ethically questionable to leave if the PIP had never happened, either. If you want to leave, you get to leave! Ethics don’t come into it, unless you’re, like, an airline pilot parachuting out of the plane mid-flight.

People end up leaving shortly after PIPs all the time — sometimes because they feel poorly treated, but sometimes because the PIP made them realize the job wasn’t a great match (whether due to the work itself or their manager’s expectations, or because the PIP made them feel too much instability, or all sorts of other things).

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