I know what it feels like to work for someone who I was convinced was my biggest problem. The one who interfered most with my ability to succeed at the very job they had given me responsibility to do.
I remember being summoned to a meeting where a very serious, yet ridiculous and unsupported accusation was made against me by a direct report, with no forewarning of the agenda. The meeting had been arranged by the HR Executive and this was not the first time I had found myself in that kind of situation. As I sat there trying to explain myself I gradually realized that nobody was interested in what I had to say. So I thought If you’re not going to listen to me, I am done talking.
And I almost stopped listening too. Until the part where in spite of my best efforts to hold my department together, with his very own hands and words, the boss threw me under the bus. It was hard to believe. Almost surreal. While the one who caused the problem, who failed miserably at the most mundane tasks, sat there smugly with an innocent look on her face.
You caused this mess and somehow I am the one on trial?
Needless to say I left that meeting incensed, went straight to my desk and wrote one of the strongest and most poignant memos I had ever written. It said exactly and directly all that I had held myself back from saying previously. There was no diplomacy, no wondering how anyone might receive it and certainly no attempt to soften anything. I was angry, the direct report was guilty as sin, and yet they seemed to be taking her side. This was not right and I was not taking it.
I sent it out immediately, copied to the two senior executives who were in that meeting. When my boss saw it he called me immediately, clearly shocked and disturbed by what I had written. He said that I sounded as though I felt completely on my own and unsupported.
I responded at once.
“You got that right. That’s exactly how I feel.”
And I meant every word.
There was no perhaps I am overreacting going on in my head. As far as I was concerned, I knew what had happened, I knew who had caused it and I knew exactly why I felt the way I did.
The problem was, in retrospect, I did not know then what I know now..
I knew a great deal about what they had done. What I did not understand nearly as well was what I had done.
In hindsight, I can recognise the insecurity I felt as I walked into that meeting. The person in there had accountability issues and took no responsibility for her actions. She expertly masked this by showing up as the victim and the boss could not see this as clearly as I could.
In my view they were all wrong. I thought I was right and justified.
And this is where the problem begins.
Anger and self righteousness has a way of preventing you from seeing how your own behaviour could make a bad situation worse.
Yes, they were wrong. Yes, I was the one being treated unfairly. I was angry, hurt and clearly paying the price for actions I did not take.
At that time, in that state, I could not see why I should have to reflect, regulate myself or be the bigger person.
It was not right and it was not fair.
That is certainly how it felt to me.
Taking a hard look at myself then would almost have felt like admitting that they were right, that I was wrong and somehow taking them off the hook for what had happened. So I didn’t.
But I wish I had.
Not because I now believe I was wrong about everything. I don’t. There are things I believed then that I still believe today, and there is at least one line in that memo I most certainly would write again.
What I wish I had understood was that being right about what they were doing did not automatically make my response right too.
And as time would tell, some of my responses eventually worked against me. That is the part I could not see while it was happening.
I could see their behaviour. I could see the injustice. I could feel how unsupported I was. What I could not recognise was the extent to which my anger, hurt and need to protect myself were beginning to influence what I said, what I did and how I showed up.
And unfortunately, even when somebody else creates the problem, you still have to live with the consequences of how you respond to it.
That may be one of the most irritating truths I have had to learn.
Because even they really are wrong. Even though your boss may genuinely be difficult. They may not listen. They may criticise unfairly, undermine you, favour other people or make decisions that affect you badly. You may have very good reason to object.
But being justified in your objection does not mean that everything you do in response will work out in your favour.
This raises a much harder question, which I reluctantly had to ask myself:
Could I be right about you and what you have done and still be wrong about the way I responded to you?
Could the way I defended myself have made my situation worse? Or could something I attributed entirely to your behaviour also have been caused, at least in part, by the way I related to you?
Those are not easy questions to ask when you already feel wronged. In fact, they can feel deeply unfair.
But the alternative is to hand the other person even more of your power.
Because if everything that happens next depends on what they do, then your options remain tied to them. The moment you begin to understand where you have control over your responses, you recover something very important: you recover your agency—your power to choose.
In Be the Person You Dream of Becoming, I ask:
“What might I not be seeing about me?”
I wish I had known to ask myself that question then.
It would not necessarily have changed what they were doing, and it might not even have changed some of the decisions I eventually made.
But it might have changed me and how I responded in that situation and in similar ones.
I might have understood why certain things affected me as deeply as they did. I might have recognised when I was responding to what was actually happening and when an older insecurity had joined the conversation. And with that understanding, I might have been able to choose my response instead of simply acting from how strongly I felt in the moment.
Perhaps I would still have said some of the same things. I might even have walked away.
But there is a considerable difference between making a decision because you have thought it through clearly and making one because, in that moment, it was exactly how you felt.
Sometimes we only discover how much that difference matters after we have lived with the consequences.
Reflect & Apply
1️⃣ Who are you convinced is making your life difficult right now?
2️⃣ What might you not be seeing about yourself because you are so focused on what they are doing?
3️⃣ Even if you are right about them, how is your response helping you—and what consequences might it be creating for you?
📘 In Be the Person You Dream of Becoming, I explore how seeing ourselves more clearly can change the choices we make and the results we create. My book is available on Amazon, in RIK Bookstores nationwide, or directly through me.
It takes a lifetime of Becoming to live a life.
Sanctimoniously,
Monica Rogers-Fletcher
Listen to YOUR BOSS MIGHT BE WRONG YET YOU ARE NOT RIGHT