I work in a large public service organization. My team joined forces with another specialist team to form a tech innovation hub for the department. We formed a new mgmt structure, with me as 1 of 4 managers, reporting to a director from the other team.
We pushed out some pretty cool products quickly and had formed a high performing team.
I started noticing problematic behaviours slowly that began to unsettle me more and more about my new mgmt team:
-Rampant sexism, comments of women’s clothes, weight and intelligence.
-Zéro sum attitude to clients and partners, if they didn’t want to do something, they were dumb and wrong. They were taking away form our expertise.
-Creating an environment where the team felt they needed “protection” from the clients and the only way to be safe is to stay in this team. Everyone not with us is against us.
-Discouragement of claiming proper OT
-The team was all underpaid compared to other parts of the organization, rhetoric about how the innovation of the team makes up for the lack of pay. How we are all “family”.
-Constantly demeaning and diminishing clients and partners to the team
-Gaslighting me and other people when I raised concerns, eg “we are joking “, “people just can’t take being challenged”
-I noticed good members of my team start to buy into the environment, getting more stressed and angry each day at the clients and the department.
These behaviours were demonstrated by one of the managers and my director.
I lasted 1.5 years, but decided enough was enough and I left. I took a few members of my team with me to a new department.
My old boss totally lost it and complained to as many executives as he could about us. Recently, he sent an email to my new team saying they’d no longer provide us services bc we targeted his staff (they provide tech services to other departments, including my new one).
It’s a complete mess and I’ve never witness this level of toxicity and selfishness in the work place in my life.
When I was with the old team, when clients complained or when people complained it was buried. The external image of the team was a spotless place for innovation, our senior executives had bought into it.
I doubt many outside of that team know about the sheer level of toxicity and now their behaviours are impacting my new department bc they feel I wronged them.
I want to tell our President/Minister personally about these issues, but don’t know if this would be career suicide? She had been instrumental in the formation of this department, so clients fear complaining to her about issues with that team.
I just want to move on with my life and work, but also want to hold people to account and ensure these behaviours aren’t perpetuated.