I work at a major fashion brand at the senior director level and pride myself on being very collaborative, logical/pragmatic, and empathetic to the teams that I work with and those who report into me. I’ve always been a huge proponent of work life balance, clear track for promotion/pay bumps (this usually at the expense of my own pay bump), and pushing back on work that doesn’t make sense.
So while I’m not full tilt anti-work per se.. I am the type of manager who believes everyone should take sick time without worrying about counting sick days, all vacation days should be taken with additional day’s receiving my immediate approval, etc.
This last quarter was tough for the entire industry, but we managed to hit all of our targets with a small-ish crew through great planning and communication.
Enter new director for another team that interacts with us a lot (we report into the same SVP) – she has been playing some type of twisted game by misrepresenting the truth, lies through omission, and straight up lying in conversations with our SVP. I’ve received complaints from the team that she’s been rude and degrading in her communication, but our SVP dismissed that feedback immediately.
Instead, I find myself becoming the sacrificial lamb in our conversations where any feedback I share now is turned back around on me as a sign of my incompetence.
I love my team and don’t want to abandon them, but Momma didn’t raise no fool – I won’t be staying long.
This is a bit of a rant, but I’m curious if anyone has been through this and/or has recommendations on how to help my team and myself.