RE: Knocking 'em dead at a new job

["Giordano, Connie" <Connie -dot- Giordano -at- FMR -dot- COM>]

OK, some ideas from past, not present (Thank goodness), experience:

-Send follow-up memos or emails confirming the subject of your
conversations. Detail any concerns or issues you raised, and the "boss's"
response. Copy the higher ups on the project/management team.

-If necessary blind copy the boss's boss.

-Be constructive, point out the issues when given a task, and provide at
least one alternative to solving the problem.  Document it.

-Provide reminder emails and status reports, copying the members of the
project team who need to know the status of your work. This way more than
one person on the team is aware of the status at all times.  It's pro-active
so that when the changes and lies appear, you've got documentation all over
the place of what you did or tried to do.

-Do some interpersonal skills triage:  Plan a time to discuss the problem of
mind changing and blame laying. Bring a list of the points you want to make,
a list of potential methods to solve, and recap the meeting in writing.
Only copy or blind copy a manager or HR person as a last resort.

-When all else fails and you choose to leave, make the conditions well-known
during a written exit interview.  They may not read it, or they may ignore
it, but you've done your best at that point.

In my experience, anyone worth his salt goes through a bad employment
situation such as the one you describe.  The best ones do what you have
done, figure out what went wrong, and develop a positive approach to fix it
in the future.  These things have worked for me in the past.  I hope they
help.

Connie G

-----Original Message-----
From: Scottie Lover [mailto:iluvscotties -at- mindspring -dot- com]

[snip]

Any suggestions about what to do when working for a liar?  Over the years,
I've had incredibly perfect bosses (several of whom are still very close
friends).  However, I had two who were congenital liars.  They would tell
you to do something (blatantly ignoring your explanations about why that
wasn't prudent), and then deny having said that, and blamed you when
something went wrong.  I was not the only person involved in this
situation, and we were all miserably unhappy and left.  

[snip]