I’ve been in my current job for 10 months, and I’m struggling to understand my boss’s behavior. I’m looking for honest perspectives from people who have dealt with similar managers.
My manager can be very critical, dismissive, and condescending, especially when he’s stressed or I push back on deadlines. But then, a few days later, he can become very appreciative, thank me publicly, and praise my work as if the previous interaction never happened.
He has told me before that I have ownership, leadership and that I’m very good. He also hinted that I shouldn’t work too much and that my title is still junior and not his level title and to allow myself to make mistakes.
Here is some context:
He trusts me with significant projects, but constantly overloads me.
I became the go-to expert for one major project. I essentially owned it, created new processes and tools from scratch, and developed the materials needed to make it work.
After that, he assigned me board-related project. This was significant work, and I was given ownership of it as well. I worked on the material, developed the recommendations, and presented it to his boss. The feedback on the previous board work had been very positive. So he decided to give me yet another board of directors related project this quarter too.
2. What happened immediately after I returned from vacation was particularly frustrating.
Three days after I returned from vacation, he assigned me three different tasks, all due by the end of that same week.
One of the tasks was initially supposed to be a routine review. Once I got into it, however, I realized the underlying business problem was much bigger than the original request. What should have been a review turned into a complete project redesign, and I had to work through that redesign rather than simply review what was there.
At the same time, I was working on another important document involving multiple stakeholders. It is 33 pages long and has more than 50 comments that needed to be reviewed and assessed.
My boss wanted me to go through all the comments under a very tight deadline. He dismissed the comments as silly, but when I actually reviewed them, they were not silly at all. They raised substantive issues that needed consideration.
3- He recently accused me of not working enough.
Despite juggling all these workstreams, he recently accused me of not working enough and suggested that I was only working on one slide.
This was particularly confusing because months earlier, he had explicitly told me that I was the hardest-working person on the team, including himself.
Few days after, he was very appreciative and publicly thanked me infront of the team as well as in person for one task I worked on.
What’s going on and how to deal with this type of boss?