Another unskillful boss.

Can not believe that it has been three years since I last wrote anything here. A lot has happened since then but I do want to record this post about another unskilful boss I had for two years.

Hindsight is 20/20 as they say and maybe I could have done things differently but at the time it all seemed like the way to go.  I was posted into a position which I hadn't done in a long time. I asked for it because I thought I needed to renew those skills which I had not used in a long time.

I was up front with my boss and informed him that I felt underdone for this role and needed a little more mentoring from him to bring me back up to speed. I guess he took that to mean that I knew nothing; because that's the way he treated me for the next two years until he moved on.

Do you know what micro-management is? Its when your boss gets involved with every single thing you do and wants it done their way. Well he was that. He also only had one setting for his communication style - transmit. There was no receiving happening. I remember he asked for my opinion once in the entire two years and I was so shocked at the time that I didn't know what to say.  I guess that showed him not to ask for my input because he never did again.  Belittling,  degrading, uncaring, he was all of them. I remember telling him about my dyslexia about March of the first year and all he could say in turn was 'why are you telling me this now? I should have been told this from the start.'  There were three other people in the section who all felt the same as I did so again I knew I wasn't going nuts.

Anyway, this post is not about him. It's about how well I survived this very unskillful individual. The two years were not pleasant in any way but I came out of it stronger than before.  I was able to apply the skills I had gained from Buddha and see that his issues were his issues and not mine. I left them with him. Yes the years were stressful but I was able to see that emotion as simply an emotion and know that it didn't define me, or make me less. It was just a physiological response to this situation.