Stories
Victoria, a professional woman, aged 45
I felt as if I had been physically and emotionally abused after I lost my senior management position.
The Board Chairman had been bullying me for months, undermining everything I did, telling me what I did wasn’t good enough. I would send him a paper and he would say it has to be rewritten and when I asked what improvements he would recommend he would come back with a different numbering system or highlight a small grammatical error.
He would send me up to ten emails a day telling me what to do, how to manage, asking me to justify my management decisions and to explain myself. I didn’t mind being accountable but I did mind having my professionalism and integrity continually undermined and questioned. He used to shake his finger at me. A bloke would have decked him.
He questioned my integrity and my relationships with other people and then he started talking to my staff behind my back. The final straw came when he employed a consultant to talk to my staff and told me about it three days later.
Up until this man became the Board Chair I had felt that as a Chief Executive I was competent and able. I had the support of the previous two Chairs and felt the majority of the board. Little did I know that even my supporters on the board would in the end be outwitted by him. Though later they told me they didn’t want to support him but they were powerless too.
During my term in management our organisation had high credibility, we were more financially stable than ever before and people were proud of being associated with us. I felt good about my job, myself, my staff and the relationships with clients, my networks. I had very positive performance appraisals and was increasingly recognised for my expertise outside of the organisation including at the highest political level. Members of the Board seemed happy, the previous Chairs were always complimentary, as were clients.
Within four months of the new chair taking over I felt shattered. My confidence was gone. I kept looking behind to see who might stab me in the back. I was scared to make decisions, or purchase anything let alone leave the city in case it would result in me being accused of some wrongdoing. I felt as if I had committed some crime.
I was constantly being asked to write papers for the Board to explain decisions and then they would be rejected - so they never went before the Board. If by chance a paper did get through and if I was allowed to present it to the Board he would announce after I had done the presentation that he didn’t support my proposal. Twenty-four hours before he had approved them. I was not allowed to speak to other board members and if I they contacted me as three did we had to meet in secret. Towards the end even those staff I had been close too stayed away.
The harder I worked to satisfy him the worse it got. One night I sat at my desk until midnight sobbing. I didn’t know what else to do. In the end I rang a friend who came and got me. The next day I didn’t get up to go to work. In fact I didn’t get out of bed for five days. I had never done that - not ever even when my parents died.
In the end I resigned. My employer, under threat of a personal grievance, reached a settlement with my lawyer. The money did not repair the damage that was done to my confidence but it did give me some security. I was lucky too that I was offered a job the day after a settlement was reached – I did not feel obliged to inform my previous employer but did tell my new employer of the circumstances.
My former employer had told me that if it were within his power he would ensure I would never work in (city name) again. No one heard him say this when he handed over the cheque - just me.
Despite this, for the first few months I was hurt and confused about what had happened. I would find myself bursting into tears when I was alone. I would wake up crying during the night and then couldn’t sleep because I kept going though the events over and over again asking if it was my fault, had I over-reacted, could I have done something different. I studied the annual accounts for months, carrying a set round checking if there were other things I could have done. The company was in fact very secure financially – it had made a profit for the first time in 12 years that year.
I felt a failure and I thought that everyone knew. I stopped answering invitations to functions. I was too embarrassed to go and I was worried that people would ask me what happened and that I would show my real feelings. I didn’t trust anyone anyway.
My former clients and staff would ring and say how sorry they were that I had gone and the atmosphere of the organisation had changed. They would ask me why I had gone. There was a gag clause in my settlement. I had to say it was time to move on and that sometimes change was the best thing. I wanted to tell them what had happened but knew to do so would make things worse for me and my former staff.
Two of my staff who had been close to me were made redundant six months later. They were in core positions and they too were bullied. Unfortunately our relationships with one another have still not fully recovered – the hurt and the guilt between us is unspoken – we are like abused children- we share a secret