5 Hints Your Boss is Unhappy with You
You’re not imagining the forgotten invitations and backhanded comments. They’re key signals from your manager.
The worker enjoyed her job for a year. Then her boss began changing his tune: most of their conversations involved negative feedback, and in their 30-minute one-on-ones, he began ending twenty minutes in. She was not informed of a casual Friday happy hour. Her boss started attributing displeasure to others in ways that she couldn’t confirm, such as, “The CMO is very unhappy with your work.” A mild but steady stream of backhanded comments flowed during seemingly light conversations.
She was beginning to wonder, no worry, about her job security.
Whether they realize it or not, many managers can be fairly indirect about their concerns over an employee’s work. Some of this is human nature and has long been a problem. “Managers don’t like difficult conversations,” says Karen Huang, senior director of search assessment at Korn Ferry. “They fear employee tears or anger, or the need to justify their negative impressions,” she says. And in recent times, some of the sidestepping is the result of firms slashing management layers, leaving bosses stressed out and little time for more open conversation.
Either way, most employees rarely miss the ensuing flow of negative signal, but struggle to understand them and to know how to respond. “It’s quite rare that it goes unnoticed by the employee,” says business psychologist James Bywater, senior client partner at Korn Ferry. “And it’s quite damaging.” Here are the behaviors to look for:
Delayed responses.
To everything from emails to requests for vacation dates. Anything that requires an answer suddenly requires a follow-up message. It’s rarely about your request. “It reflects their own discomfort with conflict,” says Kendra Marion, vice president of global assessment services at Korn Ferry.
Exclusion.
The rejection comes in many forms: marginalization from high-profile projects. Omission from invitation lists to both social and work events, such as team happy hours, corporate dinners, client events and key meetings. The exclusion is most likely to rear its head around spontaneous lunches or coffee breaks, says Marion, where no paper trail exists. And then there’s the most insidious type of exclusion: idea exclusion. A manager stops seeking your input, or simply doesn’t seem to care what you think. One-on-one meetings become shorter or non-existent. “Your manager appears less willing to mentor or invest time in your development,” says Bywater.
Extreme compliance requests.
Suddenly your sick leave requires a doctor’s note, and your slideshows require dissertation-level footnotes. Or perhaps a review is requested midway through a project that previously would have been checked upon completion. That unimportant deadline that you missed? Every milestone is now a crisis if not promptly met. “The boss is giving you the fifth degree,” says Huang, and your autonomy is in the toilet.
Negative reviews.
Your strengths and improving skills? Those are so last year. When you’re on thin ice, “feedback predominantly focuses on mistakes, gaps and shortcomings rather than growth,” says Bywater. It’s an expression of the increasingly negative lens through which your boss sees you.
Bad body language.
The body doesn’t lie. Negative non-verbal communications include avoided eye contact, not smiling, and closed-off body postures like arms crossed across the chest, physical turning away, or leaning away from you, says Huang.
While none of these signs is damning alone—after all, a forgotten invitation isn’t terminal. But stack three or four together, and the pattern means that it’s time to either find the path to improvement, or a Plan B.
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