Boss hates me - how to fix relationship
EDIT: seems like I'm getting a lot of hate in the comments rather than any actual advice, would appreciate someone helping with suggestions
I’m looking for advice on how to repair a relationship with my female director after I made a serious mistake at work. I’m a senior associate (6 years experience)
We used to have a great relationship — regular lunches, coffee walks, lots of rapport — and she genuinely seemed to like me (professionally of course).
Then everything changed once I messed up on an M&A deal. I flopped the internal approval deck for the investment bank’s committee (for non-IB people: the paper/deck that needs to be strong enough for senior leadership to approve the deal). There were two major mistakes I made (my valuation was completely wrong and the paper lacked a rationale / narrative), and the committee shouted at my director for wasting their time by bringing something below standard. The deal didn’t get internal approval, and we had to delay the client by two weeks to re-submit, which blew up the timeline
My director was furious and yelled at me in private — the first time she’s ever done that. I guess she was also angry at her self as she gave me full autonomy to deliver this myself as she trusted me but then I messed up and it backfired on her.
Since then, it’s been a constant negative loop. She’s been giving me extremely heavy and difficult workloads, and I keep slipping because I’m overloaded. For example: multiple pitch decks, multiple models, competitor analysis, and attending all her meetings to take notes. How can I find time to do work if I'm having to join her meetings and note take.. I’m constantly behind unless I work late, and my work quality has dropped
When I delivered recent work, she shouted again and told me to redo it (I agree it wasn’t good enough — I just can’t seem to produce high-quality output with the volume). If I say there's too much and I'm struggling she just says "This would only take me 15 minutes to do... so you should be able to do it in 30 minutes or your too slow for this job" but in reality it actually takes me around 2+ hours to do so maybe I am too slow or maybe she's unrealistic with how fast she expects me to do it. She was never like this before though.
In the last week alone she’s shouted at me six times (I’ve counted), and it’s been aggressive and insulting: “How can your work quality be so low? Are you an intern? This is intern quality. Do I need to spoonfeed you? Do I need to do your work for you?”
She’s also declining any lunch catch-ups I try to put in her diary to rebuild things.
The issue is I report directly to her — we’re a boutique, so she’s effectively my main staffer/boss — and I genuinely want to fix the relationship, but I don’t know how. We had such an amazing working relationship before and now it's awful.
I was even considering bringing flowers into the office and saying something like: “These are to make up for the past couple of weeks. I’m sorry for my mistake and I want us to be good again.” Would that help, or would directly saying something like that make things more awkward and worse? Like maybe she would reply saying if you want to make it up to me then start delivering better work etc..
So much tension… you know what you need to do
Are you autistic by chance? Just think about the optics of the situation for a second... actually you know what. Flowers are a wonderful idea. Be sure to include a happy valentines day card too.
Am not autistic.. I just want to fix the relationship and end this negative loop I'm stuck in. I posted on here hoping for genuine advice?
i usually skip this part
I refuse to believe this was written by a fully-grown adult man.
what do you suggest doing then?
just whip it out bruv
time to pack it up and lateral
Get her the flowers bro be sure to give them I nice sniff before you enter the office and be sure to blow a flying kiss on your way out.
Is there anything else you suggest doing? I don't know what to do unless I just work till 4am everyday to deliver the work better but I'm in my 30s and working that late really lowers my work quality as my brain can't handle it.
Adderall and Cialis will get u to the top bucket
Assuming this isn't some kind of chatgpt intro to a fanfic or something - just start looking to lateral. You have a lot of experience, and were a strong performer, so I don't think it would be that hard?
You can’t fix broken relationships and bluntly no one should be yelling at you in a professional white collar work environment. Look to leave immediately before this ends with you getting fired.
At least the timing is good and other banks will be looking for lateral hires post bonuses in March.
Don’t do the flowers thing unless you want to get fired for sexual harassment.
this
Or do it right before you resign.
Your reputation is worth its weight in gold, this is an almost certain way of ruining it and destroying your long term career. Do not ever mix romantic interest with work in any capacity.
I had a similar situation though not as extreme where a director turned on me overnight for basically nothing.
She is going to badmouth you at comp and promotion round tables. Honestly hard to come back from.
Either knock her work out of the park or leave.
Ignore title. dude you can always lateral……maybe you are not telling the whole truth but it seems that she is mean if she continued to renegate against you.
Don’t do the flower thing. Focusing to lateral to another bigger bank, and if you are lucky enough, you may get the VP title in a bigger bank if the market in your segment is good. And of course never mention these drama in interview, just say want bigger platform/better exposure or your bank is delaying your promotion due to budget, etc.
But you need to make sure you do not screw up in the next bank.
Also can not understand the hatred here. The director seems to be mean if the op did not conceal anything else. We have so many DEI female hires and why can’t male help male?
And of course, be polite with your director at this time, never show her that you want to leave, be obedient and do whatever she asks you to do until you get another offer
She is on a power trip and far too many femcels have infiltrated VP+. MDs will take her feedback into account even without evidence just to make her feel important. Better to lateral.
Do NOT do flowers. That can be taken 100 wrong ways vs the 1 right way you’d want.
Trust has to be rebuilt between you over time. It doesn’t help that she’s slamming huge amounts of work on ur desk, but you have to give her excuses to trust you again. If you were in her shoes, you’d probably feel similar to how she feels towards you, gotta rebuild trust.
If you haven’t acknowledged the mistake (and how abnormal the mistake was) then do that directly, then smack it out of the park with your work quality for two months. That will fix things
It sounds like you're in your own head quite a bit and for some reason, just underperforming on the standard. If you've been fine before and suddenly have made mistakes either... (1) you made mistakes before that went unnoticed, (2) the volume increased drastically, (3) or you're fatigued and overwhelmed.
(1) you made mistakes before that went unnoticed: if this is the case, then consider implementing some form of self-review process to sense check your numbers, story. One way to do this is to print out the deck/report and read it on paper. I'm sure other folks in the industry can weigh in on how to catch slip ups self-sufficiently. Then, put your head down and perform for 3-6 months to rebuild the relationship.
(2) the volume has increased drastically: if the volume has gone up and your direct superior is unrelenting, find work elsewhere since it'd be difficult to rebuild the relationship whilst fighting an uphill battle and not receiving capacity support. This is assuming the work exceeds your max capcity and greatly inhibits your ability to perform/put out quality work.
(3) you're fatigued or overwhelmed: this could be the case if your mistakes are recent. If you've been having poor sleep, additional (to the already relatively high) stress, and worse/poor diet, they all affect your cognitive abilities. Now I'm well aware PTO is not easy and heavily dependent on optics of the firm, but if you continue to perform in a poor state of mind, it will cause greater reputation damage. I would take the next PTO window you have to rest and recover. Then re-engage from a better state of mind by putting your head down and delivering.
I get the impatience to want to clean up the mess immediately, but this is one of those things where recency bias works against you. The best way to rebuild a bridge with a superior is to deliver on the work requested to the calibre expected over a good duration (~3-6 months), then these weeks will seem like a blip and have less and less significance on their perception of you. In contrast, trying to rebuild the relationship with a gift or otherwise may be seen as counterproductive.
My two cents.
p.s. - I've been there myself in a past life.
Don’t do the flowers, it won’t be good outcome. Blink twice if this is a healthcare group.
Some men drown while others die of thirst...
I sincerely hope she is the only finance professional in the world not on WSO
Thread title too good to not click. Respectfully if your screw up is at all close to real then ya you need to find another job. If I went to my IC and half-assed the analysis/model my former PE shop would’ve made it clear I wasn’t getting the promote. If I pitched something to my PM that was half-baked and my targets were flat wrong, I’d be out of a job the next day.
You’ve been doing this 6 years apparently, how do you mess it up that bad? Was this your first real time without training wheels? Also a bunch of this stuff sounds like analyst work that you should be driving, are you having to play analyst through VP on most deals?
The good news that generally in IB it’s super hard to get fired but you can stall and get pushed out. Sounds like you need to think about how you screwed up the first place and figure out a way to improve.
I genuinely wonder if some of you all were socialized because it’s so ridiculous it sounds fake.
You need to lateral and under no circumstances should you be giving flowers to your female boss. TF?
It's time for you to go...If she got yelled at by the committee then she was professionally humiliated, and she blames you for that so she's going to project that humiliation onto you every chance she gets. No amount of flowers (you're trying to get reported to HR???), apologies, or ass kissing is going to fix that. When a relationship is damaged this bad everything you do is going to suck. Things that went unnoticed before or were perceived differently are going to irritate her. "I hate the way he breathes, chews, talks, writes, and I hate his face." There's not much you can do besides save her life.
You have to remember you two had a professional relationship no matter how close you think you were to your boss, and you fucked it up. She's not your mom or your friend so ditch the flowers (seriously you want to get reported for harassment???). It takes two to repair a relationship, and it sounds like she doesn't want to give you the opportunity to redeem yourself. That's a leadership problem. She's now setting you up to fail. You made her look bad in front her superiors so she's not going to let up. I would be proactive and look for work elsewhere. It sounds like she wants you gone too.
Smash. Next question
keep it in your pants bud
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