Who’s in the wrong? Am I Lazy or micromanager?
I was an associate in another team and just moved to a new team and bank as a VP and my MD is a hugeee pain. I thought it was just because I was new but it’s been 4 months now and she hasn’t improved.
She’s the world’s biggest micro manager and gives me no space checking in on me every morning and evening.
Most mornings I have an email like “what’s on your to do list today?” Or “how’s the progress on X going?”
Or in the evening “what did you work on today” or “send me a list of what you’ve done so far today”.
she’s also super annoying when it comes to new tasks she will say a deadline date for 1 week, then the next day ask how the progress on it is going so far or to send her what I’ve done so far so she can give me some ‘initial feedback’ like obviously I haven’t even started it yet, it hasn’t even been 24 hours and you’re checking in already…
its super annoying, I can’t lie she is very good at her job, the work she does and puts together is truly incredible and she is super on the ball and organised but such a pain to work for. I’ve worked for 2 banks before and I’ve never had a boss like this, they’ve always been respectful to give you your own time I.e. previous bosses would tell you what they want and deadline and then they wouldnt disturb me in between and then I’d email them with the work done, or in between I’d message them if I had questions or they would message me if some additional things they wanted to add etc.. but with her… I need to give her an update every morning and night or she checks in on me. It’s like I’m not allowed to have any downtime.
one of my colleagues who is a friend at the bank (she doesn’t know we’re friends) was with her talking and he mentioned she referred to me as “overall he’s good addition to the team but I notice his personality is a little lazy and lacks proactively so just needs a little pressure to get him moving and to make sure he doesn't hide from work” which I found really offensive considering I’ve always had positive reviews.
now I’m unsure who is in the wrong? Is she an awful micromanager or is this normal behaviour and I’m in the wrong so need to step up my game and stop being lazy?
Def a micromanager. My approach to these types of MDs (if they are good at what they do), is to overcommunicate staffing, workload, timelines etc.
I won't speak for yours but one of mine is like this and its because they have so much on the go, knowing bandwidth helps them plan and prioritize meetings. I started with flipping a quick "these are priorities today" email in the morning and now that we have some history together, it's maybe twice a week.
From the perspective of an analyst, I’ve noticed there are times when it’s more ideal to have someone give guidance and clarity or general process insights on more difficult or complicated processes / check in a lot to see we’re moving in the right direction in those types of projects, but give more autonomy on simple stuff or regular day to day type of stuff.
It’s annoying if you have the opposite: where they spend tons of effort checking in on simple tasks and give ridiculous amounts of comments on stuff like profile books, yet they don’t give any clarity on the deliverables or questions that matter. And then if you try to be more communicative with them in those situations, they get annoyed
Heck I had a vp who kept giving more comments to process on books even though we weren’t even working on the same project anymore (after we pitched some slides, he wanted several days worth of changes to the deck post-pitch and followed up for days and days on this)…
I had an MD like this. MD was the best in their coverage space (by a wide margin), would ping you at 4am on the dot every morning with tasks for the day and would hit you with an “ETA?” email at 9am.
I played the game and became their go to person. In my case, the only thing it got me was burn out and a PhD in how not to interact with people.
Might be time to swallow your pride find a new shop.
Yeah I can relate with guy above, know quite a few people who’ve sent 4am comments on workstreams as well. I could understand if there’s a meeting the next day or in a couple days but I don’t see why people get worked up over non urgent matters
What’s the logic of micro managing? People probably won’t be as effective if you send a message asking about a deliverable every few minutes anyways.
Posts like these just make me want to quit banking but alas here we are
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