Am I Losing My Mind?

Going anon to avoid outting anyone or myself.  Sorry for the long post.

Have previously worked in various finance roles at good shops and made my way up the ranks, eventually got an opportunity to join a small buyside shop in a mid/high level role and was sold on the team, interesting deal work, approach to deals and path to partner.  As you can probably guess, things have been rocky.

Given small team, we’re selective with deals, which is fine.  However, the overall attitude has slowly turned sour by the partners on every single investment opportunity, not even willing to discuss or lob in an IOI.  Eventually, I found something we’re all interested in pursuing and have reached a point where we’re doing more in-depth diligence with the seller, but this is really where shit hits the fan.

As we get into due diligence I am essentially running everything, no help from anyone else and receive extremely limited guidance except at the worst possible times...  During on-site visits, I’m meeting with target’s team members for the first time outside of passive ownership and in essentially every meeting one partner on my team shifts the entire conversation and line of questioning away from the company and directs it to me.  “What’s their process for this Anon?”  “Which person from the company records this paperwork and where does it go after then Anon?”  “Why don’t you already have this folder from them Anon?”  As I respond saying something along the lines of “we haven’t gotten to this or that yet, but will definitely get to the bottom of it, understood” the typical response is “I really need you to focus on these types of things Anon”, tone and word choice in these situations do not come across friendly.  Mind you, this is all while the target company’s team is in the room with us just sitting and listening.

Look, I appreciate a learning opportunity and welcome coaching and leadership, but this literally drives me insane.  It’s the most embarrassing and unprofessional thing I think I have ever experienced working in finance.  Maybe I’m not asking the perfect questions or leading diligence in the exact direction they want it to go at that moment, but wouldn’t the correct way to approach this be reshifting the line of questioning on your own and taking the time after the meeting to discuss how we should tackle the next steps/meetings?  Or maybe, I don’t know, ask these questions to the company members themselves who are sitting in the room?  These are essentially intro, get to know your job and processes discussions.  The approach seems wild to me.

Am I being a wimp or is this total bs behavior?