How to protect yourself from being managed out
‘Being managed out’ means that your boss or company is trying to make your working life so difficult that you decide to leave. This is done in companies and countries where it’s not legally possible to simply let someone go for underperformance or because you don’t get along well with them.
There are usually two main issues for this:
Low performance and not meeting targets
Poor relationships and/or bad communication skills
How would I know if this is happening to me? Some telltale signs include
Not supporting you or your professional development
Lack of training or learning opportunities
Ignoring your requests for promotion or growth
Being actively and openly negative towards you
Making it difficult to do your job by (e.g. poor communication, lack of resources etc.)
Giving you very difficult, unclear or impossible goals to reach
What you can do
Have open and honest conversations with your manager/colleagues to address the issues
Understand what your KPIs are and commit to improving your performance based on them
Apologise if necessary for any wrongdoings on your part, even if it wasn’t intentional
Develop personally and professionally to reduce the risk of further problems
Understand the 3-month rule - it will take 3 months for anyone to believe a new behaviour is real, or to be convinced that your performance has improved
Make a deal with low risk and massive upside for the employer
