Celestial Tech Limited

Imagine you have accepted a position at a middle-management level in a company. You have a team of approx. 10 subordinates and you are tasked to develop sales and service of a new product line and to grow the team with new employees with the respective background.

You do everything to establish yourself as the new manager, get yourself accepted, work on a business plan and a strategy and then, every time the CEO is in the office, you notice that he calls your team members, either individually or in small groups, for meetings, but you are not being invited. You scratch your head what is going in there.

Once these meetings are over, and you get hold of the respective team members and you ask what was the topic of discussion, you are very surprised to hear either, “sorry, I have no time I have to work for the boss now” or even better “sorry, I am not supposed to tell you”.

Confronting the CEO to change way of communication with respect for the chain of command, you only get silence – no answer whatsoever.

This pattern goes on and on, day by day, and even if the CEO is travelling, he regularly calls your subordinates giving them direct instructions about things you do not know or you are not supposed to know.

After the first experience of such kind, newly employed team members come to you asking whom they are supposed to listen to, to their immediate superior or to the CEO. They are totally confused.

This is life of a middle manager in Celestial Tech Limited. In this company, a middle manager simply cannot perform his/her job, and the toxic direct communication of the CEO with your subordinates behind your back corrupts the entire organization (where such organization exists).

Do you want to join a company with such behavior pattern as a middle manager, where ultimately you cannot do anything else other than to resign, or do you stay away from such company in the first place?

Any comments or contribution from the audience?