Bosses Without Boundaries
I’m about to start an exciting new role with a Digital Marketing agency next month. Since accepting the job, my new boss has been sending me client and strategy decks to bring me up to speed before I start. As an uptight, perfectionist Virgo who likes, make that needs to be prepped for everything, I’m OK with that. But then, I’m suddenly getting cc’d in on a few team emails and yesterday, I received a calendar invite to attend an off-site planning session with my future team, two weeks before my official start date. Then an email follows from my boss. She starts in a kind of friendly, casual way saying ‘how great (!)’ it would be to have me there with the team and that she thinks I could make a ‘really valuable contribution to the workshop and future planning’. But by the end of the email, she says that while she feels it’s ‘critical’ for me to attend, she’d leave it with me. Mixed messages much?
Over the last few days, my anxiety has really kicked in and I’m second-guessing my decision to take the job and work for this woman. Am I overreacting or do you think this is a genuine red flag?
Love your advice please!
Hey Lady,
Well, yes, I can definitely make out a red flag flapping across your eye line. However, first things first dear Virgo: never ever lean into the reputational slurs that are hurled at those of us with star signs people just love to hate. It is quite possibly your very Virgo-ness that makes people want to employ you. You’re always on time and ready for everything with sky-high standards of excellence and a brain that’s organised much like a complex, colour-coded Google Sheet. But please, it’s vital that you don’t let that Virgo-ness leave you vulnerable to The Wrong People who will take advantage of your excellent work ethic, organisational superiority and primal need for professional pats on the head. By all means be ready for this job; be well read and prepared before you strut down a fresh new career catwalk but don’t let your need for control (and being amazing at all you touch) confuse the issue. Repeat after me, Lady: we do not work for free.
As it happens, this very sitch pops up in my group chats from time to time, especially in reference to entrepreneurial, founder-led businesses that play things loose and fast. In ancient times, I myself have even caved to the pressure of enthusiastic (read: pushy) past-future bosses wanting to ‘help’ get me on board ASAP because ‘it’s such an exciting time for the business’ and because ‘we’re all just so thrilled and excited for you to get started’. But no mas and definitely not in 2023.
…it’s vital that you don’t let that Virgo-ness leave you vulnerable to The Wrong People who will take advantage of your excellent work ethic, organisational superiority and primal need for professional pats on the head.
But back to you…Any decent operation that has a HR function and cares for its recruits bakes an induction period into a new starter’s first day or week. And guess what? That happens on company time, as it bloody well should, and you get paid to be there. Lady, you are in vital boundary-setting time RN and much like answering emails on the weekend (or when you’re technically on the job somewhere else), working before you’re actually working sends your boss a subconscious ‘Sure, I’m OK with that grey-area shit, bring it on’. And rinse and repeat.
A great and professional boss will want you to have a clean break (if the timing allows) so that you arrive on their planet all shiny-fresh and mentally buffed, ready to do the great work that they’ve hired you to do. A great boss will not penetrate your inbox repeatedly before you start and will save all those pre-reads and strategy decks and roll them into your induction manual for your first day. A great boss will not expect you to work for them before you’re actually on their official pay role, nor will they ask you to do so directly or in the pass-agg, pushmi-pullyu* way your new boss did.
Now for the What-You-Can-Do part….
1. Be unavailable
If your boss hasn’t mentioned any remuneration or isn’t throwing in a future-day-in-lieu sweetener to attend/contribute to the strategy workshop then I wouldn’t go balls out and demand to be paid or ping her an invoice after the fact. Just be unavailable that day. Maybe you’re still finishing up your current role and are technically on someone else’s clock. You could be officially on gardening leave and would be in breach of your agreement if you attended (awkward!). Or you’re just gloriously off-grid and taking a much-needed vacay with extremely patchy wi-fi.
2. Don’t over-index on your excellence too soon
Remember that in the early weeks and months of a new job, all eyes are on your input/output. There’s all that unspoken pressure to prove your worth and if you’re senior, and on fat pay, then quadruple that pressure and square it. Why would you start dropping gold nuggets of wisdom and experience so very prematurely? Waste not your great ideas ‘til you are officially on the payroll, at your standing desk, and high-vis to the wider business.
3. Remember: how you start is (often) how you finish
Is this a reason to walk away from a job about which you were genuinely stoked, not to mention one that you have beaten countless others to land? I’m going to say no…with an enormous BUT attached. If you start by accepting blurred lines and that frankly uncool behaviour then there’s a high chance that those blurred lines and uncool behaviour will be the very reasons you end up leaving, in time. [Fool me once…]
Just as small children and narcissists love to blow up a boundary, whether you push back or not in this instance sets the tone for behavioural patterning on both sides of the employment contract. So stay away from the grey and stick to the script dear Virgo, because we all know you can (and probs want to).
*NFI what a ‘pushmi-pullyu is? Translation and psych profile here if you want it.
Image credit: ©Tim Walker
