Relief from a TOXIC Boss !!..

It was almost four and half years I was associated with Accor Group of Hotels in India. I was working as the Head of Learning and Development and worked for three properties of Accor. 

The brand had given me an opportunity to learn new dimension of Training, which I did not experience in my previous brand where I worked earlier. Eventually I was being nominated for 'The Best L&D Manager of the Year' award for Accor India four consecutive times, and in the year 2017 I won the award. Beyond the brand also I was awarded as Best Learning Leader of the Year 2018 by UBS forum in Future of L&D Conference and Awards in Mumbai. 

Now, why am I telling all these here? 

Just to let you know that the brand I was associated with and I was advancing my career with graph steeping high, had surprise for me. When I was in mid of my career success, all of sudden a 'turn' came to my life. I refer it as the 'Black Day' in my life. 

It was mid of June' 2020, when the world was experiencing the pandemic situation and the lock-down initiative by the Government continuing, I was informed by my boss that I was being relived from my work. He (the boss) cited multiple reasons to justify his decision to release me, all were making no sense to me at all at that point of time. I was shocked and surprised on his announcement. 

At some point when I controlled myself from the so called 'Bad News', I literally pleaded as what was my fault? Can't they reconsider the matter? There must be some way out. 

But, I was unheard, my voice was pushed down by citing unethical logic, which was not acceptable at all.

For a moment, I could not understand as why the boss is so adamant, but it took few minutes for me to realize that with whom I was dealing that point.

I have heard from somewhere that...

"Good Employees Never Leave the Company, instead They Leave Because of Their Boss".

The statement proved to be true for me.

My reporting head (boss) and myself was working together for almost one and half year at the last organization. Over the period of time I observed few qualities in him which at times annoyed me, but i could do or say anything as it would not make any sense.

He was damm egoistic, always felt himself that he was the best one and rest all not worthy of HR domain. He never approached to the team members for honest and constructive feedback, since it would backfire him on his behavior. He aimed to push the team members down whoever reports to him. He researched the pattern of influencing the authorities, whom he can butter to get his work done. 

And he found the way, it was the head of organization who heads all the managers and managing the complete show. Day-by-day, he started influencing the head of organization, spending odd times in his office doing no quality work (as witnessed by my colleagues). The pattern was continuing and one point came when this COVID came into existence, he took this situation to axe the employees one by one whom he did not like. 

There were numbers of Dept. Heads who told me and given me the evidences where my boss took personal revenge on people whom he did not like. 

Being in learning and development domain, we had to be approachable to all our team members, so was I. 

Multiple team members used to approach me for counselling and mentoring for their professional and personal problems. As a responsible individual I was trying to solve their concerns and eventually those team members were very happy with me, as I was easily approachable. But this was not acceptable by my boss. He started feeling inferiority of himself and was targeting me to teach a lesson. I could sense his way of talking to me. 

I was bearing this unknown pain for quite long, but I was still happy as the organization was doing well and I was able to contribute to my responsibility at my best always, which in turn brought many success to the organization. I was much appreciated by my team members as well, which was not digested by my boss.

The result now I got. I was shown the Red Card in my job.

It gave me a shock of my life, however after few days I started feeling the relief from such 'TOXIC BOSS'.

I have seen many office politics, anger from colleagues, partiality from team members; I became victim of such things manier times earlier. But I had never experienced such cheap behavior from any professional like this. I am now experienced with a Toxic Boss who can spoil the entire work culture. 

It is now a big lesson learnt in my life journey.