Fallout From My Coup D'état

I have a habit of doing this sort of thing. When I'm really frustrated over a situation, really unhappy, or just, in general, boxed into a corner, the only thing I can think of to do is to throw all my cards up in the air and see how they land. Like shaking up a snow globe, the air gets cloudy for a while, but eventually the dust settles and you can see clearly again.

Was I prepared for the fallout? Oh, I was pretty certain that Il Duce would hear of this eventually, somehow, but I wasn't too worried about a lame duck. Il Duce knew, at this point, that his tenure as Director of my team was about to end. I figured he'd react in a passive-aggressive manner, grumbling behind the scenes, but leave me alone for the most part.

I was wrong.

Sure enough, Il Duce found out about our meeting, indirectly, through one of my three managers (we'll call him Judas) who mostly likely told Jezebel, with whom he's worked closely for the past several years. (Ironically, Judas is the person Il Duce was at one point trying to promote Jezebel above, thus screwing him out of a deserved promotion; just a little tidbit for you.) Il Duce then called my manager in London, who we'll call Judy, into an office and made her tell him, word for word, what it was that we talked about during that 30-minute meeting on the Monday late in July of 2007. When the third manager out here (we'll call him Bob's Your Uncle), found out about this, he informed me. I thanked him and told him not to worry about it.

I called Judy and asked her if she was okay. She was horribly upset and told me all about it. She blamed Judas for putting her in the position of having to either lie to Il Duce or betray me. I told her to relax, that I didn't feel betrayed. (For truly, I didn't care, but I couldn't tell her why.) She said this was going to complicate my working relationship with Il Duce. "True," I said, adding silently not for long, "But I'd never ask you to lie for me. You did the right thing. Don't worry about it."

I called Judas and asked him if he had any idea how Il Duce found out about our meeting. He said, "No." I told him that it was okay if he mentioned it to anybody (not naming names, not calling out Jezebel at this point), that I was just curious. He denied it emphatically. I tried once more and explained that if he had something on his mind that was bothering him that he could always come to me to talk about. For the third time, he said no. (We'll end the metaphor there, for those of you following along.)

The actual fallout came a few weeks later. Il Duce had set up a teleconference with me for a supposedly benign purpose and at the start of the meeting told me he wanted to talk about something different entirely. He said he knew what I had proposed to my managers and that I needn't bother lying about it.

"Who's lying?" I said. "I'm happy to talk about anything you want."

"And I know you're calling people to ask how I found out, and this witch hunt is going to stop now." Strong emphasis on the "now" in that sentence. He had practiced this part of his conversation. I imagined him reciting this speech in the mirror as he got ready for work in the morning, and again in his car on the way in. Motorists passing him would have noticed his lips moving and wondered who he was talking to.

"I've got no witches left to hunt," I said.

He went on to rant a bit, and for a while I was fine with that. He was clearly upset, and I didn't care. I had been doing nine other things prior to his call, and while he spewed forth, I let my mind wander back to those nine other things. But at some point I think he finally got on my nerves. I think it was when he asked me, demanding really, "What would you do if you were me, in my situation?" that I finally got angry back.

"And what situation is that, exactly?" I asked.

"You know what situation I'm talking about."

"You mean being left with a mutinous employee who doesn't care for your self serving leadership style, or your decisions, and prefers to do things his own way?"

I don't think he was ready for me to spell it out so clearly. "Well, yes."

"I don't have any idea what I'd do if I were you. I don't have any idea what I'd do if I were the kind of person who'd sacrifice one team to build another just because it made my resume look better. Or who'd throw his own employees under the bus if it served his own interests. I'm happy to say I don't have a clue."

He sputtered for a while, claiming none of that was true, and tried to offer that his support of the Indian contractor initiative as evidence that he is doing everything he can for my team. I believe my response to that was: "Sure, whatever makes you feel better about yourself."

He prattled on for a while longer and finally closed by saying that he was going to have to decide what to do. I told him to let me know when he decides and hung up.