Act I: Judy
Judy, as it turns out, has been the most open and forthwith about this whole situation. She told me every time Il Duce approached her with requests for news from my team, with instructions meant to cut me out of the loop, with demands of his own. Considering she's out in London with him, in the same office, this is both surprising and appreciated.
Act II: Judas
Judas as been the most guarded about his blooming relationship with Il Duce but also the most obvious. He has taken it upon himself to implement strategies secretly suggested by Il Duce without consulting me. (Which I know to be true because he has implemented ideas, verbatim, that I have heard Il Duce suggest to me in the past so either Judas has remarkable foresight or he's been given explicit instructions to follow.) This has happened twice. Both times I let him try implementing these strategies himself for a little while with my guidance, but both times he ignored my guidance and didn't do what I was asking him to do, so I pulled the projects away from him and did them myself.
We met at the beginning of December (last month) because he was getting increasingly hostile towards me under the surface while still trying to keep a pleasant and friendly face on top (something he's not very good at). I asked him, outright, what was going on. He complained that I had taken these projects away from him. I explained that he wasn't following my instructions and I needed them to get done correctly. He said okay, fine, he could understand that, but it was the way in which I took them from him that he was really angry about, that I had humiliated him in front of his peers by taking them away. I said it was not my intention to humiliate him, but that as his manager it was at my discretion to move projects around.
Then he told me that he didn't appreciate the fact that I had called him back in August and asked him if it he was the one who had told Il Duce about my mutinous meeting. He said, "I didn't appreciate that witch hunt."
Witch hunt? Where had I heard those precise words before? Oh, right... verbatim from Il Duce himself.
I replied, "I was merely trying to figure out if something was bothering you that you might have wanted to discuss with me," which is precisely what I told him on the phone at the time.
I then explained my perception of Il Duce to Judas:
- his taking over the team under suspicious circumstances
- his empire building
- his relationship with Jezebel
- his attempts to promote Jezebel over Judas
- my attempts to stop that
- my attempts to promote Judas
- Il Duce's veto of that plan
- Il Duce's move of Jezebel to the other team where he could promote her
- and finally the fact that Il Duce and the entire other team was moving to a different part of the company very soon.
"It's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when," I told him.
He took a minute to swallow the information I'd dumped on him.
I closed by telling him that next time something is bothering him, he let me know right away and not let it stew for several months. "We've worked together for 7 years," I said. "We know each other far too well to let a little thing like a misunderstanding come between us." (I assume he both understood what I meant by "misunderstanding" and appreciated that I didn't call it "betrayal" outright.)
He agreed.
After that, things have been much better between us. He is agreeable to anything I tell him to do. He offers his own opinions and if they are good ones, I let him take the lead. I can tell he appreciates this and is happy that things are back to the way they were between us. But still he asked several time after our meeting if I was still sure that Il Duce was leaving, and each time I've told him, yes.
Act III: Bob's Your Uncle
Bob's Your Uncle is a different story altogether. I'm having all sorts of other issues with him. I hired him 8 years ago. He was my first new hire after I became a manager. He was completely loyal to me for the first 7 of those years, but since I promoted him to a manager (about a year ago), we've had issues. He came into his new position with ideas on what his responsibilities were that differed from mine and with ideas of how a team should be managed that have also differed from mine. He has lost two of this three staff members in that time and has proven to me on a number of other occasions that he is not so much helping me lead my team but rather trying to wrestle it in a different direction. The more he has fought against me, the harder I have to push back on him, and therefore the more unhappy he's become, as have I in the process.
Il Duce picked up on this discord between us and began meeting with Bob's Your Uncle on the sly, encouraging him, boosting him up. Bob's Your Uncle has told me this and told me how much he's appreciated the support, how comforting that was to him. He's gone on to tell me that he feels that all of the team's problems, the discord that we've felt, is all my fault for not blindly and completely supporting Il Duce at all times.
I could go into more detail, but I won't. Bob's Your Uncle had been a friend and a trusted colleague. I have my theories as to why we're in the position we're in now, but I won't go into them. It's a painful subject. The fact is, he's lost my trust and my confidence and, sadly, I am not sure how he will be able to get those back, if he would ever want them again.
I have recently removed Bob's Your Uncle from his management position. He took the news rather poorly for someone who, I would have thought, was smart enough to see it coming. I feel I did the best I could for him. I offered him his choice of two positions, both at the same grade and salary, one in my team and one in another, and he chose the other (obviously).
In the end, I feel like I've lost an appendage, perhaps one that had grown cancerous in recent months and needed to be excised, but it's a loss nonetheless. It's been two weeks, and I'm still stunned. After all, it's not often you're presented with the opportunity to put the final nail in the coffin over an eight year friendship.
I cannot look back now, only forward.
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