We get slices of people...
So it's often not you, it's still them.
Last week, I was painfully reminded that we can all experience the same people very differently. It’s happened a few times to me through my career/life, so I thought it was worth sharing.
A piece of advice I wish I followed more throughout my career more was optimizing primarily for working with the best people. For most of my career, I picked projects/teams/ideas and just got very, very lucky with working with awesome people. Once in a while, I didn’t. :-)
So when people come to me for advice on new jobs to take, I advise them to spend a lot of time on trying to figure out the people aspect of the equation - who’d they be working for? what the culture is like? etc. When I can, I help dig that out for them. Managers and leaders matter a lot.
A few times in my career, leaders that others told me were incredible turned out not to be for me. In fact, very early on in my career, someone that was considered world-class at their job, treated me incredibly unfairly (I need to leave the details fuzzy :-)) It left me pretty devastated. Much, much later I understood, the person had a lot going on personally and professionally, and my treatment was as much a function of neglect as it was incompetence or a lack of empathy. It didn’t excuse the behavior, but it helped me understand it.
Some months ago, I was asked about a person I’d worked with before. I gushed about this person - told the person checking about them it would be an incredible experience where they’d learn a lot. I warned them about a couple of things to watch for, but I thought that was small thing compared to the benefit of working for this leader. Turns out, I was pretty wrong - the person was now leaving that company. The behaviors that I’d asked the person to watch for turned out to be much more problematic than I had remembered to the point of making the job untenable.
At work we generally get to see a slice of a person and not everyone gets to see the same slice.
Context matters: The same person could be amazing in one role, and terrible in another.
Context with you matters: They may be pre-disposed to think of you - or your role or team in a different way.
Their context matters: People change with time; jobs change them and you may be getting a different version of the person than someone else did. They may be great in a certain role, but just terrible for another.
Note that sometimes this cuts the other way. I once turned down a job because of the vibes I picked up while interviewing for it. The vibes turned out to be right, but I found people that joined this person’s team were still happy because the dynamics of that org were such that that person’s vibes didn’t matter as much.
Why do I bring this up?
The first reaction, particularly if you are early in your career is that you can often end up blaming yourself. After all, this person was supposed to be great!
Just remember, sometimes it’s just the context, and that you may be getting an unlucky slice. Throw the slice away, and find another fruit where you can hope for a better slice.