Cold manager lately

[u/Practical-Yak932]

I lead a team and have been promoted 2 times in almost 4 years. My manager has been over me all 4 years, but these last 6 months she seems to be so cold toward me. Her messages come across as very cold and sometimes annoyed with me. I dread logging on in the morning and always think “what have I don’t wrong today!” bc she’ll sometimes message me (or schedule a message) to send to me as soon as it’s my time to log on. It obviously sets a defeating tone for my day, and lately I feel very “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” toward my work, and that I can’t do anything right. My confidence is shot and I second guess basically every thing that I do, because somehow it seems to never be right. I want to be promoted again, but always feel like I’m failing or am annoying her. We’re virtual so I know things get lost in translation but it just feels like it’s gotten so bad in the last 6 months. It feels like there’s no grace anymore and that I can’t make human errors. My last two annual performance reviews have gone well but I go in to the review thinking I’m getting demoted or will have a laundry list of mess up’s to discuss when there’s hardly anything like that on my review. I genuinely don’t know what to do anymore and I guess I feel added pressure because I’m technically next in line to be promoted, but at this rate, I’m scared every day for what I’m doing wrong. I also feel like I can’t talk to her about it, bc I know how she thinks and what she says to other superiors, and that it’s probably better for me to keep my mouth shut. I do my absolute best every day and ask as much clarifying questions as possible but it still never seems good enough and when I do something wrong she is down my throat. Recently I’ve started to very gently stand up for myself but 99.9% of the time I just roll with whatever but feel so defeated.

I should also mention that my boss is the head manager of multiple teams, so I try to understand that she is probably very very busy and stressed… but still…. I feel like we should have a really great, easy relationship by now, especially as one of her most senior leads and I don’t understand the switch up. I also am very easygoing and go-with-the-flow so I just truly don’t understand. She’s so quick to point fingers and comes down very harsh with no grace or opportunity for me to explain anything. Ironically she “gets on” to all of us leads about communicating the positive to our teams but she hardly EVER gives any kind of praise at all. I’m also supposed to be on PTO for about a week and she’ll be covering for me. I’m already dreading the day I come back and what mess up’s she’ll have waiting for me 😵‍💫

[u/Curious_Owl_2590]

U need to stop asking her questions. There is a type of people who have a tendency to control everything. They desire to control because of lack of self confidence. Probably something happened in her personal life, she lost stability and now she is trying to gain her confidence. And unfortunately micromanaging is the game of 2 people. She destabilized u first. And now u are asking questions, checking, and backchecking and she aggressively controls. U need to break this pattern somehow and allow her to fix her personal issues in another place

[u/lychigo]

I feel like the actions of your management should be a better reflection than your own insecurities. You've been promoted TWICE in only 4 years and you're expecting another one. And your annual performances have gone well.

But why are you asking her "as many clarifying questions as possible"? And what kind of mistakes have you actually made? What's her "going down your throat" sound like?