A manager gets promoted from peer to boss. He switches the team from weekly meetings to daily. He opens every single one by asking about hobbies, dinner, the dog. He texts stream-of-consciousness updates about his life throughout the day and gets annoyed when the emoji reactions aren't enthusiastic enough. Meanwhile he's micromanaging, taking out company stress on the team, and nobody's salary has moved.

In this Reacting to Reddit at Work episode of Why Does It Feel So Wrong to Be Human at Work?, Pinaki Kathiari and Bree Bartos are joined again by Lottie Bazley, internal communications manager, to react to a Reddit post titled: how do I communicate to my micromanaging manager that I don't want to be friends?

Lottie brings a story from early in her career about the exact dynamic at the center of this post, peers suddenly turned into managers, with zero training on how to navigate the shift. The three of them work through what actually changed the OP's situation (a comment revealing just how overworked they already are), why 'what was going through your mind' beats 'why did you do this' every time, and why finding the win-win beats putting a target on your own back.

In this episode, they discuss:
• Why promoting someone from peer to manager overnight breaks the relationship if nobody names it
• The bandaid problem: responding slower or using emojis doesn't fix anything, it just trains the behavior around it
• Confronting a dynamic early instead of letting resentment build in silence
• The one-line reframe that changes every hard conversation: 'what was going through your mind' instead of 'why did you do this'
• Leading with facts, not feelings, when you don't have the emotional capital to spend
• Why 100% capacity actually means you're already overworked, there's no room for anything unplanned
• The real fear underneath OP's silence: not wanting to become the difficult employee who gets cut first
• Framing the ask as a win-win instead of a complaint

This one pairs well with our episode on code-switching and emotional labor, also with Lottie. Listen to them together.

Connect with Lottie! Visit her LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lottie-bazley-736633112/
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Connect with Us

Pinaki Kathiari – LinkedIn | Local Wisdom

Chris Lee – LinkedIn | Gallagher Communication

Bree Bartos – LinkedIn | Local Wisdom

Special thanks to digital communication agency Local Wisdom (www.localwisdom.com) for really believing in our mission and making this podcast possible.

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