Overlooked for promotion

You ask yourself, how could this happen to me? You did everything right, you worked harder than everyone else producing excellent results - you are a workplace leader. You know deep down, you challenge the manager's authority and you suspect this is the reason why you were overlooked for the promotion despite the fact that you act as the team leader and spokesperson in an unofficial role.

Looking to get leaped over by those less technically competent is difficult to fathom, especially when my manager has absolutely no idea what is actually going on in the workplace. They are the number cruncher, the paper shuffler but you are the leader, the motivator, the technically proficient driver of change. We all know workplaces are driven by interpersonal relationships - how did it come down to this?

Your manager doesn't like your brash outspoken persona, when they try to unload their responsibilities on you, it is a simple process to check their job description and point out in no uncertain terms that they need to do their job so you can do yours. Or maybe they need to rewrite your job description with the necessary increase in salary; maybe they need to explain to their boss why this is so, one suspects their salary won't be reduced accordingly.

Unlike most people, you look forward to your performance review as you know the real reason for such a review is to see what the manager has to do for you to perform your job efficiently. This is your opportunity to control the review, not to sit idly by whilst criticism flows freely and you and forced to defend your actions. Turn the situation around, you control the meeting and all of a sudden they have to defend their decisions and conduct. To be sure, you had better be well prepared.

But at the end of the day, you know the manager likes the other guy better than you; really, the manager doesn't like you at all, if it was legal to run you down in the carpark, they probably would. Even though you have not come out and said it, they suspect that you don't respect them yet you work with them in a professional manner. Do you need to call their professionalism into question? Are you able to lodge a formal grievance? It has been said, people don't leave jobs, they leave managers - how true this is.