Beware the hidden agenda

Back in my recruitment advertising agency days, I was fortunate to work with lots of great clients. From start up recruiters to Heads of HR at large employers, and for businesses in a variety of sectors. As an Account Director, it was important that I built a good rapport with everyone me and my team dealt with - and I thoroughly enjoyed that process. At least I did until the unexpected happened one day, totally out of the blue.

I returned from visiting a new person at a client that I had worked with for some time. They had come in to head up their comms team. The business in question was a big player in their industry and had a spend of well over a million.

As I got to my desk my boss invited me to 'have a chat with him'. It quickly transpired that this new person had phoned them following our meeting to say that they couldn't put their finger on it but didn't feel that they could work with me. To say that I was stunned was an under-statement. Nothing like that had ever happened to me before. I was, as the old saying goes "someone who could deal effectively with people at all levels". I really couldn't understand what I'd done wrong.

Anyway, the upshot was, rather than trying to ascertain exactly what the problem might be, if indeed a genuine problem existed, or explaining that we didn't keep a selection of account handlers in a cupboard that we could wheel out until they found one they were happy with, my boss immediately took me off the account and replaced me with someone else who operated at the same level as me. Hard to take if it just involved me, but I had a team working with, and for, me and, at a stroke, through no perceivable wrongdoing of my own, I'd suddenly lost their respect completely.

It was an awful feeling. I'd been sidelined from the significant piece of business I was brought in to the agency to manage. I remember that I used to spend my time going to and from work asking myself what I'd done wrong. Going over and over things in my mind. Was I really no good at what I did? Had I said something inappropriate or acted in an unprofessional way? No, I'd done none of that, yet I kept replaying things over and over in my mind. It got so bad that I felt I had no choice other than to quit. I felt that I was being judged every time I walked into the office - even if I probably wasn't. The loss of professional self-esteem was drastic, and very painful.

Fortunately I had quite a good network of contacts and, a luck would have it, another agency was looking for someone at my level to come in and mentor a team of 12 - over double the size of the team that I was working with until that fateful day. So, after a few chats and meetings I was hugely relieved to be getting out of the depressing scenario that my then current role had become. Imagine being respected one day and trashed the next, when you've actually done nothing wrong. It messes with your mind I can tell you.

Fast forward a few months and it transpired that this person who said they couldn't get on with me had an ulterior motive. They had previously worked with a rival agency and had it in their mind that they wanted to work with them again in the future. Turns out I was part of the plan in the bigger scheme of things. It made sense, but it didn't make me feel any better about how things turned out. Yes, I had another job, but I felt betrayed and let down. I lost the respect of maybe half a dozen people because of what happened - and all because someone had a hidden agenda.