Dear Stephen,
I'm a sales rep for a manufacturer in the southwest market. Great company and product. I generally like working with my colleagues and pretty much everything about the job. It's a big company, yet not the biggest. Here's my problem —
I've been at this company for four years. I was hired by my current boss who I like very much. She is one of the reasons why I originally took the job. However, I feel like my boss plays favorites within our division, and it hurts my feelings. I feel slighted. She is a great boss, I really can't complain about her as a person, but one of the sales reps I work with worked with her at their previous company and since that person joined our team, I feel like they have the best relationship in our division and the rest of us are the odd man out.
It's little things they do that drive me crazy. For example, they seem to speak their own language, whether talking about former colleagues together, or dealers... And now it even affects accounts that we all handle; I think that my coworker gets better accounts than I do and any request they have gets a faster response than mine. I'm not sure if the two of them even realize that they are doing this.
To make it worse, I really like working with the other salesperson as well (the favorite). Do you have any suggestions, subtle or otherwise, on how to deal with this issue? If I tell my boss directly, I think she will be offended and will not necessarily agree and at some point she will tell my colleague that I said as much which will put me in a very awkward position. I really need a strategy on how to handle this and avoid blowing up my relationship with both of them. What do I do?
Signed,
Outside Looking In
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Dear OLI,
This is a tough question!
That being said, it is one that I can relate to because at one of my earliest jobs in sales I worked for a boss that had a long history with one of the sales reps that I worked with. It was identical to your situation. My boss definitely played favorites!
I didn't hate the guy who was the favorite, in fact, he was super nice to me, but like you I felt like the odd man out. My colleague got better accounts, better discounts, and most importantly, faster answers — which customers often need. I felt I could not talk to my boss about it because he would be defensive and completely disagree with me, and therefore it would put me in a very awkward position. I also felt it would not end well. My advice is to do what I did which is not to bring it up. As many of my readers will know from the Ask Stephen column, we have a great readership who volunteer many suggestions to answers in the comments; and I hope this is one of those times...
Now back to the story, I also liked my coworker who was the favorite to my boss when I was in your situation. In fact, we are still friends to this day! What I found was that staying close to that individual helped me a lot with my own relationship to my boss. In other words, I went out of my way to become best work friends with 'the favorite.' It wasn't hard because I naturally liked the guy and believe it or not, when my boss saw that he and I had become good friends I was brought into the fold. Also, to be a bit more analytical, you could observe the qualities that a person has that makes them special to the boss and adopt those traits yourself. Would it make you a better salesperson and enhance your career and income? Might be worth thinking about.
Everyone handles things differently, but one of the most important ways I was able to feel better about my situation was realizing that it wasn't about me, or my boss not liking something about me, it was just hard to compete with a coworker who had history with the boss. Here are some practical examples that I see today:
When #HermanMiller acquired #Knoll, and the company became #MillerKnoll, the ex-Knoll people were clearly closer and had relationships and histories that the Herman Miller people did not. The option they had is the same option you have, or the same option I had in my first job: you can either stay and make it work, or you can leave. I always lean towards staying and making it work. For me, ultimately, it did; and I suspect for you it is going to as well.
Basically, my advice to you is to handle the situation the same way I did, which is to not make waves and make it work. I don't think there is any high-brow HR guru advice on how to handle a situation like this, but like I said, we have some great readers in this space who always contribute great ideas — see you in the comments!
Signed,
Stephen