I had a meeting today and my dotted line manager showed up (he wasn’t invited).

Anonymous

April 13,2022 at 4:39AM UTC

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I had a meeting today and my dotted line manager showed up (he wasn’t invited). Then he ran the conversation for an hour and left. The other men in the meeting kept asking, didn’t you have a meeting agenda? But the manger kept onward with topic after topic.

Im not quite sure hoss we to process what just happened. Did he do this on purpose?

any help with type of behavior?

im not quite sure if I need to respond or not.

im not sure if he did this on purpose or not?

thanks in advance for any insight here!

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AnonymousMay 2,2022 at 4:05PM UTC
Wow! I'm following this thread to see what type of feedback you get because I'm kinda in a similar situation. I recently had an org change w/in my division where my teammates and I no longer report directly to our director; my director decided to promote someone to manager. This new manager (once a former peer) is now my boss; no complaints about it, btw.
What I still don't understand is, my director is still very much involved with our day-to-day work (they come to our weekly team meetings) AND recently decided to add back 1:1s (bi-weekly), in addition to, the weekly 1:1s I already have with my new manager. I'm not sure what to make of this, and I'm slightly uncomfortable about it. I plan to ask my director about their 1:1s w/ me -- just trying to understand why we need to meet biweekly when you already come to our team weekly meetings. Like what's the goal of our check-ins? How involved do you actually want to be in my work? Is something missing between my relationship with my new manager that you have concerns about? (my new manager is also responsible for all my professional development/performance coaching, so I'm at a loss). I want to respect my new manager as much as possible but I'm concerned my director's presences in everything is undercutting the point of us having a new leadership structure. Looking forward to insights in this thread too!
AnonymousMay 2,2022 at 9:52PM UTC
Is the director still involved in the overall project in some way and therefore needs to keep involved?
AnonymousMay 3,2022 at 8:36PM UTC
Nope! All my work is being funneled through my new manager. Mind you, my new manager and the director meet 2x a week, in addition, to our weekly team meetings, so I don't understand the need for my director to meet with me 1:1.
Aurora MeyerMay 2,2022 at 4:07PM UTC
What was the original plan for the meeting? Were you supposed to come up with the agenda? Has anything like this happened before? Do you generally have a good relationship with your dotted line manager?
Christi MillerMay 2,2022 at 5:14PM UTC
Did you have an agenda for the meeting? Did he cover any of the topics on the agenda? I would reschedule the meeting with the original attendees and include the agenda in the invite. If you have a good relationship with him then I would bring it up with him privately. You may ask what his goal was for joining the meeting and if he plans to join others in a similar fashion. Lastly you could ask him for a heads up before he joins another meeting uninvited.
AnonymousMay 2,2022 at 9:54PM UTC
Thanks for advice!