In this solo episode of the Outrageous Workplace Stories podcast, Natalie Fisher recounts a recent encounter with a newly appointed, micromanaging boss who questioned every detail of her three‑year‑old role. She describes her initial instinct to react defensively, then explains how she deliberately shifted to a self‑coached, compassionate mindset. By reframing the boss’s lack of trust as a need for evidence, she proactively shared her calendar and project documentation, giving him full visibility while setting boundaries for questions. This transparency built trust, reduced micromanagement, and demonstrated a scalable approach to managing new supervisors. Natalie expands the lesson to a broader career principle: cultivating trust and relationships—not degrees or certifications—is the key to promotion, protection from layoffs, and career acceleration. The episode closes with a call‑to‑action inviting listeners to join the waitlist for her "Professionally Human" program and receive a 13‑video lesson series on mastering professional life with humanity.
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Welcome to the Outrageous Workplace Stories series of the podcast. In these episodes, you'll see ways to handle even the toughest of workplace situations with power and impact while making humanity a priority. These stories shaped how I went from receptionist to HR manager in 4 short years without a degree, without the qualifications or experience that you would've thought I needed. This series is designed to help you turn everyday challenges into momentum for your next No matter where you're at right now. If staying grounded in your humanity and being true to who you are as a person is important to you, yet you also want to get to your next level, you want to earn more money, and you want to create a professional life you're proud of, that is also at the top of your list, I'm here to tell you that you can do both, and this is where you start. Let's go.
Have you ever had a micromanaging boss? What I mean by that is they Want to get in with every little nitty-gritty detail of what you're doing. So if it was in the kitchen, they would be like, you're using the wrong knife to cut that. I had a boss who was brand new to me. We sat down for our one-on-one and he asks me, what are you working on? I started listing the things that I was working on. Now, I'd been doing this job for 3 years before he became my boss. I knew my job better than he did. He actually didn't know very much about my job at all, and I think that was part of the problem. He He felt pressure to make sure I was doing a good job. He neglected to realize that I had been doing this job for three years without his involvement, and the way that he came across questioning me in our one-on-one, it really felt like he didn't trust me to do my job. So when I would tell him I was going to be doing things, he would be like, "Oh, and who are you talking to about that? And what is that about? And do you have this person in on the meeting? And is this happening?" In my head, I. Instantly felt attacked. I felt like he doesn't trust me. And with that line of thinking, I could have been defensive. So the less effective way would have been to say, hey, I've been doing this job for 3 years. You don't need to micromanage me. I know what I'm doing. Don't worry. It's all going to get taken care of. But that would have been reactive instead of proactive. And you can take your uncoached brain into a situation and it can go very badly or it can escalate versus if you take your coached brain into a situation, it will feel better. So I didn't respond in that moment. I left it as it is. And I was like, okay, I will make note of all your questions and I'll get back to you with a detailed report because that's what he was looking for. So I didn't go into it right then and there. I just said, okay, I've taken note of everything you've asked me and I'll get back to you. I went away and my initial thoughts were, oh, he's so annoying. He's gonna want to know everything I'm doing. He doesn't trust me. This isn't gonna work. I really don't like him. You can see how the thoughts start spiraling and I start to get into a space that's not a very good vibe. We're not going to have a very good relationship in this vibe. I needed to shift myself. Here's the self-coaching I gave myself. I said, he's new to this job, he's new to being my boss, he doesn't know what I'm up to. It's understandable that he has questions. Secondly, he doesn't know he can trust me yet. He probably needs some evidence. He probably needs to be shown through experience or examples that he can trust me because he didn't hire me for this job. He doesn't know me. He doesn't know that I've been taking care of these things for 3 years and I've been doing a really good job at it. That's how I helped myself get on board with being compassionate with him. Then I went back with this new frame of mind because this was making me feel more understanding towards him, a little bit more compassionate towards him. I was still, oh, it's so annoying that I have to go out of my way to explain everything to him, but it was better to do that than it was to be defensive and complaining about him and gossiping about him. It was better to get to the point where I could see his point and I could understand where he was coming from. In our next meeting, I came in and I said, look, I understand that you want a detailed account of everything I'm working on. I understand that you want to see into what I'm doing because you haven't really been involved in this. You don't really know how this works. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to give you access to my calendar and I'm going to give you access to the sheet of everything that I'm working on. I basically gave him access to all my documents and I said, so if you have any questions, you can look here, you can look here, you can check these things out and you can ask me on Slack if you have any questions about anything other than that's not listed in these documents. I had documented things pretty well and I could give him share access. I thought that's going to give him peace of mind even if he never looks at that stuff. He's gonna know that I'm sharing it. One thing that I do really well is to give people more information than they need so they feel comfortable. He was happy about this. He said, "Thank you very much. That's appreciated." So instead of me feeling like he was micromanaging me and feeling like I had to answer all of his questions right then and there, instead I said, "I'm gonna open up everything I can to you so that you can have full access so that you can see what I'm doing, and then if you have questions, you can bring them to me. If there's a problem, you can bring it to me." So even though I'm a subordinate, he's my boss. I was leading this discussion in the way that I wanted it to go because I didn't want to sit down and have an hour-long going through all these things, right? And so this particular thing worked because in my head I was thinking, it makes sense that he needs this information. It makes sense that he doesn't trust me yet. It makes sense that he doesn't have full confidence that everything's running smoothly because he hasn't seen that happening yet. He doesn't know. So from there, I opened up my mind to the idea of what if I showed him everything and then he knows that I'm not hiding anything from him and that he can take a look whenever he wants. And this made him feel relaxed. It made him trust me. From me giving him the benefit of the doubt and understanding where he was coming from, he then understood where I was coming from afterwards when we had a discussion later, because he was still micromanaging. He was still thinking, oh, you need to do this and you need to do that. And in my head I was like, yes, not yet. That's going to be taken care of at this point. And instead of jumping and being like, hey, You don't know what you're talking about. Actually, I've been doing this job for three years and you just got here. Instead of that, I said, I looked at him and I said, "Hey, I've given you access to all of the particulars for this project. Do you think you could trust me on this?" He didn't really like that because he was like, "No, because I'm still your boss and I still have to know and everything." And that's fine. But I have been doing this job for three years. I have been through this exact same situation before, and I know that if we do it that way, this is what happened last time. And so this is why I'd rather handle it this way. And then I said. Do you think you could trust me on this? After that explanation, he said, oh, okay, that does make a lot of sense. Okay, I will trust you on that. You've been through it. There's trust to be built through the process. It's not just one thing that you do. These steps had to come from a different line of thinking. The reaction that most people are going to have when they're being questioned is they're going to feel attacked. When you feel attacked, your action is more likely to be defensive or to shut down, go off, complain, gossip with coworkers or complain to your husband at home or your wife and not do anything to solve the solution because you don't have compassion for the person and you're just angry and defensive against the person. Depersonalizing it, reassuring myself that this didn't have anything to do with me, this wasn't my problem, I wasn't bad at my job, he just didn't know everything, he just didn't have all the information, and I needed to build up some trust with him. And one of the ways that I did that, the first step was to give him access to some things so that he could have visibility into what I was working on. And that was one of the several, several steps that I took to build trust with this particular new boss. And building trust with new bosses, new coworkers, new people coming in, that is what protects you from layoffs. That is what allows you to have opportunities for promotion and working on different teams or getting opportunities where someone else might have been a shoo-in, but they pick you because you had a relationship with that person. This is the kind of thing that advances your career. It is not that you had the degree. Even when you're in the job search, people think it's because you have the degree or because you have the certifications that you got the job. It's not that in the job, your degree and your education, your experience don't advance you. It is your relationships. It is your way of handling situations. It is the way you get people to trust you, the rapport you build with them, the ability that you have to expand their mind. That is what gets people to trust you. And that is what gets you promoted, paid more, gets you the opportunities and gets you where you want to go in your career faster. If you like this video, click the link below, get all the video lessons I'm teaching The moments in your career that either break you down or build you up, set you up for success in the future, or tear you down. So get on the list, get all 13 videos sent to you, and I will see you in the next one.
If you enjoyed that story and you gleaned something from it, if you want to learn how to master your professional life while being both impactful yet deeply human, join the waitlist for Professionally Human. The link is in the show notes. I can't wait for you to see what I have in store.
