Dear Theresa,

if I am understanding it well, there are several problems that you’re facing at the moment, all related to each other:

1) you are left out of some projects and activities led by the committees you’re on,

2) the committee’s chairperson claims that you didn’t do your job properly on a previous project, even though she didn’t even know what your tasks were on that project,

3) the chairperson has a habit of treating you poorly, accusing you unjustly, talking at you without listening to you, and never apologizing,

4) you got a bad yearly evaluation, and it was because you didn’t know what would be asked from you. You felt you were at a disadvantage because your co-workers (including the one who treats you poorly) were shown how a project should be monitored, and you weren’t, and this lead to you performing worse at the evaluation.

5) In the past couple of years, you were afraid to share your ideas, because you were afraid that they weren’t good enough and that you would fail. Now, after receiving bad evaluation, you shared those ideas with your boss, and he was quite pleased. He shows interest in your work and is cordial with you.

Your biggest fear is that next year you’ll be off the mark again because you won’t know what exactly is wanted from you:

My biggest fear is that I will proceed next year and find out I was way off in what he wants from me. I have always thought I was doing an ok job with the project. I knew it needed improvement, and I was happy to improve and learn whatever I needed to know.

As I see it, the common denominator in these problems is that you often don’t know what is expected from you (but you’re afraid to ask?), and the result is that you don’t perform according to expectations. Or you’re afraid to share your ideas, and then your supervisors believe you aren’t pro-active enough.

It seems like a fear of expressing yourself, and fear of asking for clarification (lack of assertiveness), which then results in misunderstandings and you under-performing. Would that describe what’s going on?