Wow… this has honesty been one of the best message boards I’ve been on for any reason.
Thank you all for your feedback.
I will take this as constructive criticism and move forward with my role, make sure I have some questions written down even before the meeting so that my voice is heard, and also not get intimidated by my manager. She does have a loud, aggressive personality (been noticing it since day one) - but as an independent consultant with a solid work history, I’ll be sure to put forth my thoughts and assert myself as well if it happens again.
Good luck!
If you feel like it, let us know how it goes - it’s always nice to get updates on threads like this.
If I were in this situation, and I’m not saying that you are like me, I would take time for both of us to cool down and request a meeting.
Let the boss know what you have done and where you are planning on going. Also,as myself, I would ask what the boss wants from me and that I am not a mind reader and don’t work well with hints. Clarify what your boss wants and go from there.
And don’t quit because you got yelled at. 10 years of stellar works and you want to ruin that over being yelled at? Find a way to get through this and remember it for the future.
In the tech world this is very bad advice. If the OP were clueless then she should get a clue, but it is quite clear that she knows what she is doing. In any meeting the leaders are the ones talking - even asking questions, and the followers are the ones in the seats against the wall just listening.
Her boss saying she should talk up and act like a leader was a compliment. Perhaps not addressed very well. I’ve told people who were smart but quiet the same thing.
I’ve seen plenty of smart women not advance because they were too quiet. Yes, it can seem very egotistical to force your way in there, but it is necessary and often you are smarter than others in the room.
While I like the idea of canned questions, it is far better to see where the meeting is going and ask questions either about stuff that everyone else knows from history (but a new person won’t) or about a path not taken, or about where things are going. That shows engagement.
OK, not sure about the yelling bit - I’m not a fan of yellers, although I have known some excellent managers that were yellers - but this sounds like actually a -really- good boss to work for. Makes it very clear what is expected, as far as I can tell waited until after the meeting and in her office to raise her voice, made it clear that firing her wasn’t at all what she wanted - she wants the OP to step up her game, etc.
Now, it sounds like there hasn’t been much time spent on getting the OP up on background meeting notes etc, which may (or may not) be the manager’s fault. So OP, your first order of business is to be more pro-active in digging up background info/emails etc as much as possible. Also, as noted above - you’ve been given the green light to assert the hell out of yourself, so go get 'em!
As an aside, I’m a bit concerned that the company has apparently is in the habit of scheduling meetings with no pre-organized agenda, and no write-ups/notes passed around afterwards…
In my own world, consultant teams get built for a project (which may correspond to an actual project with start and finish, or merely to a budgetary period for a long-term maintenance team), move into the clients’ offices and spend several months working there. The real projects, if done properly, take about 9+1 months to complete (9 to implement, 1 of post-go-live support).
I was reading the story and when I got to the part where she started to counter the boss’s picture of her and defend herself and I thought “Well it might not be the best response, but at least the boss can’t call it passive!”
Then the next line is “But I didn`t actually say any of that I just said thanks let me know if you want me to quit”. Really deflated what was turning into an interesting story.
Fuzzy Dunlop
I did start telling her what I had accomplished so far and how I was taking ownership of the piece of work that she assumed someone else was driving (I wasn’t going to finger point, but wanted to tell her that I consider that leadership too)… but she cut me off. For some reason, everyone cuts everyone off here and talks over each other.
That’s when I decided not to appear defensive and at the end of her rant told her to let me know if this is not a good fit.
Anyway I’m at work now.
She’s out of the office today and tomorrow for an off-site meeting. Hah.
But she did send me an email asking if I was feeling better (as I said, I was down with a bad cold last week) and sent me a document asking if I could take ownership of it.
I responded saying I was feeling good, ready to roll and I would certainly take ownership.
It is a relief to not have to face her today though.
Divine intervention.
In case it was unclear… We know next to nothing about you, but we know that when your boss confronted you about not leading or being proactive, you let yourself get interrupted then gave up and offered to resign. You posted the story without any indication you saw the irony in it.
It’s like if my boss talked to me about my anger problem and I ended the story with throwing a chair at him in fury, but I didn’t recognize that my reaction per se was evidence I have a problem.
Maybe you were just having an off day, but the one detailed example you gave indicates that the boss is right about you.
Alright Fuzzy dunlop… thank you for your candid comments.
I would pour a hot drink over him and make it look like a genuine accident! 
Well, your manager probably shouldn’t yell at you. But unfortunately as a consultant you are a) expected to already know your shit and b) be highly proactive in learning your shit if you don’t already know it.
I’ve found that working in large organizations can be extremely difficult for a number of reasons. They tend to be large, bureaucratic, highly political and move very slowly. They tend to have their own proprietary jargon and layers of management relationships that you won’t know or understand coming in as an outsider. If you spend most of your time in meetings, you are probably at a level where you don’t actually “do” anything. You just report and plan and discuss what other people in other departments work on.
I’ve been doing this long enough to know that if your boss “isn’t going there” with respect to firing you, then chances are she can’t. She’s already on the hook for getting this project delivered and it was behind schedule before you even joined the company. She either can’t or doesn’t have the time to deliver it herself (or would prefer to remain an empty suit passing status reports in meetings) so she needs a PM (ergo “you”) to deliver it. Unfortunately you are not asserting yourself to the point where she feels confident in your ability to do this.
What you SHOULD be doing, since you are new, is using that as an excuse to interrupt and ask questions. “Excuse me, could you provide some detail around that?” Can’t really do that after you’ve been there six months.
There are all kinds (I’ve been several kinds myself). The OP sounds like a “consultant” in that the company has hired her (him? Sounds like “her”) in a staff augmentation role. Basically as a highly paid temp. For some reason, companies are now outsourcing the project manager role. Presumably the thought is that all you need is a PMP certification or similar experience and you can come into a company and deliver on some project regardless of the complexity or subject matter. Of course, most of what those sort of PMs do is take minutes at meetings and regurgitate them into executive status reports that no one reads.
The sort of consultants you are thinking of are “management consultants”. A term applied loosely to basically encompass any professional organization or individual that provides IT, advisory, strategy or other expertise or services.
True, and doubly so because she’s new. New people are expected to ask questions, and a desire to be prepared for a meeting by asking the right one seems smart to one’s coworkers rather than clueless. I have a lot of technical meetings too, and part of my prep-work for them is figuring out what they’re about before the meeting begins. It’s part of the OP’s job too.
When I read this in the OP, what came across to me was that the boss was trying (maybe poorly) to give feedback to a staff that she saw as having potential or otherwise being valuable.
And the “not going there” was basically saying - “man up and listen bitch”. Bringing up the possiblity of resigning everytime you get feedback is a passive agressive bullshit move.