It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go…
1. CEO assigns work to my staff without talking to me
I was recently promoted to a management position. My team’s main obstacle to success is the CEO of the company, three levels above me. No matter how clearly I set priorities, or how much I discuss them with the CEO beforehand, he continues to assign work directly to my team members without consulting me, almost daily.
This causes our priority items to fall behind, as they understandably put anything the CEO gives them ahead of my requests. I also feel undermined and useless. This is not unusual; he does this to every department, not just mine. I delicately discussed the issue with him, and it got better for a week or two before regressing again. Any ideas on how to handle this? Or is it just time to dust off the resume?
Focus on the part that’s within your control. The CEO’s behavior isn’t within your control, but your team’s actions are. Tell your staff members that when the CEO assigns them work, they need to loop you in right away so that you (a) are aware of the request and (b) can weigh in on how to prioritize it. If you decide there are higher-priority items, you can email your CEO to say something like, “Jane told me you asked her for X. She’s got a client deadline on Thursday that we can’t move, so I’ve asked her to finish that up before starting on X. Let me know, though, if it’s more time-sensitive than that.”
Obviously you’ll need to use some judgment here; if the CEO is asking for something for a meeting he has tomorrow, don’t bump that. But if that happens a lot, then the conversation with your own boss needs to be “I’m finding we’re not able to reliably do XYZ because my team gets pulled away so often for urgent requests from the CEO,” followed by a discussion about solutions to that (more staff? reprioritizing other things? etc.).
2. Our equity posters were vandalized
I work as the equality and diversity manager of a research institute with about 350 people. Recently we’ve been running some poster campaigns bringing attention to issues like the gender pay gap and lack of representation of people of color, and we’ve had some posters be lightly vandalized. One on the gender pay gap was taken down and replaced with a jokey poster on men winning the lottery more than women and how can we address that imbalance! Another was next to a poster advertising a women-only running group and both posters had question marks and arrows pointing to the other drawn on them.
Our equality team has been divided on how to respond to this. I think it’s important to say something and I’d like our director to send an all users email saying we like to receive feedback and have many official avenues for this (including ones that can be anonymous) but we take these issues seriously and vandalism is unacceptable. Other members of the team think that we shouldn’t feed the trolls by acknowledging it at all or that this is a valuable way to get dissenting opinions. I know you are against blanket emails in general but in this case we don’t know who it is and I don’t want silence to be mistaken for condoning this behavior. What’s your advice on approaching this?
Someone on your team thinks this is a valuable way to get dissenting opinions? Huh.
I think you need to address it and say it’s a hostile act to women at your company (because it is), and that it’s unacceptable. But you also need to take it as a sign that at least one person employed there is very unclear on the organization’s values in this regard (and if that person is, possibly more are), and that you have some serious educating to do on things like why affinity groups for historically marginalized populations are part of equity work, not at odds with it. In other words, this is a distress signal from your culture — take it a sign of work you need to do.
3. Is my daughter taking too much time off?
My daughter has a BA and MA in Philosophy. Not surprisingly, she had a very hard time finding a job after graduate school (we supported her during her job hunt). She finally found a good job selling software packages at a start-up. I haven’t had an actual paying job for decades, and, when I did, I worked in a hospital laboratory, not sales. She started in April. In June, we had a long-planned family reunion. She brought her laptop and did some remote work. Last month she took three days to go see her 99-year-old grandmother (again she did some remote work). She has asked for and been given the week of Thanksgiving and Christmas off.
She told us she always meets her sales quotas. But that seems to me like a LOT of time off when she has only been there six months. We are desperate for her to keep this job — and if she loses it, we’ll have to support her until she finds another job. How do you know whether or not you are taking too much time off?
It depends very much on the office, but that’s not inherently too much time off. If she has the accrued PTO and her boss is approving it, this isn’t something you should worry about. (I’m deliberately not saying “if those things are the case, it’s definitely fine” because it really does depend on her office. But it’s likely enough to be fine that it doesn’t make sense for you to be concerned, when you’re not the person employed there.)
If there is a problem with how much time she’s taking off, her boss will probably let her know.
The bigger issue here, I suspect, is that how invested you are in her keeping the job. I can understand why, if you’d be supporting her if she loses it! But she could lose it for all sorts of reasons — layoffs that have nothing to do with her performance or conduct, an unreasonable manager, low work quality despite trying hard, a personality clash with a coworker, and lots of other possibilities. I say that not to freak you out, but because you shouldn’t be white-knuckling your way through this. You might be better off encouraging her to save enough money that she can provide her own safety net if something does happen with the job. (Part of that might be letting her know you won’t be as much of that safety net as you were last time, although that depends on whether your daughter would take that help for granted or not.)
4. Interviewing with a bad eczema flare-up on my face
I’m interviewing for a really interesting position with a lot of potential. I hadn’t heard from them in a couple of weeks, which was a relief as I’ve had a bad flare of eczema on my face that makes it impossible for me to wear makeup and is seriously off-putting to strangers who see me. (This time half my face swelled up alarmingly, which thankfully has since subsided. It’s hard enough to deal with when just working, let alone interacting with people, but generally it doesn’t affect the quality of my work.) I’m getting medical treatment but it takes time.
They have just gotten back to me to say the next round should be soon, and I’m nowhere near 100% healed yet. How should I handle such a visible condition? I hope it’ll be healed by then, but if my skin is raw and red when I go in for the final interview, I worry I’ll give the impression that I can’t do the job, despite my demonstrated experience and skills.
Especially as a woman, I worry whether I should I go into an interview sans makeup if I’m not healed yet. It’s not required every day in my industry, but interviews are one time we’re expected to be completely on point.
The best thing to do when there’s something very visible and potentially alarming while you’re interviewing is to just own it. As soon as you sit down, say something like, “Please don’t be alarmed by my face! I had a minor skin reaction, but it’s temporary and it looks much worse than it is.”
As for the makeup, so be it. If any of your interviewers are the type to expect that look, they’ll probably figure out that it’s not an option for you right now (just like they might normally expect dress shoes but would understand you not wearing them if your foot were in a cast).
5. People ask me for favors and then never thank me
I’m relatively well known in my field and I often get emails from total strangers asking for professional advice. I’m totally happy to share my advice and I reply with a thoughtful response to whatever they’ve asked, as well as inviting them to contact me again if they have follow up questions, which again, I’m genuinely happy to answer. I don’t mind in the least spending a little time helping someone out, but it really irks me that almost NEVER does anyone reply to thank me or even acknowledge they got my email. The other time this happens is when I’m asked to speak at a conference or event and I have to decline, but usually suggest someone else I think would be a good fit for them to ask. I always feel kind of bad saying no anyway, and when the other person doesn’t even bother to send a quick “totally understand, thanks anyway!” kind of email, it makes me feel even worse.
Am I being unreasonable to think it’s rude not to even acknowledge someone you’ve asked for a favor? Especially when that person is someone you’ve contacted totally out of the blue and never even met before? At the least I feel like this is very bad email etiquette. I don’t expect some over the top effusive email gushing with gratitude, but a quick “thank you!” seems like the bare minimum.
Nope, you’re not being unreasonable. It’s rude as hell, and also very common.
In addition to being rude, it’s also really short-sighted, because if any of those people ever want something from you again, it’s very unlikely you’ll go out of your way to respond.
CEO assigns work to my staff without telling me, vandalized posters, and more was originally published by Alison Green on Ask a Manager.
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