It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go…
1. My employee won’t let go of a mistake I made
I’m a few months into my first management job and I’m still trying to figure out how to be seen as the manager. I’m in my early 20s and a large part of my time is spent doing the same work as the people I manage, so I think I struggle to come off as authoritative.
Right now I feel at odds with our new hire. Since the beginning, she’s challenged my authority when I give her directions. Recently I made a very small mistake with very little impact on her. She brought it to my attention the next day, and I thanked her for letting me know, apologized for any inconvenience, and got back to my work. But she keeps bringing it up. She’s on a work trial so I’m meant to do supervision meetings with her every other week. Instead of answering my questions about her work, she brought up my mistake. I told her we could address it at the end of the meeting but that we needed to focus on the task at hand first. Another time she brought it up out of the blue so I asked her what steps she could have taken to solve the problem. Now I’ve overheard her talking badly about me to her coworker. I’m starting to lose my patience. How do I get her to drop this?
“Jane, we’ve discussed this and it’s been handled. You’ve continued to bring it up. What’s going on?” … followed by, “I am happy to take ownership of my mistakes, but this has been dealt with. It’s becoming disruptive to keep bringing it up and makes me wonder if something else is going on. I need you to focus on your job, not mine. Are you able to do that going forward?” (The point of asking that question at the end is to get her to either agree to move forward or to air whatever is stopping her from that.)
But I doubt this will be the end of it, because this is the behavior of someone who has something else going on. I’d keep a very close eye on her and be prepared to assert yourself further if you see additional problems from her, which you probably will. Also, she’s new and on a work trial! Pay real attention to whether she’s someone you want to keep; if she’s toxic to your team, she can’t stay, and it’s much easier to deal with that now than have to do it later.
Keep in mind that authority, especially for new/young managers, comes from knowing what tools your authority gives you and being willing to use them — calmly and matter-of-factly. In this case, that means knowing that you have the option to let her go and being willing to do that if you need to, and not feeling you have to cajole her into being reasonable.
Here’s a set of posts about exercising authority that might help:
- how to appear more authoritative at work
- what consequences can managers enforce, other than firing someone?
- new managers and authority
- how to coach an irritated manager to stop yelling
- I yelled at our intern
- my employee disagrees with my evaluation of his performance
That look like an odd mish-mash of topics, but they all delve into how to use authority effectively.
2. Is my boss’s advice making me look bad?
I recently switched industries entirely, from a tiny retail environment to a national corporate company with headquarters in another state. My boss is at the senior level regionally and is awesome – she’s personable, smart, believes in my abilities, and has point blank told me she’s grooming me for bigger things. But as I’m trying to create a more professional persona for myself and learn how to navigate a traditional office atmosphere, there have been times when I worry that what she advises me to do will make me look out of touch if I do it.
A recent example of what I mean: we had our local office renovated and we’ve been taking turns going back to set up our new office spaces. My desk area needed a couple tweaks, one of which the construction company said should be done by whatever technology company we use. We recently outsourced our tech security to a remote company, so the people I would have called a couple months ago to come to physically fix something are no longer working with us. When I asked my boss who I should contact, she gave me the name of the senior technology manager in the corporate office three states away. Their team does more software technology stuff, like getting our remote desktops set up to communicate with the corporate office, not drilling holes and rewiring things in our local office. I fear that if I reach out to this person, who firstly is not oriented to this type of work and secondly is too far up in the hierarchy of the business, I’ll look like I don’t understand office norms. Typically, I just make sure to copy my boss and/or mention that I got the contact information from her, but I’m wondering if there’s a better way to navigate this? Or am I overthinking this and it won’t make me look like a naive corporate newbie like I worry it will?
Yeah, sometimes people in senior positions don’t actually know how to get stuff done at lower levels — because they no longer need to, or because the people they’re in touch with are higher level themselves, or because other people usually handle it for them. That doesn’t make your boss bad at her job, but it does mean she might not be well equipped to advise you on this kind of thing.
The good news is that it sounds like you’re able to spot it when it’s happening (at least some of the time), before you’ve taken her advice. When that happens, it’s fine to try a different avenue first if you can — like if there’s someone else you could ask, you could check with them to see if they have a different suggestion. When you do, make sure to say you also checked with your boss but weren’t sure if there’s a better way (because otherwise you risk looking like you’re wasting people’s time by asking for guidance from multiple people without acknowledging or following any of it, so you’ve got to explain why you’re seeking a second opinion). It also might be wise to start with those alternate sources first, if you have them.
Or, if you do contact the person she suggested, you can be explicit about the situation (politely): “I need to do X and Jane suggested I start with you. I realize you might just handle Y though — if so, any chance you can point me in the right direction?”
Make a point, too, of developing other ways of getting direction on this kind of thing without going through your boss if you can (whether it’s a friendly admin who knows everyone, just spending some time digging through your company’s intranet, or so forth).
3. How do I politely end professional phone calls?
This question seems so simple, but it stumps me a few times a day. How do I get off the phone on a professional call, when there is nothing else to talk about or when I have to go? I’m a divorce lawyer, so the subject matter is very emotional and personal and relationships are key. It is important that my clients know I’m listening and that I care. I spend a lot of time on the phone with clients each day, asking or answering questions and relying information. We start off with an agenda, but then we get through what we have to get through … and then what? It’s often painful awkwardness. I find myself saying something that feels really clumsy, like “well, that’s it” or “okay, I’ll keep you posted” – which, duh, of course I will.
I guess I don’t really have a better answer in my personal life, and usually just conclude calls with “I’ll let you go,” which is the universal signal that you are done talking on the phone. But, that doesn’t work professionally. There is obviously a simple answer here, but I can’t figure out what it is. What are the magic words?
Actually, the way you’re doing it — with something like “okay, I’ll keep you posted” — is fine. You just need to say it confidently rather then feeling awkward about it. But some other options are:
* “Okay, I’ve got everything I need. Thanks for your time, and I’ll be in touch soon.”
* “Well, I should be back in touch with you in about two weeks when X happens.” (Wait for response.) “Talk to you then, and take care.”
* “I’ve got to run to a meeting, but I hope this helped and we’ll talk soon.”
* “I think that’s it for today! It was good talking with you.”
* “Is there anything else we should cover before we wrap up?”
* “It’s been good talking. Let’s plan to touch base next week.”
4. My new job said I could work from home — but my manager is pushing me to come to the office
I work in an industry that was already remote about 50% of the time before COVID. I recently started a new job and emphasized during the interview I prefer working from home and was looking for a job that had that setup. The interviewer (who is now my manager) told me company policy was everyone had the option to work from home full-time until it was deemed safe to do otherwise. She also said the company would keep this setup once COVID was over. I told her this was great because I wanted to work from home as much as possible.
Now that my city is easing up on COVID restrictions, she is giving me a lot of pressure to work in the office full-time. I tried going in for a few days two weeks ago and was extremely stressed — I do not want to be in a small office space at all while my city still has active cases. When I told her I would return to working from home for the foreseeable future, she told me she would “strongly prefer” I work in the office. I asked if company policy had changed and she said no. I’ve been back at home since and she messages me every day asking when I will come back in person. I have a feeling my boss wants me there because she is a bit micromanagey and likes to track what everyone is doing at all times.
The job is otherwise great but I definitely wouldn’t have accepted if I knew working from home wasn’t going to be possible long term. How can I respond to my boss when she keeps asking me to come in? Should I take this as a sign of worse things to come and start looking for a new job?
You might as well address it head-on: “You’ve been asking about me working from the office, so I want to make sure we’re on the same page. Finding a job that allowed remote work was a high priority for me, and my understanding when I was hired was that I’d be able to work from home. I wouldn’t have accepted the job without that agreement in place, and I’ve been working from the assumption that that hasn’t changed.”
If you have decent HR, I’d raise this with them as well, especially since it sounds like your boss might be at odds with company policy. That said, even in companies that encourage working from home, individual managers are often allowed to set their own policies on it — so I’d also start thinking about what you’ll do if she won’t budge. Do you still want the job if that’s the case?
5. How do I approach my boss about time off for fertility treatments?
I started a new job about five months ago. Everything is great so far — my boss (and grandboss) are incredibly understanding and kind and supportive, and I love my coworkers. However, my husband and I have been trying to have kids for two years now. Our doctor said that the next step would require going into his office three times a month for fertility treatments. How do I approach this with my boss? Everything revolves around my cycle, so it’s not like I can say, “Every Thursday I have this appointment.” It’s going to be more of, “Oh, just got my period and so I’ll need to go in to the doctor in two days.”
It’s a small world that I work in, and someone I used to work with who knew my boss told me that my boss had had her kids via infertility treatments (I know, I was shocked she told me but obviously have not let my boss know that I know), so I know my boss would be understanding. At the same time, I feel so much pressure and anxiety around this and am so afraid it won’t work and am not sure I could take the “did it work?!?” each month. I also don’t want to seem flaky since I did only just start five months ago. What do you think I should do?
Treat it like any other medical appointment, meaning your boss only needs to know how it will affect your schedule and not any details beyond that. Even if she had fertility treatments herself, this is still your private medical information, and you’re right to worry it could lead to conversations you don’t want. Plus, as lovely as she seems, there’s a risk that she’ll be annoyed you’re missing work for something “optional” while still relatively new, or that you’ll face bias (unconscious or otherwise) if she knows you’re trying to have a baby, with all that implies about maternity leave, etc. Maybe not, but why introduce the risk when you don’t need to?
All you need to say is, “I have a series of medical treatments coming up that will require me to go to the doctor several times a month for a little while. It’s nothing to worry about, just something I need to get taken care of. My plan is to try to schedule for early or late in the day but I wanted to give you a heads-up.” (If this is an office where you’d be expected to make up that time, you could add, “I’ll plan to come in early or stay late on those days.”)
employee won’t let go of a mistake I made, how to politely end phone calls, and more was originally published by Alison Green on Ask a Manager.
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