It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go…
1. Is it okay to give people a heads-up before a colleague is fired?
I am working with HR to let someone go. The person is directly involved in a number of active cross-functional projects.
Typically terminations in our organization are communicated post-event, but I feel a bit like I will be blindsiding several team members. The termination shouldn’t be a major surprise as this individual has had performance issues, including interpersonal issues.
Would you ever recommend giving select team members — potentially managers and project managers — a heads-up that this event is coming so they can somewhat prepare? I thought about communicating it vaguely, e.g. “change is coming that may affect this project,” but that would just create more confusion and paranoia. Or, do I just sit tight and deal with the teams after the deed is done?
As long as you trust the people you’re talking with to be discreet and not share what you tell them with others, you should be able to give a confidential heads-up to managers and project managers when there’s a real need to know. I’d try to avoid sharing it with peers of the person but sometimes it’s unavoidable, depending on the details of the situation — but keep the number of people you discuss it with to a minimum and on a truly need-to-know basis. And ideally this heads-up would be within days of the firing happening — you don’t want colleagues knowing for weeks when that person doesn’t know themselves. (And really, once you know for sure you’ll be letting someone go, you should do it quickly anyway, not let it drag out.)
2. Telling your boss he’s unapproachable
Due to COVID, our company had to lay off some people, and re-org those remaining. I was on a team that got re-orged; as a result, another teammate and I were split from our really great manager, Tom, and given to a totally new one who is the polar opposite personality-wise, Brad. While Tom was very warm, supportive, and easy to talk with, Brad has an overall demeanor that is best described as very serious/intense bordering on cold. He’s not a malicious person, but he’s not someone you ever feel comfortable around. I’m always relieved when our one-on-ones are over.
I have occasional skip-level meetings with his boss and indicated that I found Brad to be rather unapproachable. Next thing I knew, in my next one-on-one with Brad, he asked me point-blank if I found him unapproachable or difficult to bring issues to (the answers being “yes” and “yes”). I was so uncomfortable and basically stuttered for a bit until he moved on. I’m also irritated that his boss clearly told Brad I’d said this. I never specifically said it should be confidential but I guess I assumed that was common sense to at least anonymize the feedback or something.
I’m struggling with how to approach this. I am usually a fairly forthcoming employee overall, and am comfortable giving more concrete feedback like “When you changed that deadline to X, it made it harder for me to do Y” or whatever. But this feels more personal, like attacking the person instead of the work. How do you give actionable feedback on soft skills? Also, is this even my job to deliver it?
Nah, it’s not your job to tell an unapproachable manager that you find them unapproachable. It’s useful if you can, but it’s also the kind of feedback that his own manager should be delivering, and without pinning it on specific people. So his boss messed this up.
Now that it’s out there, though, it might be useful to revisit it in a future one-on-one and say something like, “You asked me earlier about whether I found you hard to bring issues to. I was caught off-guard when you asked, but having had some time to think it over, I do find it difficult to raise some things with you because ____. I feel awkward giving that feedback, but I also didn’t want to ignore the question since you’d asked about it.” Obviously, temper this advice with what you know of Brad; if you think he’d react badly, skip it. But there can be value in having this kind of open discussion if you’re up for it and don’t think you’ll be penalized in some way. And some managers who fit Brad’s description genuinely don’t know they’re putting people off and can become better managers from hearing it. But again, it’s not your job if you’d rather not take it on.
3. In which I am stumped
I’m a newly-promoted manager (yay!), and AAM has been a great resource for me during the last couple months of learning to manage. Lately, I often find myself thinking up resolutions to various scenarios so I can try to be prepared in unexpected or outlandish situations. I’m interested in your take on how to professionally handle something that’s stumped me.
A few jobs ago, I had a coworker with severe priapism (persistent erections not caused by sexual stimulation). He always carried a doctor’s note with him and was extremely open about his condition; usually whenever we had a new hire, he’d take that person aside and explain that if they ever noticed anything, it wasn’t personal. It was a very small company, and since he was a genuinely nice guy, there was never any trouble there.
But it got me thinking on how to navigate something like that if someone with this condition wanted to keep their health private (as would be their right), and a coworker complained of sexual harassment. What could be done then?
Wow, I have no idea! You’ve stumped me. If I were the employer in this situation, I’d consult with a lawyer. But I’d imagine it’s easier to handle it internally within an office; it would be much harder more difficult if the person had a job that required him to deal with various members of the public on a regular basis.
4. Application systems that won’t accept a cover letter
I know the importance of cover letters from your blog, and also because for me in particular, I have a wide variety of experience and it helps me explain which aspects are aligned with the job I’m applying for. However, I recently applied for a job at a major media organization, and the online application system didn’t seem to have a way to attach a cover letter. There was only space for one file (resume), and I kept thinking throughout the process that there might be a place at the end to attach more documents, but of course, you don’t know that for sure until you’ve completed the entire application process. I even paged back through to see if I missed something – I didn’t.
Is this some kind of new normal? If so, and sometimes you don’t get to submit a cover letter (but you don’t actually know that you won’t be submitting one until you’ve completed the process), how do I explain how my experience aligns with the particular job I’m applying for? I thought about PDFing the cover letter and resume together and attaching that as my file, but the system parses your resume into individual jobs. Also, if you later apply for a different job at the same organization, the cover letter would be wrong since it would be for the first job you applied for.
It’s not really a new normal; there have always been employers who just don’t care about cover letters and don’t set up their systems to invite them.
Sometimes when this happens, you can just include a cover letter in the same PDF as your resume, and that’s the best way to handle it. But when there’s no way to do that, that’s a clear sign that this employer doesn’t want cover letters — and if that’s the case, you’ve just got to work with that. It does mean you won’t be able to explain the things a cover letter would let you elaborate on, but that’s the weird choice those employers are making. (I say weird, but certainly some managers simply don’t care about cover letters. I think that’s a mistake for most jobs, but they’re out there.)
5. Can I tell interviewers I’m leaving my job because of how they’ve handled Covid?
Part of the reason I’m job searching is that my management team is getting very antsy about getting us all back in the office. Our CEO is old school and hated the idea of letting us work from home to begin with.
In the event a hiring manager asks my reason for leaving, is this a bad answer? In general, I try to avoid badmouthing any of my previous employers in response to this question. Is there a good way to answer the question to this effect? I imagine discussion of precautions going into a new job is inevitable, but I’m concerned about framing that conversation coming from this angle.
I wouldn’t get into all the details (like that the CEO is old school or hated remote work — ultimately that stuff isn’t the point) but it’s fine to say something like, “My office is reopening faster than I think is safe for our area, and I’m looking at employers that are taking a different approach to the pandemic.” Of course, that will likely screen out employers that are doing the same thing as your current one — but you presumably want to do that anyway.
giving people a heads-up before a coworker is fired, telling your boss he’s unapproachable, and more was originally published by Alison Green on Ask a Manager.
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