It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go…
1. We have to share our feelings on a color-coded scale
My manager has started asking our team to go around the virtual “room” and share our state of mind at the beginning of each meeting. We are supposed to to share how we’re doing on a color-coded scale of red to green.
This has been explained as a trust-building exercise. But as someone who suffers from chronic illness, I find it to be quite difficult. We’re told that this exercise is meant to allow us to bring our whole selves to work, but what about when your “whole self” is in much more pain than other people? And what if you don’t want your coworkers to know when you’re having a bad day? I don’t feel comfortable answering these check-ins honestly, because if I did I would be giving away how unwell I feel on a regular basis, which would almost certainly impact how my colleagues think of me (whether it ideally should or not). Because of this, an exercise that is supposed to make people feel welcome instead makes me feel alienated. Not only do I have to do my usual masking to get by, but I now also have to lie about how I’m doing. It seems to me like an open ended “how are you doing” question would be so much more authentic, and then people can answer if they want to, or not, to the degree of detail that they want to include.
My question for you is whether I’m being a grump and should get over my personal misgivings and accept this as the charade it is and play along and just tell people I’m green or whatever, or if this really is something that managers should think more carefully about before assuming it will have a positive impact on everyone.
It’s something managers should stop doing, full stop. It’s invasive and boundary-violating, and it’s not the point of work. And as you point out, it’s particularly problematic for people who can’t answer honestly without revealing info they shouldn’t feel obligated to share at work and which could open them up to discrimination.
In some cases, there can be value to knowing what mindsets people are bringing to a meeting. In meetings where you need people actively participating, it can be useful to know if people are distracted, stressed, tired, upset, etc. (although if you want to inquire, you need to already have done the groundwork to create trust and a reasonably healthy environment). But requiring this info of everyone every time and with this weirdly blunt instrument (colors?!) … no.
Ideally you — or even better, a group of you — would speak up at the next meeting and say, “We’re not finding the color exercise useful. It feels intrusive, and would be particularly difficult for anyone who’s dealing with health challenges that they don’t want to share at work. Can we skip it and focus on work?” But if you’re not up for that, then yeah, just say “green” or whatever color represents neutral every time and roll your eyes internally.
Also, about their claim that this builds trust — the way you build trust is by working to create a transparent, fair environment with open communication without violating anyone’s privacy. You don’t just make people reveal personal feelings every time they sit down to meet.
2. How to demote someone
My company is a young and growing start-up. We are in a period of rapid growth that is leaving all of us stretched to the brim. I am on the leadership team, and we have a situation with an employee who we (maybe carelessly) promoted to a key position. They have been in the position for six months and it’s just not working out. It is absolutely our mistake. We put them in the position out of necessity rather than carefully considering who would be a good fit.
Now we are being forced to reckon with our mistake. It is just not working out and it’s time to replace them. We would like to move this employee to another position where they have a greater chance of success.
The debate we are having is about how we should go about this. I am advocating that we tell the employee, hope they still want to stay on with us, and allow both internal and external candidates to apply for the position. I want to allow our internal candidates the opportunity to move up.
My colleague is arguing to hire externally for the position and not tell this employee what is going on until we have found a suitable replacement. We are short-staffed and need to hire more people regardless.
Both of us are concerned with the employee quitting before we have found a replacement. It is a vital position to our organization and not having someone there for any extended amount of time would place more work on our already overburdened team. I am very concerned about what it would do to trust and morale if we are not transparent in this situation. What would you recommend that we do in this situation?
Have you been talking to the employee about your concerns with their work all along? Ideally this will already have been an ongoing conversation, and so the next stage of that conversation can be transparency that it’s not working out and a discussion of where to go next (including the option of moving to another position if they’re up for that). That’s honest, it’s fair to your employee, and it’s just good management, because ongoing feedback should be a regular part of managers’ relationships with employees anyway.
If you haven’t already been giving the employee that sort of feedback, then you’re in a harder spot — but transparency is still the way to go. Your other employees are likely to hear about how this went down, and “they secretly hired a replacement and then sprung it on everyone, and Employee didn’t even have the chance to know about their concerns” can become a (bad) defining mark about your culture.
But yes, your employee might move on before you’ve found a replacement. They could move on regardless though, especially if they’ve already realized the job isn’t a good fit. People can move on at any time, and you can’t make major management decisions based on that fear. If you want to minimize the chances of that happening, you can do that by sweetening the pot for the employee — offering a bonus to stay for X amount of time, or even simply ensuring you’re treating them with respect, dignity, and appreciation. But don’t secretly replace someone before they know what’s going on — that’s not the culture you want to be building.
(Also, especially as a young company, make sure you’re doing the necessary postmortems here and drawing lessons for next time. Especially when you’re short-staffed, hiring too quickly, and possibly because someone was already on hand, is an easy mistake to repeat.)
3. Should I tell an internal candidate that I’m secretly planning my escape from our organization?
We recently got approval to fill a key position in my department, which took several months and many hoops jumped through. We will have several internal candidates, one of whom is phenomenal and will almost certainly be in our group of finalists. This person once told me that they wouldn’t want to stay at our organization if I were to leave.
…but that’s exactly my plan, and nobody knows it yet. My boss is horribly toxic and emotionally abusive, and I am planning to put in notice as soon as this position is filled, new job or not (I don’t trust my boss to not use my departure as an excuse to screw my department out of a key position, and I also don’t trust my boss to not show me the door immediately upon receipt of my notice). I have reason to believe that having me as a boss is part of the reason this internal candidate is applying for the job, and it feels icky keeping this to myself for that reason. Do I confide in this person and let them in on my secret, or just keep this to myself until I’m ultimately ready to pull the plug?
If you absolutely trust this person to keep what you tell them confidential, it would be a kindness to have a discreet conversation with them about it, especially since it sounds like you plan to leave as soon as they accept. Otherwise, though, you could be less direct about it, possibly just pointing out that no one stays forever and before accepting that job they should be sure they’d want it even if you weren’t there.
But also, do your internal candidates know your boss well enough to know they’d be signing on to work for someone emotionally abusive? If not, it would be a kindness to find a way to share that too.
4. Disclosing my family’s pandemic schedule when interviewing
I’ve been actively interviewing during the pandemic. The standard advice is not to disclose any personal details during interviews, not only because it is illegal for companies to consider them, but also because it may hurt your chances to get a job due to potential bias and discrimination from the interviewers.
I wondered if this advice is different now. I’m interviewing for a fairly senior level, and I have children distance learning at home, and a husband working from home. I am personally curious how the hours will be for the role, given my additional responsibilities with my family. Will it hurt my chances if I explain I have children at home and most days, need to stick to a schedule that will allow me to manage home responsibilities too? I feel like any hiring manager will view this negatively, yet I need to know, and I don’t want to spring my personal responsibilities on them after I get the job.
Wait until you have the job offer and raise it then. I know it feels more efficient to raise it earlier, since if they can’t meet your scheduling needs, then there’s no point in going through the rest of the interview process. But if you raise it earlier, you do risk it biasing them (consciously or unconsciously). With anything that has the potential to cause bias but which your interviewer can’t legally consider (kids, religion, disability, etc.), you’re actually doing them a favor if you wait to bring it up until the offer stage. That way it can’t subtly influence their thinking — and they don’t need to deal with you wondering if it might have influenced their thinking if they reject you.
Your situation is potentially a bit different, because it’s possible that the sticking point could be not that you have kids, but the schedule you need as a result … but if that’s the case, you can deal with it at the offer stage. The benefits of not muddying the waters before then are still greater.
5. What to do about a promising job opening that’s dragging out
I had a great interview for a dream position that went very well — so much so that they immediately asked for and contacted my references, all of which my reviewers said were “glowing.”
This was almost a month ago, and the workplace told me they would get me a decision the next day, and then I was told a week later that the decision would take “a few more days.” A week after hearing nothing, I emailed to follow up and was told that there “were more steps with HR than they realized.”
That was two weeks ago, and I don’t know what to do. Should I email and check in for a status? Is this a red flag that indicates that I maybe don’t want to work for this place even if a job offer comes up? It’s been almost a month since my reference checks.
The biggest issue is that this job would require moving to a different city, so I had put my apartment search in my current city on hold. I’m okay in my current work and living situation — they’re not ideal, but for being in the middle of a pandemic, I feel lucky.
Should I check in again? Should I be even more patient? I’m always very polite in my emails but am afraid they will think I’m being too pushy and rescind any kind of job offer. My field (museums) is very small, and good jobs are difficult to come by, so I’m really anxious to hear about this one.
Wait one more week and then check in one last time, specifically asking if they can give you a sense of their updated timeline. After that, though, put it out of your mind — assume you didn’t get it and move on and let it be a pleasant surprise if they do contact you. If assuming you didn’t get it means you’d resume moving forward on a local apartment search, go ahead and do that. If you want to be more cautious, you could wait a few additional weeks before you do … but I wouldn’t keep your life on hold longer than that, since the job may never materialize. (A stronger candidate could have emerged, they could be rethinking the position altogether, etc.)
As for it being a red flag about the job itself … eh. It would make my job easier if I could tell people that a disorganized or longer-than-anticipated or low-communication hiring process always indicated problems with the job, but the reality is that it doesn’t. Definitely pay attention to other cues you’re getting during the process, and if this seems like part of a pattern, put more weight on it — but the details in your letter aren’t damning on their own (and this kind of thing is really common).
we have to share our feelings on a color-coded scale, how to demote someone, and more was originally published by Alison Green on Ask a Manager.
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