It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go…
1. I was praised for my doubts and insecurities
I am a first-time manager who walked into a situation no one was expecting. I had to rely on my boss, grandboss, and HR to help me navigate situations that were almost unknown in my organization. I’ve gotten praise for how I handled it (and for the fact I’m still in the role), but I needed a lot of help. I’ve struggled to find my place and pace in my job, and I have doubts and insecurities about my work that I try to be honest about so they can be addressed.
During a meeting today, my grandboss went around a meeting and personally thanked every manager for how they are doing during the pandemic and the positive things they’ve done. When they got to me, they thanked me for being honest about my doubts and insecurities.
That said, it stung to have that be the thing called out in a meeting in front of every coworker I have. It makes me feel like my insecurities are at the forefront of my boss and grandboss, and that isn’t how I wanted to be seen. I’d hoped that by addressing my concerns head-on I could counteract them, but now it seems like that has backfired and I’m known as a needy, weak manager. I would like to hear someone else’s thoughts, and how you might interpret that kind of call-out.
If everyone else is being praised for accomplishments and you’re praised for having doubts and insecurities, I can see why that stung! I mean, there can be real value in having an honest conversation about those things but … yeah.
Since you’ve had positive feedback from your manager aside from this meeting, it was probably just an awkward choice on her part. But I don’t want to dismiss the possibility that your doubts and insecurities have taken center stage in how they perceive you, rightly or not. Frustratingly, trying to address it risks adding to any perception of you as someone focused on insecurities, which puts you in a catch-22.
It might help, though, to pull back on sharing self-doubts for a while (if you haven’t already) and focus on demonstrating the sorts of things you wish you’d been praised for instead. But for what it’s worth, I would expect a first-time manager to need a lot of help navigating tricky situations that had never come up in the org before — that isn’t weird at all.
2. My boss keeps pushing me to change my vacation time at the last minute
At my job, we pretty much always schedule vacations way ahead of time, so as not to conflict with other people’s vacations and so that the department always has coverage. Yet lately, the week before I am scheduled to be off, my manager asks, makes jokes about, and sometimes even pressures me to reschedule or not take the time. When I say no, she keeps pushing. Once she asked every day for a week and got visibly angry at my refusals. There was also a lot of ”why not? I know you’re not going anywhere anyways!” (I usually travel during my vacations, but COVID….) Today, she even tried to guilt trip me to reschedule as a favor to her, after all the time she spends trying to make sure the company recognizes my efforts.
Frankly, I am furious. This is time that I have earned; I am not asking her for a favor here! Am I overreacting? Has this become some kind of new normal? I have once postponed a vacation due to a company-wide emergency, but I refuse to do so just because we are busy and she has not ensured adequate staffing ahead of time.
You are not overreacting. Time off is part of your compensation package, just like salary, and you’re entitled to use it. Asking someone to reschedule their vacation should be a very rare thing; I can’t imagine asking for it on multiple occasions. It does sounds like your boss is assuming your plans are infinitely flexible if you’re not traveling, but it’s still not okay.
You have two options, both of which involve continuing to refuse. One option is to just keep refusing and ignore your boss’s pushiness. Keep saying, “nope, sorry, I have plans I can’t change” and let her stew in her own frustration. The other is to keep refusing but also address it head-on — as in, “Recently you’ve been pushing me to cancel or reschedule my time off right before I’m due to leave. I make a point of scheduling it in advance, and once I do, it’s hard for me to change it. You’ve seemed bothered by that lately, so I want to make sure we’re on the same page going forward that once my time off is scheduled, I’m planning around that and won’t be able to make last-minute changes.” Or even: “I find it really unsettling when you push so hard for me to change vacation plans that I scheduled in advance. I don’t mind you asking if it’s an emergency, but if I tell you I’m not able to do it, can I ask that you respect that and not continue to push the issue?” (Depending on her response, you may need to escalate in seriousness from there, but this is where I’d start.)
3. Did this company fumble my rejection?
After job searching for months in a new industry, I landed a job interview at what seemed like a great company. I originally applied for two separate positions, one business development representative (BDR) and one account manager, which I had more experience with and was considered higher level than the other position.
I really hit it off with the interviewer, and he told me he was moving me along the track for the account manager position, taking me out of the running for BDR. I then had a second interview, where I was again told how qualified I am and received great feedback. Finally, I had a third interview (this had now been about a month and a half process) where the interviewer told me I was one of the final two candidates and I would know by a certain date. This date comes and goes, and I know from reading your website not to put too much stock in that. Finally, a week and a half after the date, I received an email attempting to set up an interview for the BDR position. I replied and let them know I was told I was taken out of the pool of candidates for that (I even forwarded them the email that said that), and was waiting on a response for the account manager position. The receptionist, who I had been communicating with, responded with, “Oh, we already filled that position! Would you want to set up an interview for the BDR position anyway?”
I was fuming and did not respond. Am I being oversensitive? I know that it’s common for candidates to be rejected without any communication, but I assumed that after being told I was one of the remaining two candidates and given a date, they would have at least had the courtesy to let me know I hadn’t gotten the job.
Would you have been interested in the BDR position if they’d rejected you for the account manager job? If so, I’d try to put your anger aside and say you’re interested in that one.
It is infuriating that so many employers don’t respond to candidates who have taken the time to interview, even after promising they would. But it’s so, so common that if you hold it against employers, you’ll end up taking yourself out of the running for a huge number of jobs. It’s also possible that the receptionist’s info is wrong, or that they have a reason for not announcing the hire externally yet, or who knows what. Regardless of the reason, not hearing back after you’ve been rejected is so common (and so rude! but also so common) that it doesn’t make sense to get worked up about it. You’re actually better off just expecting it, annoying as that is.
4. We train employees who then leave for our competition
We are in the fire and water restoration business. We spend years training our employees, so when an employee becomes problematic we let them go and our competitors end up getting highly trained employees. Is it better to keep an employee who only does a portion of their job and is highly paid or let them go and build the competition?
You shouldn’t keep problem employees. That will lower your company’s performance over time, and it’ll demoralize other employees and make it hard to hold anyone accountable for their work.
That does mean that you’ll invest in training people who eventually leave for your competition. But that could happen anyway, even if they weren’t problem employees — and better that your competitors get the problem ones than the good ones, no?
5. Should I mention my pay cut to explain why I’m looking for a new job?
I work in an industry that has been heavily affected by COVID-19 gathering restrictions. As a result, when everything shut down in March, non-managerial staff who were not immediately let go received a 10% pay cut. This was supposed to be temporary, but has continued to be extended and now there’s no clear date by which the original pay levels will be reestablished.
At first, I was managing “okay” with this cut to my personal income, but in the last few months my family and I have experienced some big, unexpected life changes that have made it significantly more difficult to survive with the pay cut in place. I am beginning to look for a new job with a higher salary in a (hopefully) more stable industry. If I end up getting any interviews, do I mention that salary cuts at my current job are an issue for me, or do I give a vague “looking for new opportunities” answer?
You don’t need to be vague. It’s okay to say, “We’ve had to make a lot of cuts because of Covid-19, and I’m looking for a company that’s more stable.” (You don’t need to get into it being pay cuts specifically, or how much, or so forth. Just explaining there have been cuts is enough.)
I was praised for my insecurities, boss pressures me to reschedule vacations, and more was originally published by Alison Green on Ask a Manager.
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