February 20, 2019 • 28 mins
Coworkers who tell you way more than you want to hear, references you didn't offer, and more.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
My colleagues. We'll stop commenting on everything I need. My
assistant rules his eyes at people and meeting. Why does
my coworker keep taking credit for all my ideas? Have
any wisdom for me? Hi? I'm Alison Green. Welcome to
the Aska Manager podcast, where I answer questions from listeners
about life at work, everything from what to say if
you're allergic to your coworkers perfume to what to do
if you drink too much at the company party. Let's
(00:25):
get started, Hi, and welcome to the show. Today. I'm
going to answer a bunch of shorter questions from people,
and the first question is from someone who works in
an office where people do way too much over sharing. Hi, Alison,
I've worked in the same office for over a year
and a half and I'm bathful at how much my
coworkers share. I've worked at several offices before and I've
(00:48):
had very open discussions, but nothing quite on this level.
To give you a snapshot, my office is open concept,
with the majority of us and cubicles and a few
of us sharing offices in other rooms. It's a out
ninety percent women, and the majority are in their early thirties,
so they're going through similar things when it comes to
marriage and children. This past year alone, one of my
co workers got married to had babies, and one had
(01:11):
a baby about a year ago. This has caused discussion
to always be about the female body and babies. I'm
fine with sharing about these moments and hearing all about
these milestones. However, I am not sure I need to
hear about every kind of breast pump, the specifics of
my coworkers bodies after birth, and associated issues related to pregnancy.
I understand that they may have questions for each other
(01:32):
as they go through certain things for the first time. However,
I now know that one of my co workers had
to go to a vaginal physical therapist because of the
condition of her reproductive organs post baby, and now has
to use keegel weights. Another husband's was not into the
Brazilian bikini actually got, and another kind of hates her husband.
One of my friends in the office has brought it
up to her supervisor, but since her supervisor is also
(01:54):
one of these people who overshares, nothing really happened. The
few of us who aren't in this stage of life
feels super uncomfortable. If we walked in talking about how
much we drank over the weekend or what we did
in a nightclub, we would be seen in a negative light.
But if we talked about how our child is afraid
to use a toilet or that our breastar chiefs from breastfeeding,
it would be completely fine. As tempted as we are
(02:17):
to go to HR, it doesn't feel like a major
enough issue to bring up in our HR department. Is
a bit of a joke. Also, since it's the majority
of our office having these discussions, it would be really
obvious to figure out who complained. Are there any ways
we can reduce over sharing in a house before having
to take it up to someone higher. Thank you so much.
People are so fascinating with the things that they do
(02:41):
and don't have boundaries about and color you have somehow
landed in a nest of people with no boundaries at all,
it seems so. In general, I would say it's mostly
stuff that you want to try to address yourself rather
than escalating it to your manager to HR. There's one
exception to which I'm going to get to in a minute,
but in general, with interpersonal stuff like this, typically it's
(03:05):
something that you would address on your own, unless it's
at the point where it's really interfering with your ability
to do your job. Like if you had a client
in your office and your coworker was talking loudly about
her bikini wax, that's something that would be appropriate to
give your boss that heads up about because it's affecting
clients and affecting your work, you know. Although even then
I would still say talk to your coworker about it
(03:26):
yourself first. I mean, if it's a one time thing
that's not manager worthy, if it's a pattern, talked to
her about it yourself. If that doesn't work, then talk
to your boss. But the reason I would say try
talking to her about it yourself first is because first
that will often solve the problem without you needing to
involve your boss. And also because if it doesn't solve
it and you do need to talk to your manager,
(03:48):
it's going to look better that you've already tried to
handle it yourself. Your boss may ask you have you
tried talking to her about this directly, and you want
to be able to say yes. And then also from
your co workers perspective, it's annoying to have someone complained
to your boss when they didn't talk to you about
the issue first, So you want to start with the
people themselves. And if it's not stuff that is affecting
(04:12):
your work, if it's just annoying interpersonal weirdness, that's not
really stuff to take to your boss. There is an
exception to this, though, and that is if someone is
over sharing about sex specifically, and if having to listen
to sex talk at work is making you uncomfortable, because
that is getting into problematic legal territory for your employer,
(04:33):
because sexual harassment laws can be in play. Sexual harassment
isn't just one person targeting another person. I think a
lot of times people think that's all that it is.
It can also be that you're working in an environment
that's inappropriately sexualized and where you're subjected to a barrage
of unwelcome sexual discussion. So if something like that is happening,
(04:53):
your company has an interest in knowing about it and
shutting it down because otherwise they can be legally liable.
As for what to do here, you can try shutting
it down when it's happening, Like when one of those
conversations gets going, you could say, hey, this is more
graphic than I want to hear at work. Can we
keep this PG, or you could say, WHOA, that is
(05:16):
too much for me at work, Let's move on. So
sort of nudging people to realize, oh, there's people here
who might not be happy bystanders to this conversation. Now,
if you are actually working when this conversation is happening,
you have a stronger standing to say this, because you're
right to be able to focus on your work without
(05:37):
having that distracting conversation around you. Trumps there their right
to talk about vaginal physical therapy. But if it's a
conversation that's like more like something a conversation over lunch,
where it's more of a social context, if everyone else
at the table wants to be talking about post baby
(05:57):
body changes or so forth, it might be that you
just need to cut back on how often you're having
lunch with that group because they do have more freedom
with conversations and social settings. Although to be clear, that's
still a work context and there's still a line they
shouldn't cross. It just really depends on exactly what the
topic is and how graphic they're getting. But you may
just need to be armed with some phrases like wow,
(06:20):
too graphic for me, or so forth, something that you're
ready to say when the conversation veers in that direction,
that doesn't mean it will work. I mean, there are
definitely groups of people who do this kind of thing,
who think it's funny when someone objects, and we'll kind
of tease you about it and won't stop at all.
So so how effective this will be will depend on
(06:40):
your coworkers. But if you can frame it in terms
of like, hey, I'm trying to work over here, that
might help. But it is also true that if this
is the culture of your office, and since at least
one manager is apparently part of the problem too, this
might just be the culture there. And that doesn't mean
that you would need to put up with sexual harassment
if that's what we're happening, or sexually hostile work environment.
(07:03):
I mean, I want to be clear that the answer
to those things would not be, oh, it's just the
culture there. But assuming that it's not that, and that
it's really just people over sharing, there's probably not a
ton of recourse. Even if you did have good HR,
which you said that you don't, I don't think it
would be something that you would get a lot of
attraction on from them intervening on I mean a good
(07:26):
HR person would talk to that manager who's involved and
explain why she should be raining this in. But HR
also doesn't have the power to come in and just
insist that people change their conversational habits as long as
it's not something like harassment. And in your case, because
you said HR at your company is bad, that's probably
moot anyway. So the upshot here be armed with some
(07:47):
phrases that you can use to redirect the conversation. Emphasize
that you're trying to work. But that might be the
best that you can do with this group. Okay, let's
go to the next call. So I'm bill like a
new team to turn around late deliveries for a pretty
important internal customer to our business. So in the process,
I'm going to inherit a team member who's just he's
(08:11):
away from his desk for hours on his phone and
his computor at his desk. I walked by his desk
and I've seen him watching movies on his phone while
keeping his monitor alive with a spreadsheet or project plan
on the monitor. Um, he comes in at nine am,
takes a long lunch, leaves at two pm, and really, seriously,
(08:32):
that was just in the course of a typical week.
So in this guy's defense, he's pretty new to the
organization and he was never really coached by his manager.
His manager had been on vacation or was traveling for
business the majority of the time that he was here.
The person who was responsible for on boarding him was
moved to another team because he really couldn't handle the workload.
(08:55):
So I'm I'm really thinking you probably take up some
bad habits from that time. So you know what am
I going to do? Like, I feel like I'm going
to demonstrate the energy I expect. I'm going to give
tough but fair deadline, give him some weekly goals, ensure
that his passions are aligned to the work. But it's like,
(09:17):
do I give him the benefit of the doubt and
see if he needed just a more engaged manager, or
should I just start out addressing his behavior directly and
allowing him to start with clear expectations immediately. I just
don't know whether I should just face this head on
or let him evolve into the employee that I need.
(09:40):
What do you think maybe there's another way forward? I
don't know anyhow. Thank you very much for your time,
and I really hope that you have some great ideas
for me, and I'm sure you will thank you. You know,
I could argue this either way. There is an argument
to be made for addressing it right off the bat,
like right up front with him, so that he knows
(10:02):
that the bad work habits have been noticed and aren't okay.
But if I were you, I would give it a
little time to see what happens. Not months, not even weeks,
but like one week. See how that first week goes,
and if you notice any of those habits during that week,
address it right away. But who knows. I mean, it's
possible that the reason that he was slacking off so
(10:23):
much under the old manager was because they hadn't given
him much work to do or something like that. And
if that's the situation, and he wasn't doing much because
they hadn't delegated much to him, but he otherwise would
have been happy to be working if there was any
work to do, it's going to be pretty mortifying to
him and maybe I mean upsetting really to be called
on the carpet for that if it wasn't really within
(10:46):
his control, and it's going to make him feel like
he already has the strike with you, even though it
wasn't a situation of his own making. Now that's giving
him a huge amount of benefit of the doubt. But
but there are potential I mean, who knows, who knows
what was going on and why that slacking was happening,
and why that manager, his old manager wasn't intervening. So
(11:06):
I would give him that week, and during that week
I would watch pretty closely and be ready to step
in if you do notice anything problematic, But see how
it goes first. Um, if there wasn't some sort of
extenuating circumstance that puts his earlier behavior in a better light,
then presumably that's going to show up pretty soon for
you too, and you can address it very very head
(11:29):
on when you do. But give him that week and
see how it goes. We'll take a short break here
and be right back with a question about employers who
called references who were not on the reference list that
you gave them. I have applied for positions before and
(11:52):
been um given a heads up by colleagues that they
were contacted to serve as reference for me, even though
I hadn't listed them as references. You know that the
place of employment had seen somewhere that I had worked
with these people before and just contacted them out of
the blue. Luckily, they all had great things to say.
(12:14):
But I've also been on the other end of this
where I have been contacted as a reference not having
been listed, and um, the employer has been transparent about
that that they were just sort of calling to see
what I thought of this candidate. Is this okay? Is
there's something that happens a lot, and if so, is it? Um?
(12:37):
Is it okay? Or does a candidate have the right
to control who gives them a reference when they apply somewhere?
Thanks so much? You are talking about what are known
as off list references a meeting. They are going off
the list that you provided, and they're definitely common. From
(12:57):
an employer point of view, It's pretty likely that when
a candidate hands over a list and says, oh, here
are my references, you can contact these people about me,
it's pretty likely that they know that those are people
who will say good things about them, and maybe that's
going to give you a full picture of who they
are as an employee, but maybe not, because if someone
is kind of a not great employee, they may have
(13:20):
sort of hands selected the very few people who will
say something positive, So some employers won't always stick to
the list that you give for exactly that reason. I
will tell you what I personally do when I check references.
When someone gives me a reference list, I really pay
attention to who they have chosen to put on there.
(13:40):
If it's like their last three managers, then great, that's
pretty standard. It doesn't look like they're trying to hide anything.
But if there's only one manager from like a decade ago,
and all the more recent people are peers or other
people who didn't manage them, I'm going to wonder why
what's going on there that they're not offering up any managers,
And I'm just going to directly ask, hey, could you
(14:02):
put me in touch with your last couple of managers.
The exception to that is for their current job. Of course,
I'm not going to contact your boss at a job
that you're still working at if you haven't given notice yet,
because they could put your job in jeopardy. But if
you have a few previous jobs before your current one
and none of those managers are on the list, I'm
gonna wonder why, and I'm going to ask if I
can talk to them, and when I coach managers, I
(14:24):
tell them they should be doing that too, because when
you are checking references, first of all, you really want
to get a full picture of someone, and you really
want to talk to their managers, because managers just often
have a different vantage point on someone's work, different than
what other references might have for them, because it was
their job to assess it, and often they see different things.
(14:48):
And so if I got a reference list with few
or no managers, I want to go digging into why.
But the other thing that I do, and that a
lot of employers do, is if I know someone who
has worked with the candidate before, I'm going to contact
that person about them, even if their name is not
on that official reference list um whether it was their
(15:09):
boss or a peer or whoever it might have been.
If I know someone whose judgment I trust, who's worked
with you before, I'm absolutely going to reach out to
them and get their take. And that type of informal
reference checking is super common, where you have mutual connections
and they get contacted about you. There is another type
of off list reference checking that some employers do, although
(15:31):
it is less common. That's where they're reaching out to
people not in your reference list and who also are
not mutual connections, So they're just like calling up your
last employer and asking about you. And when they talked
to people, they might say something like, is there anyone
else who Jane worked closely with who you would recommend
that I talked to? And then they're calling those people.
(15:54):
That's a lot less common. That's a very very thorough
kind of check, but it does happen. Now. You also asked,
does the candidate have the right to control he's giving
them a reference? And the answer to that is no,
at least in the US. I can't speak to other countries,
But in the US an employer can seek out references
for you from pretty much anyone they want. But the
(16:15):
informal ones where they're just talking to mutual connections, that's
the most frequent type of off list reference. And that's
just pretty basic info sharing. You know, Hey, I see
used to work with Jane Smith. I'm thinking about her
for a job. What can you tell me? Okay, let's
go to the next call, And before we do, I
want to explain some of the terminology that you're going
to hear this color using. You will hear her refer
(16:37):
to people who are working five eights, which means five
eight hour days each week, and four tens, which means
for ten hour days each week. Okay, here is the call,
Hello Wales, and one of my direct reports is the
manager of a group of fifteen people. Proximately eight years ago,
before I was around, this group of fifteen was much
(16:57):
smaller at around eight or nine and the work was
much less intense. As an experiment, the opportunity was given
to the staff to work four ten hour shifts rather
than the usual five eights. This worked well for a while.
Now the team has grown, and has mentioned above, the
scope and intensity of the work has also increased. Currently
six people are on the modified four by ten schedule,
(17:19):
with the rest of the team providing coverage for absences.
I should note that we are a seven day week
operation to some extent, with weekend schedules being covered by
a skeleton crew made up of a mixture of folks
who have a staggered work week, and by overtime shifts
by the standard Monday through Friday employees. As we've grown
and expanded, the four by ten shifts and the coverage
concerns they cause have become an increasing problem. After a time,
(17:41):
analysis and other considerations did not justify hiring additional staff.
My report, the group's manager, and I have come to
the conclusion that we need to pull everyone back to
five eighths in order to consure adequate coverage. This has
been suggested in the past by members of the team
currently on the five eight schedule. Too much wailing and
gnashing of teeth of the current four by ten and
it's to the point where the business needs are showing
(18:02):
us that we really do need to make this change.
We're trying to be as kind as we can and
the way that we announce this transition, but are struggling
with the message, the timing, and the lead up to
the implementation. Any advice on how to approach this. I
would like to make it as straightforward and drama free
as possible, and I'm aware that some folks may quit
over this change, which would put us even more behind
the eight ball we while we try to re stuff afterward. Yeah,
(18:25):
this is tough for a lot of people working for
ten hour days and getting three day weekends every week
can be a really significant benefit, and it could be
a blow to hear that that is changing. I think
you're right to prepare for the possibility that some people
make quit over it, but that's okay. People need to
do what's best for them. What you want to avoid
(18:46):
is people rage, quitting, being angry at how it's handled,
or feeling like they weren't heard. If people quit, you
want them doing it from the place of rational decision making,
not irritation. So the best thing that you can do
is to be really transparent about what's going on. Be
open with people about the reasons for the change, the
alternatives that you considered instead of this, and why you
(19:09):
ultimately did pick this as the best solution. And tell
people that you know that this is a major change,
that you appreciate what a benefit the old schedule was,
and that if there were alternatives, you would have taken them,
but in this case, switching back to five eights is
what made sense because of Blink. And tell people that
you get it's a blow, and that you're available to
(19:30):
answer questions or talk about concerns they might have, and
if you can give people as much of a heads
up as possible before that change happens, because people may
have childcare schedules to work out or other scheduling issues
that they'll need some lead time to address. You don't
want to spring it on them without much notice. And
of course, if people do tell you that they're rethinking
(19:50):
whether the job will still make sense for them, don't
penalize them for telling you that. Let them know that
you understand and that you hope they'll stay, but that
you support them in doing what's best for them. Beyond that,
though there's not a ton you can do, people are
going to feel how they feel, and some might decide
that this changes the calculation of whether the job still
(20:12):
makes sense for them, And that's okay as long as
you're open and transparent and hear people out about their
concerns and genuinely listen with an open mind and be
willing to be flexible where you can. That's about all
you can do to manage a tough situation. Well, but
those things will go a long way. The difference between
doing those things and not doing them is pretty significant.
(20:35):
We'll do a final break care and when we come back,
we have an update from a recent caller who came
on the show. Hi, Alison, I'm a fairly senior lawyer
at a large law firm on a partner truck and
(20:58):
I have decided after I was passed over for partnership
this year for again not having an instillable hours, I've
decided that I need to find something that allows me
a little bit more work life balance because I have
two small children whom I'm trying to parent properly, and
hobbies that I like to have, and uh, you know,
(21:20):
just generally, I just need a different balance in my life.
So my question to you is, so i'm reading your blog,
it seems like being a lawyer, particularly at a at
a large, large law firm, is one of those jobs
that typically is understood to just not be skewed towards balance. UM.
So I take hope from that that there are jobs
(21:42):
out there that I can achieve some sense of, um,
being able to serve other parts of my life besides work. However,
what I would like to know is, when I'm interviewing,
how can I get across the idea that I'm leaving
my job in order to be able to spend more
time doing other things without sounding like I don't want
to work hard. I'm happy to work hard. The way
(22:03):
I've been framing it in the few, you know, sort
of headhunter conversations that I've been having is I want
to be the client. I don't want to be the
service provider, because it's really the on call nature that
I'm really struggling with. But I've also mentioned saying things
like I don't mind working hard. I'm happy to work
nights and weekends. I'm happy to travel. I just don't
(22:24):
want it to be every night or every weekend. Anyway.
I would love your opinion about how to make it
sound like I'm not just looking for part time. I
don't want to coast. It's not that I just I'm
not doing anything but work and parenting, and I need
to do things like sleep and exercise occasionally. Thank you
(22:45):
so much. I love your site. Thanks for everything you do.
This is going to be easier than you think it is.
You are absolutely right that people generally know that being
a lawyer at a large firm means absolutely crazy hours
and no work life balance. So you can really lean
on that in explaining why you're looking for something else now,
(23:06):
because people will get it. You can just say something
like I love my work, but I'm ready to move
on from eighty hour weeks and I'm looking for a
job where I can still work hard, but also where
being able to have dinner with my family won't be
a novelty, and that's all. You don't need more explanation
beyond that, you're not going to sound like you're looking
(23:26):
to coast or not work much. People know there's a
middle ground between crazy law firm hours and part time hours,
and most of the population is in that middle ground.
For what it's worth, I would not use that framing
that you mentioned about wanting to be the client not
the service provider. I don't think it's totally clear what
(23:47):
you mean there, and you don't want to confuse people,
and it's also possible that they'll take that as meaning
something different than how you intend it. I think you're
using that because you feel like you need to have
more of an explanation than you do. But really, it
is totally fine to just say you were working eighty
hour weeks or whatever it was and are ready to
live like a more normal human being. You could even
(24:08):
use you could even use that language, but being wanting
to be a normal human you don't need anything more
than that. People will get it and you will be fine.
Before we wrap up, I want to share an update
that I got from the caller who was on last
week's show the episode called My co Worker is Unbearably Negative.
She's the person who had to work closely with someone
(24:28):
who was doing a couple of difficult things. One was
that she was just talking NonStop, including just talking out
loud to herself while sharing workspace with the Collar. And second,
she was just really really negative, like unrelenting lee negative,
constantly injecting their shared space with negativity, which was getting
hard to handle. The Collar had even said she felt
(24:49):
like she was sort of an unconsenting therapist to this
coworker because it was just this stream of negative problems
in her life. Well, she recorded an update about was
happened since she was on the show. Let's hear it. Hi, Allison,
I'm the letter writer that recorded the podcast with you
about my coworker who wanted me to be her non
(25:10):
consensual therapist. And thank you so much again for taking
the time to talk over the issues that I was
having with her, and I wanted to let you know
how that's been going. And you know, I've been keeping
my unusual coping strategies like taking a lot of breaks
and having a lot of work to do um which
hasn't been hard I've had a lot of work to do.
And at one point she came in and I was
doing a stack of calls, and um, you know, I said, hey,
(25:33):
I got a lot of work to get through, so
I may not be as talkative today, um, even though
I'm not a talkative one. But I said that, and
she said she said okay, and she started to do
that thing again where she talked out loud to herself
and just says negative things out loud. And I just
turned and said, hey, Jane, would you mind not talking
out loud like that. It's just kind of distracting for me.
And she totally stopped, and I just so appreciate it.
(25:56):
And because you know, while she was a little happy
at first, I think I was just being so reasonable
that she wasn't going to push back on that. And
I just can't even believe it was this symbol of
a solution to get that to stop. Um. And then
as for the negativity kind of stuff where she's just
really negative. You shared an anecdote with me on the
show about your mom and how sometimes she just gets
(26:17):
a kind of like a kind of twisted joy out
of sharing that experiences almost like a way to connect
um and I started to see things that Jane was
saying that way, and it really really helped because I
was less frustrated, um, I was let I was able
to use my normal coping strategies. But just having that
different mindset and attitude about her and about why she
(26:40):
does that really made a difference and made me be
able to have better empathy for her um as that
was going on and not take that negativity in quite
so hard. So it's not perfect, but it's way way better.
And thank you so much for your show and your website.
As didn't just really appreciate um all the work you
do here because I know there's a lot find the scenes,
So thanks so much. That is a great update. It's
(27:05):
so interesting how sometimes solutions to things that are really
bothering us can end up being much more simple and
more straightforward than what we're fearing they will be. So
that's a testament to what you can get done by
just being direct, friendly, but direct. That's our show for today.
If you would like to hear your question answered on
(27:25):
a future episode, you can record it on the show
voicemail by calling eight five five four two six work.
That's eight by five two six nine, six, seven five,
Or if you have a longer question, a question where
you would actually want to come on the show and
talk with me, email it to podcast at ask a
manager dot org. That's it for today and I will
(27:45):
be back next time with more questions. M
My colleagues. We'll stop commenting on everything I need. My
assistant rules his eyes at people and meeting. Why does
my coworker keep taking credit for all my ideas? Have
any wisdom for me? Hi? I'm Alison Green. Welcome to
the Aska Manager podcast, where I answer questions from listeners
about life at work, everything from what to say if
you're allergic to your coworkers perfume to what to do
if you drink too much at the company party. Let's
(00:25):
get started, Hi, and welcome to the show. Today. I'm
going to answer a bunch of shorter questions from people,
and the first question is from someone who works in
an office where people do way too much over sharing. Hi, Alison,
I've worked in the same office for over a year
and a half and I'm bathful at how much my
coworkers share. I've worked at several offices before and I've
(00:48):
had very open discussions, but nothing quite on this level.
To give you a snapshot, my office is open concept,
with the majority of us and cubicles and a few
of us sharing offices in other rooms. It's a out
ninety percent women, and the majority are in their early thirties,
so they're going through similar things when it comes to
marriage and children. This past year alone, one of my
co workers got married to had babies, and one had
(01:11):
a baby about a year ago. This has caused discussion
to always be about the female body and babies. I'm
fine with sharing about these moments and hearing all about
these milestones. However, I am not sure I need to
hear about every kind of breast pump, the specifics of
my coworkers bodies after birth, and associated issues related to pregnancy.
I understand that they may have questions for each other
(01:32):
as they go through certain things for the first time. However,
I now know that one of my co workers had
to go to a vaginal physical therapist because of the
condition of her reproductive organs post baby, and now has
to use keegel weights. Another husband's was not into the
Brazilian bikini actually got, and another kind of hates her husband.
One of my friends in the office has brought it
up to her supervisor, but since her supervisor is also
(01:54):
one of these people who overshares, nothing really happened. The
few of us who aren't in this stage of life
feels super uncomfortable. If we walked in talking about how
much we drank over the weekend or what we did
in a nightclub, we would be seen in a negative light.
But if we talked about how our child is afraid
to use a toilet or that our breastar chiefs from breastfeeding,
it would be completely fine. As tempted as we are
(02:17):
to go to HR, it doesn't feel like a major
enough issue to bring up in our HR department. Is
a bit of a joke. Also, since it's the majority
of our office having these discussions, it would be really
obvious to figure out who complained. Are there any ways
we can reduce over sharing in a house before having
to take it up to someone higher. Thank you so much.
People are so fascinating with the things that they do
(02:41):
and don't have boundaries about and color you have somehow
landed in a nest of people with no boundaries at all,
it seems so. In general, I would say it's mostly
stuff that you want to try to address yourself rather
than escalating it to your manager to HR. There's one
exception to which I'm going to get to in a minute,
but in general, with interpersonal stuff like this, typically it's
(03:05):
something that you would address on your own, unless it's
at the point where it's really interfering with your ability
to do your job. Like if you had a client
in your office and your coworker was talking loudly about
her bikini wax, that's something that would be appropriate to
give your boss that heads up about because it's affecting
clients and affecting your work, you know. Although even then
I would still say talk to your coworker about it
(03:26):
yourself first. I mean, if it's a one time thing
that's not manager worthy, if it's a pattern, talked to
her about it yourself. If that doesn't work, then talk
to your boss. But the reason I would say try
talking to her about it yourself first is because first
that will often solve the problem without you needing to
involve your boss. And also because if it doesn't solve
it and you do need to talk to your manager,
(03:48):
it's going to look better that you've already tried to
handle it yourself. Your boss may ask you have you
tried talking to her about this directly, and you want
to be able to say yes. And then also from
your co workers perspective, it's annoying to have someone complained
to your boss when they didn't talk to you about
the issue first, So you want to start with the
people themselves. And if it's not stuff that is affecting
(04:12):
your work, if it's just annoying interpersonal weirdness, that's not
really stuff to take to your boss. There is an
exception to this, though, and that is if someone is
over sharing about sex specifically, and if having to listen
to sex talk at work is making you uncomfortable, because
that is getting into problematic legal territory for your employer,
(04:33):
because sexual harassment laws can be in play. Sexual harassment
isn't just one person targeting another person. I think a
lot of times people think that's all that it is.
It can also be that you're working in an environment
that's inappropriately sexualized and where you're subjected to a barrage
of unwelcome sexual discussion. So if something like that is happening,
(04:53):
your company has an interest in knowing about it and
shutting it down because otherwise they can be legally liable.
As for what to do here, you can try shutting
it down when it's happening, Like when one of those
conversations gets going, you could say, hey, this is more
graphic than I want to hear at work. Can we
keep this PG, or you could say, WHOA, that is
(05:16):
too much for me at work, Let's move on. So
sort of nudging people to realize, oh, there's people here
who might not be happy bystanders to this conversation. Now,
if you are actually working when this conversation is happening,
you have a stronger standing to say this, because you're
right to be able to focus on your work without
(05:37):
having that distracting conversation around you. Trumps there their right
to talk about vaginal physical therapy. But if it's a
conversation that's like more like something a conversation over lunch,
where it's more of a social context, if everyone else
at the table wants to be talking about post baby
(05:57):
body changes or so forth, it might be that you
just need to cut back on how often you're having
lunch with that group because they do have more freedom
with conversations and social settings. Although to be clear, that's
still a work context and there's still a line they
shouldn't cross. It just really depends on exactly what the
topic is and how graphic they're getting. But you may
just need to be armed with some phrases like wow,
(06:20):
too graphic for me, or so forth, something that you're
ready to say when the conversation veers in that direction,
that doesn't mean it will work. I mean, there are
definitely groups of people who do this kind of thing,
who think it's funny when someone objects, and we'll kind
of tease you about it and won't stop at all.
So so how effective this will be will depend on
(06:40):
your coworkers. But if you can frame it in terms
of like, hey, I'm trying to work over here, that
might help. But it is also true that if this
is the culture of your office, and since at least
one manager is apparently part of the problem too, this
might just be the culture there. And that doesn't mean
that you would need to put up with sexual harassment
if that's what we're happening, or sexually hostile work environment.
(07:03):
I mean, I want to be clear that the answer
to those things would not be, oh, it's just the
culture there. But assuming that it's not that, and that
it's really just people over sharing, there's probably not a
ton of recourse. Even if you did have good HR,
which you said that you don't, I don't think it
would be something that you would get a lot of
attraction on from them intervening on I mean a good
(07:26):
HR person would talk to that manager who's involved and
explain why she should be raining this in. But HR
also doesn't have the power to come in and just
insist that people change their conversational habits as long as
it's not something like harassment. And in your case, because
you said HR at your company is bad, that's probably
moot anyway. So the upshot here be armed with some
(07:47):
phrases that you can use to redirect the conversation. Emphasize
that you're trying to work. But that might be the
best that you can do with this group. Okay, let's
go to the next call. So I'm bill like a
new team to turn around late deliveries for a pretty
important internal customer to our business. So in the process,
I'm going to inherit a team member who's just he's
(08:11):
away from his desk for hours on his phone and
his computor at his desk. I walked by his desk
and I've seen him watching movies on his phone while
keeping his monitor alive with a spreadsheet or project plan
on the monitor. Um, he comes in at nine am,
takes a long lunch, leaves at two pm, and really, seriously,
(08:32):
that was just in the course of a typical week.
So in this guy's defense, he's pretty new to the
organization and he was never really coached by his manager.
His manager had been on vacation or was traveling for
business the majority of the time that he was here.
The person who was responsible for on boarding him was
moved to another team because he really couldn't handle the workload.
(08:55):
So I'm I'm really thinking you probably take up some
bad habits from that time. So you know what am
I going to do? Like, I feel like I'm going
to demonstrate the energy I expect. I'm going to give
tough but fair deadline, give him some weekly goals, ensure
that his passions are aligned to the work. But it's like,
(09:17):
do I give him the benefit of the doubt and
see if he needed just a more engaged manager, or
should I just start out addressing his behavior directly and
allowing him to start with clear expectations immediately. I just
don't know whether I should just face this head on
or let him evolve into the employee that I need.
(09:40):
What do you think maybe there's another way forward? I
don't know anyhow. Thank you very much for your time,
and I really hope that you have some great ideas
for me, and I'm sure you will thank you. You know,
I could argue this either way. There is an argument
to be made for addressing it right off the bat,
like right up front with him, so that he knows
(10:02):
that the bad work habits have been noticed and aren't okay.
But if I were you, I would give it a
little time to see what happens. Not months, not even weeks,
but like one week. See how that first week goes,
and if you notice any of those habits during that week,
address it right away. But who knows. I mean, it's
possible that the reason that he was slacking off so
(10:23):
much under the old manager was because they hadn't given
him much work to do or something like that. And
if that's the situation, and he wasn't doing much because
they hadn't delegated much to him, but he otherwise would
have been happy to be working if there was any
work to do, it's going to be pretty mortifying to
him and maybe I mean upsetting really to be called
on the carpet for that if it wasn't really within
(10:46):
his control, and it's going to make him feel like
he already has the strike with you, even though it
wasn't a situation of his own making. Now that's giving
him a huge amount of benefit of the doubt. But
but there are potential I mean, who knows, who knows
what was going on and why that slacking was happening,
and why that manager, his old manager wasn't intervening. So
(11:06):
I would give him that week, and during that week
I would watch pretty closely and be ready to step
in if you do notice anything problematic, But see how
it goes first. Um, if there wasn't some sort of
extenuating circumstance that puts his earlier behavior in a better light,
then presumably that's going to show up pretty soon for
you too, and you can address it very very head
(11:29):
on when you do. But give him that week and
see how it goes. We'll take a short break here
and be right back with a question about employers who
called references who were not on the reference list that
you gave them. I have applied for positions before and
(11:52):
been um given a heads up by colleagues that they
were contacted to serve as reference for me, even though
I hadn't listed them as references. You know that the
place of employment had seen somewhere that I had worked
with these people before and just contacted them out of
the blue. Luckily, they all had great things to say.
(12:14):
But I've also been on the other end of this
where I have been contacted as a reference not having
been listed, and um, the employer has been transparent about
that that they were just sort of calling to see
what I thought of this candidate. Is this okay? Is
there's something that happens a lot, and if so, is it? Um?
(12:37):
Is it okay? Or does a candidate have the right
to control who gives them a reference when they apply somewhere?
Thanks so much? You are talking about what are known
as off list references a meeting. They are going off
the list that you provided, and they're definitely common. From
(12:57):
an employer point of view, It's pretty likely that when
a candidate hands over a list and says, oh, here
are my references, you can contact these people about me,
it's pretty likely that they know that those are people
who will say good things about them, and maybe that's
going to give you a full picture of who they
are as an employee, but maybe not, because if someone
is kind of a not great employee, they may have
(13:20):
sort of hands selected the very few people who will
say something positive, So some employers won't always stick to
the list that you give for exactly that reason. I
will tell you what I personally do when I check references.
When someone gives me a reference list, I really pay
attention to who they have chosen to put on there.
(13:40):
If it's like their last three managers, then great, that's
pretty standard. It doesn't look like they're trying to hide anything.
But if there's only one manager from like a decade ago,
and all the more recent people are peers or other
people who didn't manage them, I'm going to wonder why
what's going on there that they're not offering up any managers,
And I'm just going to directly ask, hey, could you
(14:02):
put me in touch with your last couple of managers.
The exception to that is for their current job. Of course,
I'm not going to contact your boss at a job
that you're still working at if you haven't given notice yet,
because they could put your job in jeopardy. But if
you have a few previous jobs before your current one
and none of those managers are on the list, I'm
gonna wonder why, and I'm going to ask if I
can talk to them, and when I coach managers, I
(14:24):
tell them they should be doing that too, because when
you are checking references, first of all, you really want
to get a full picture of someone, and you really
want to talk to their managers, because managers just often
have a different vantage point on someone's work, different than
what other references might have for them, because it was
their job to assess it, and often they see different things.
(14:48):
And so if I got a reference list with few
or no managers, I want to go digging into why.
But the other thing that I do, and that a
lot of employers do, is if I know someone who
has worked with the candidate before, I'm going to contact
that person about them, even if their name is not
on that official reference list um whether it was their
(15:09):
boss or a peer or whoever it might have been.
If I know someone whose judgment I trust, who's worked
with you before, I'm absolutely going to reach out to
them and get their take. And that type of informal
reference checking is super common, where you have mutual connections
and they get contacted about you. There is another type
of off list reference checking that some employers do, although
(15:31):
it is less common. That's where they're reaching out to
people not in your reference list and who also are
not mutual connections, So they're just like calling up your
last employer and asking about you. And when they talked
to people, they might say something like, is there anyone
else who Jane worked closely with who you would recommend
that I talked to? And then they're calling those people.
(15:54):
That's a lot less common. That's a very very thorough
kind of check, but it does happen. Now. You also asked,
does the candidate have the right to control he's giving
them a reference? And the answer to that is no,
at least in the US. I can't speak to other countries,
But in the US an employer can seek out references
for you from pretty much anyone they want. But the
(16:15):
informal ones where they're just talking to mutual connections, that's
the most frequent type of off list reference. And that's
just pretty basic info sharing. You know, Hey, I see
used to work with Jane Smith. I'm thinking about her
for a job. What can you tell me? Okay, let's
go to the next call, And before we do, I
want to explain some of the terminology that you're going
to hear this color using. You will hear her refer
(16:37):
to people who are working five eights, which means five
eight hour days each week, and four tens, which means
for ten hour days each week. Okay, here is the call,
Hello Wales, and one of my direct reports is the
manager of a group of fifteen people. Proximately eight years ago,
before I was around, this group of fifteen was much
(16:57):
smaller at around eight or nine and the work was
much less intense. As an experiment, the opportunity was given
to the staff to work four ten hour shifts rather
than the usual five eights. This worked well for a while.
Now the team has grown, and has mentioned above, the
scope and intensity of the work has also increased. Currently
six people are on the modified four by ten schedule,
(17:19):
with the rest of the team providing coverage for absences.
I should note that we are a seven day week
operation to some extent, with weekend schedules being covered by
a skeleton crew made up of a mixture of folks
who have a staggered work week, and by overtime shifts
by the standard Monday through Friday employees. As we've grown
and expanded, the four by ten shifts and the coverage
concerns they cause have become an increasing problem. After a time,
(17:41):
analysis and other considerations did not justify hiring additional staff.
My report, the group's manager, and I have come to
the conclusion that we need to pull everyone back to
five eighths in order to consure adequate coverage. This has
been suggested in the past by members of the team
currently on the five eight schedule. Too much wailing and
gnashing of teeth of the current four by ten and
it's to the point where the business needs are showing
(18:02):
us that we really do need to make this change.
We're trying to be as kind as we can and
the way that we announce this transition, but are struggling
with the message, the timing, and the lead up to
the implementation. Any advice on how to approach this. I
would like to make it as straightforward and drama free
as possible, and I'm aware that some folks may quit
over this change, which would put us even more behind
the eight ball we while we try to re stuff afterward. Yeah,
(18:25):
this is tough for a lot of people working for
ten hour days and getting three day weekends every week
can be a really significant benefit, and it could be
a blow to hear that that is changing. I think
you're right to prepare for the possibility that some people
make quit over it, but that's okay. People need to
do what's best for them. What you want to avoid
(18:46):
is people rage, quitting, being angry at how it's handled,
or feeling like they weren't heard. If people quit, you
want them doing it from the place of rational decision making,
not irritation. So the best thing that you can do
is to be really transparent about what's going on. Be
open with people about the reasons for the change, the
alternatives that you considered instead of this, and why you
(19:09):
ultimately did pick this as the best solution. And tell
people that you know that this is a major change,
that you appreciate what a benefit the old schedule was,
and that if there were alternatives, you would have taken them,
but in this case, switching back to five eights is
what made sense because of Blink. And tell people that
you get it's a blow, and that you're available to
(19:30):
answer questions or talk about concerns they might have, and
if you can give people as much of a heads
up as possible before that change happens, because people may
have childcare schedules to work out or other scheduling issues
that they'll need some lead time to address. You don't
want to spring it on them without much notice. And
of course, if people do tell you that they're rethinking
(19:50):
whether the job will still make sense for them, don't
penalize them for telling you that. Let them know that
you understand and that you hope they'll stay, but that
you support them in doing what's best for them. Beyond that,
though there's not a ton you can do, people are
going to feel how they feel, and some might decide
that this changes the calculation of whether the job still
(20:12):
makes sense for them, And that's okay as long as
you're open and transparent and hear people out about their
concerns and genuinely listen with an open mind and be
willing to be flexible where you can. That's about all
you can do to manage a tough situation. Well, but
those things will go a long way. The difference between
doing those things and not doing them is pretty significant.
(20:35):
We'll do a final break care and when we come back,
we have an update from a recent caller who came
on the show. Hi, Alison, I'm a fairly senior lawyer
at a large law firm on a partner truck and
(20:58):
I have decided after I was passed over for partnership
this year for again not having an instillable hours, I've
decided that I need to find something that allows me
a little bit more work life balance because I have
two small children whom I'm trying to parent properly, and
hobbies that I like to have, and uh, you know,
(21:20):
just generally, I just need a different balance in my life.
So my question to you is, so i'm reading your blog,
it seems like being a lawyer, particularly at a at
a large, large law firm, is one of those jobs
that typically is understood to just not be skewed towards balance. UM.
So I take hope from that that there are jobs
(21:42):
out there that I can achieve some sense of, um,
being able to serve other parts of my life besides work. However,
what I would like to know is, when I'm interviewing,
how can I get across the idea that I'm leaving
my job in order to be able to spend more
time doing other things without sounding like I don't want
to work hard. I'm happy to work hard. The way
(22:03):
I've been framing it in the few, you know, sort
of headhunter conversations that I've been having is I want
to be the client. I don't want to be the
service provider, because it's really the on call nature that
I'm really struggling with. But I've also mentioned saying things
like I don't mind working hard. I'm happy to work
nights and weekends. I'm happy to travel. I just don't
(22:24):
want it to be every night or every weekend. Anyway.
I would love your opinion about how to make it
sound like I'm not just looking for part time. I
don't want to coast. It's not that I just I'm
not doing anything but work and parenting, and I need
to do things like sleep and exercise occasionally. Thank you
(22:45):
so much. I love your site. Thanks for everything you do.
This is going to be easier than you think it is.
You are absolutely right that people generally know that being
a lawyer at a large firm means absolutely crazy hours
and no work life balance. So you can really lean
on that in explaining why you're looking for something else now,
(23:06):
because people will get it. You can just say something
like I love my work, but I'm ready to move
on from eighty hour weeks and I'm looking for a
job where I can still work hard, but also where
being able to have dinner with my family won't be
a novelty, and that's all. You don't need more explanation
beyond that, you're not going to sound like you're looking
(23:26):
to coast or not work much. People know there's a
middle ground between crazy law firm hours and part time hours,
and most of the population is in that middle ground.
For what it's worth, I would not use that framing
that you mentioned about wanting to be the client not
the service provider. I don't think it's totally clear what
(23:47):
you mean there, and you don't want to confuse people,
and it's also possible that they'll take that as meaning
something different than how you intend it. I think you're
using that because you feel like you need to have
more of an explanation than you do. But really, it
is totally fine to just say you were working eighty
hour weeks or whatever it was and are ready to
live like a more normal human being. You could even
(24:08):
use you could even use that language, but being wanting
to be a normal human you don't need anything more
than that. People will get it and you will be fine.
Before we wrap up, I want to share an update
that I got from the caller who was on last
week's show the episode called My co Worker is Unbearably Negative.
She's the person who had to work closely with someone
(24:28):
who was doing a couple of difficult things. One was
that she was just talking NonStop, including just talking out
loud to herself while sharing workspace with the Collar. And second,
she was just really really negative, like unrelenting lee negative,
constantly injecting their shared space with negativity, which was getting
hard to handle. The Collar had even said she felt
(24:49):
like she was sort of an unconsenting therapist to this
coworker because it was just this stream of negative problems
in her life. Well, she recorded an update about was
happened since she was on the show. Let's hear it. Hi, Allison,
I'm the letter writer that recorded the podcast with you
about my coworker who wanted me to be her non
(25:10):
consensual therapist. And thank you so much again for taking
the time to talk over the issues that I was
having with her, and I wanted to let you know
how that's been going. And you know, I've been keeping
my unusual coping strategies like taking a lot of breaks
and having a lot of work to do um which
hasn't been hard I've had a lot of work to do.
And at one point she came in and I was
doing a stack of calls, and um, you know, I said, hey,
(25:33):
I got a lot of work to get through, so
I may not be as talkative today, um, even though
I'm not a talkative one. But I said that, and
she said she said okay, and she started to do
that thing again where she talked out loud to herself
and just says negative things out loud. And I just
turned and said, hey, Jane, would you mind not talking
out loud like that. It's just kind of distracting for me.
And she totally stopped, and I just so appreciate it.
(25:56):
And because you know, while she was a little happy
at first, I think I was just being so reasonable
that she wasn't going to push back on that. And
I just can't even believe it was this symbol of
a solution to get that to stop. Um. And then
as for the negativity kind of stuff where she's just
really negative. You shared an anecdote with me on the
show about your mom and how sometimes she just gets
(26:17):
a kind of like a kind of twisted joy out
of sharing that experiences almost like a way to connect
um and I started to see things that Jane was
saying that way, and it really really helped because I
was less frustrated, um, I was let I was able
to use my normal coping strategies. But just having that
different mindset and attitude about her and about why she
(26:40):
does that really made a difference and made me be
able to have better empathy for her um as that
was going on and not take that negativity in quite
so hard. So it's not perfect, but it's way way better.
And thank you so much for your show and your website.
As didn't just really appreciate um all the work you
do here because I know there's a lot find the scenes,
So thanks so much. That is a great update. It's
(27:05):
so interesting how sometimes solutions to things that are really
bothering us can end up being much more simple and
more straightforward than what we're fearing they will be. So
that's a testament to what you can get done by
just being direct, friendly, but direct. That's our show for today.
If you would like to hear your question answered on
(27:25):
a future episode, you can record it on the show
voicemail by calling eight five five four two six work.
That's eight by five two six nine, six, seven five,
Or if you have a longer question, a question where
you would actually want to come on the show and
talk with me, email it to podcast at ask a
manager dot org. That's it for today and I will
(27:45):
be back next time with more questions. M
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