January 23, 2019 • 26 mins
Why should you have to be social with coworkers, managing two employees when one is much stronger than the other, and more.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
My colleagues. We'll stop commenting on everything assist 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. Right 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
(00:24):
company party. Let's get started, Hi, and welcome to the show. Today.
We have a bunch of shorter questions from people, and
the first question is from someone who's wondering what's so
wrong with being chilly with people at work? Hi? Allison,
I've been reading your blog and listening to your podcast
for a while. There are a number of times you
(00:45):
describe certain things as coming off as chilly in some
of your answers. It clicked for me while reading your
response to the recent letter writer who didn't want to
interact with small children brought into their office. Since I've
experienced the same thing in my office, I completely ignore
it any time someone brings in their small children or
grandchildren for a visit. Fortunately, I've never been pushed to
(01:06):
interact with them. It made me realize I have a
chilly personality in general. I generally don't talk about anything
not related to work and return the topic to work
as quickly as possible when asked about something not work related.
I don't go out of my way to greet co workers.
I'll return good morning, but find it to be a
pointless ritual. Why, yes, it is, in fact morning. How
(01:26):
very observant you are is what I think every time
it happens. I opt out of most social events. I
often wear over the ear headphones while I work. They're
not noise canceling, but I've let people believe that they
are the only coworkers I'd say I have warm relationships
are those I work closely with or have in the past.
Fortunately this includes my manager. My question is, what if
(01:48):
anything is wrong with being chilly? It seems like a
good efficient way to get along. My experience is necessary
interactions occur, but those co workers whose work doesn't affect
mine are un likely to bother me with pointless bs.
The way I see it is that I come to
work to do work, not to socialize. I can fake
it in social situations, but it takes time and energy.
(02:09):
I'd rather put towards getting work done. Some background information
in case it's relevant. I'm a man in my very
late twenties. I turned thirty in a few months. This
job is my first professional job, and I've been here
for about four and a half years. The field is
accounting for a large corporation in a major metropolitan city
in the Midwest. I do my job well and I've
(02:30):
always gotten good feedback on my work. I'm definitely more
analytical than a people person, surprised and tend to be introverted.
I love this question because it's super logical. What is
wrong with being chilly? I totally see how it is
seeming more efficient to you because you're there to focus
on your work and you don't want to be distracted
(02:50):
by chit chat, And what is wrong with that. You
can live your work life the way that you described,
but there are downsides to doing it, and I would
just want you to be aware of what the downsides are,
so that if you choose to stay chilly, you're making
a deliberate decision with full awareness of the trade offs.
The biggest thing is that when you do have warm,
friendly relationships with your colleagues, your life at work is
(03:13):
often much easier in a ton of different ways. For example,
when you need a work favor from someone, you're more
likely to get it if you have a good relationship
with them. I'm not talking about just asking someone to
do their job, because anyone reasonably conscientious will of course
do that. I'm talking about the kind of thing where
you need someone to really help you out and do
you a favor something that they're not obligated to do.
(03:35):
Like let's say you are a client mess something up
and you need some help at the end of the
day when everyone is leaving. The person who can help
you is a lot more likely to delay their dinner
plans and stay late to help you out if you
have made the effort to build a warm, friendly relationship,
or to say, you know, yeah, we normally need three
days lead time on this, but let me push yours
(03:56):
through faster since I know that you really need it,
or all sorts of other favors, stuff that is going
above and beyond what they have to do, just because
you've been a nice person to them. Another way that
it can make your life easier is that you're more
likely to hear information that isn't public yet but could
affect you in a way that you would want to
know about, because people have informal channels of trading information
(04:20):
and they don't tend to do it with people they
don't know. Well. When you have good relationships with the
people you work with, you're more likely to hear things
everything from Hey, that job that you're interested in is
about to open up, and they're only going to interview
internal candidates, so speak up if you're interested, you should
let them know. Or hey, they're cutting the reserved parking
in half next year, so you should buy an annual
(04:42):
pass now if you want to make sure that you
keep a spot, or even just stuff like Bob used
to work with the new manager who's coming in and
he said it helps to do X, Y and Z
to get off on the right foot with her. There's
all kinds of not quite official information that gets passed around,
and you will generally get left out of at if
you're not building relationships with people. It can also benefit
(05:05):
you in more formal ways, because when people know and
like you, you're more likely to come to mind when
they're thinking of someone to lead a project or for
a bunch of other potential professional opportunities. And it's not
that they would never think of you without that relationship
just based on your skills, but when they've had a
chance to get to know you, they're more likely to
have a wider feel for the kinds of things that
(05:25):
you'd be interested in and good at, and what you
might bring to a given assignment, which is always more
than just your resume. But if you don't have a
relationship with them, they might just know you as basically
your resume. And another way that relationships pay off are
your network. When you're looking for a job in the future,
it really helps to have people who like you and
are motivated to help you and give you job leads
(05:48):
or references or suggest useful people to talk to or
vouch for you to someone who they know has an opening.
And again it's not that they would never do that
for you without the relationship, but you're going to get
way more fit when the relationship is there. Now, those
are all pretty self interested reasons, and there's nothing wrong
with self interest, but there's also the fact that when
(06:10):
you get to know people you work with, you're in
a better position to help them too. You might be
able to connect them with the perfect job lead one day,
or help them out when they really need last minute
help but won't bother you if they don't know you
well enough to ask you to stay late to help
them fix something. So it positions you to be a
better colleague in a lot of ways, and frankly, it
(06:31):
can also just make work more emotionally fulfilling. Not that
you need to populate your office with a bunch of
best friends, because you don't, and there can be real
downsides to doing that. So I want to be clear
that's not what I'm talking about. I'm not talking about
coming in and having an hour of deep conversation with
people every day, or sharing intimate details of your life.
I'm just talking about being warm and acknowledging them as
(06:55):
fellow humans, which is what good morning is about, by
the way, and finding points of connection, and frankly, just
liking the people who you work with. Being able to
grab lunch with someone on a particularly weird or slow
or stressful day, or being able to talk about something
funny that just happened in a meeting, or just having
camaraderie with people who know all of the characters and
(07:18):
the stresses of your work life. In a way that
people outside of work will never fully get there can
be real value in that. And that part might not
resonate with you, and that's okay if it doesn't. Just
focus on all the other reasons that I gave, but
I think you might be surprised by how much more
enjoyable it can make getting up and going to work.
(07:39):
We're going to get to a short break here and
then we'll come right back. I have two employees. Let's
call them Dufless and Diligent to be totally their Both
employees show up on time, interact pleasantly with coworkers and patrons,
(08:00):
and do whatever is asked of them competently. We work
in a library, and just like every other library in America,
our circulation is down. We can blame a decent economy,
the internet, or changing times, but my job is still
to raise circulation. I expect my employees to help me
with this task. Diligent has come up with some amazing
ways to engage the public. Enthusiastically embraces other people's ideas
(08:24):
and carries them out, and he presents new ideas that
are well bought out without taking offense that they are
just not the right time Dufaus to recognizes that our
library needs to grow, but refuses to believe it is possible.
He is involved with the federal program that will pay
some or all of his student loans if he works
for a nonprofit for ten years. His eyes on that
(08:45):
prize and he has no idea what he wants to
do once it is achieved. I inherited both of these employees.
Should I expend time and energy trying to inspire dufaus
to love what libraries do? Or maybe the better question
is do I worry about developing Dufus when I have
a diligent I feel like my job as their manager
is to help them grow in skills and competence. But
(09:05):
Dufiz has stated that he's perfectly comfortable where he's at,
aside from zero ambition or future of thinking, he's not
a bad employee. I just feel like I'm not being
fair to him if I don't try to help develop
those intangible qualities. Do we have an obligation of fairness
and development to our employees. I really appreciate your take
on this, so I'm going to argue something which may
(09:29):
surprise you, which is that, at its core, a manager's
job really isn't to develop employees skills and confidence. A
manager's job is to get results in their realm. Now,
very often getting results in your team's work will mean
helping your employees develop their skills. That is something that
most of the time a good manager is going to do.
(09:50):
But you're doing it not because developing people is the
end that you're aiming for. You're doing it because it's
in service of your organization's ability to meet its goals
and get great results. Developing people can help them get
better results, and it can help you attract and retain
good people. So it's a very worthy thing to do.
But ultimately it is a means to an end. And
(10:13):
I know that that sounds cold and calculating, and I
don't mean it to be. I just want to be
very realistic and clear eyed about why you put energy
into developing people. So when you have a situation like yours,
where someone isn't really interested in developing his skills and
trying new ways of doing things and taking initiative and
so forth, it's not your job to invest major energy
(10:35):
in trying to bring those things out in him. To
be clear, I would try it first, but once it
becomes clear to you that it's an uphill battle and
that it's not something he's interested in doing. You're not
obligated to keep investing that energy in him. I would
ask yourself whether he is the right person for the job.
Do you do you want to have someone in his
(10:57):
job who doesn't embrace new ideas and he doesn't operate
with much of a sense of possibility. It's possible that
for the type of work that he does, that's completely fine,
and that he's still able to perform at an excellent
level without those things. But for a lot of jobs,
those things really would hold him back from performing at
the level that you want. So that would be the
(11:18):
question that I would focus on. Is he bringing to
the job what you need him to bring. If he's not,
that's the conversation to have with him, to say, you know, hey,
what I need from this role is someone who will
help me come up with ideas to raise circulation, someone
who will generate ideas themselves, or at least enthusiastically carry
out other people's ideas. You've said that you don't believe
(11:40):
that it's possible for our library to grow, and we
need to figure out if you can change that. Mindset
or not, because to succeed in this job, you do
have to come at it differently. Now that's not exactly
what you're asking me, I realize, but it's an important
piece of this. Back to your question, it is okay
to invest your development energies in the place where you
have seen that they will pay off the most. And
(12:02):
that might mean that your enthusiastic employee does get the
bulk of your investment. That way, I would just be
very clear with the less enthusiastic one about why that is.
So that he's not drawing his own conclusions about what's
going on and thinking that you're being unfair or that
you don't like him. You want to be very transparent
with him about what's happening. Okay, here's our next collar.
(12:26):
Hi Allison. Firstly, I can't begin to thank you enough
for your words of wisdom. I especially into a management
role at a really young age and never got the
right training. So your podcast gives me a great guidance
on so many relevant topics. So here's my dilemma. I
work as a manager in a really small nonprofit about
six full time employees that's based in California. I've been
(12:48):
working with the organization for about three and a half years. Somehow,
over these years, our CEO and my direct boss, has
taken on a very paternal role in my life. About
his daughter's age. Turns out he grew up near where
my parents used to live. There are a lot of parallels.
When I took the job, I thought it would be
a two year option that would help me broad in
(13:09):
my career. Last year, about the two point five year mark,
my fiance and I decided to quit our jobs and
then moved to New York, where he had a job
lined up. It was a personal decision that I wholeheartedly
felt was the right one. I gave my boss a
six week notice, which I think is fair considering the
nature of nonprofits, especially this one. He didn't take it well.
(13:32):
He tuned into his fatherly persona and somehow convinced me
to give him another four weeks, a total of ten
to eleven weeks notice. When I left, I signed a
contract that when I returned from traveling abroad, that I
could help him remotely from New York. And because I
didn't have a job lined up, this seemed like a
short term blessing. It's now one year since I gave
(13:55):
him my original notice, and I'm interviewing with other organizations
in my area and I even have an offer on
the table. This short term remote work is really tough
for me. I wanted to tell him I'm leaving, and
I guess I have to, but I'm concerned he will
talk me out of it again by tapping into his
(14:15):
paternal role. How would it dost navigate the situation? The
good news here is this is one hundred percent entirely
within your control. He can't make you stay, and I
know it feels like maybe he can because he kind
of did that last time. But you've got to remember
that last time you capitulated and agreed to do it.
(14:38):
And I totally get that. I come from nonprofits to you,
and I know that there is an ethos that if
you care about the mission, you'll make those kinds of sacrifices,
and that if you don't, you're somehow letting down the cause.
I am here to tell you that is BS and
it's really damaging because it keeps people in bad situations
for too long, and it lets them be manipulated into
(14:58):
doing things they don't want to you and that aren't
in their best interests, and it is really really common
in nonprofits actually even in for profit businesses. I get
a ton of letters from people who let themselves be
talked out of quitting, or talked into giving way more
notice than they want to at real inconvenience to themselves,
or people who reluctantly agree to do contract work after
(15:20):
they go. People have a lot of trouble making a
clean break, So you have a lot of company in
this boat. But you've got to remember this is on
your decision. Your boss might try to pressure you to
stay because it would be good for him and good
for the organization. But you get to say no to that,
and you're not letting anyone down. You're not letting down
your organization or its mission. It is just a normal
(15:43):
part of doing business. People leave jobs and usually they
make a clean break, and that's just how it goes.
You have to really believe that, because otherwise you won't
stand up to the pressure. It helps to go into
the conversation knowing that he's going to pressure you and
being armed with some language that you will use when
that happens. So I would be prepared with sentences like
(16:07):
I appreciate the offer, but I've given it a lot
of thought and I've realized I need to move on,
or you know, I've really enjoyed working with you, but
I've accepted another offer and I'm committed to leaving by date.
And if he really pressures you, then you just say, hey,
I appreciate it, but I want to be upfront with you.
My decision is final and this time I can't change it,
and then immediately say something like, let's talk about what
(16:29):
the transition of my work should look like, so that
you're moving forward rather than staying mired in this one
spot in the conversation, the question of will you or
won't you? Now, you mentioned that he gets paternal with you,
and I wonder if that means that part of his
pressure will be stuff like telling you that you're making
the wrong decision for yourself, or that it will be
(16:50):
fine if you just give them another couple of months,
or that kind of thing. If he goes into that
kind of mode, just be prepared for it and just resolved,
hold firm. You really don't need to say anything other
than no, I can't do that. Truly. You don't need
anything else. You just need to be determined that you
won't change your mind. Also, be prepared for him to
propose just giving you less work but still keeping you around,
(17:14):
because he might figure that's a way to get you
to agree. Don't be tempted to give into that either,
because when you get this other job, you're going to
want to focus fully on it, and you should have
a clean break from this one. But really, the main
thing to know is this is your call. He can't
make you change it. That doesn't mean that he won't try.
And actually, years ago, very early in my career, I
(17:34):
quit my job and the head of the organization locked
me in her office, literally locked me in there for
two hours while she tried to change my mind. It
was very odd she kept playing good cop and then
bad cop all by herself. If that happened now, I
wouldn't have stayed for the whole two hours. I would
have gotten up pretty soon into it and said, you know,
(17:57):
I really appreciate you trying to find a way to
make it work, but I've given it a lot of
thought and this is the right decision for me, and
then gotten up, unlocked the door and left. But I
was twenty five at the time, and I did not
think to do that that is just to say there
are high pressure bosses out there, but they can't make
you stay at a job. You're not an indentured servant
(18:18):
and you get to do what's right for you. We'll
do one more break here and be right back, Hi, Alison.
My team is currently in a huge time crunch due
to an upcoming product launch. We have a new coworker
(18:39):
who joined us shortly before this huge time crunch, and
to be honest, I had concerns about her work ethic
from the start that I was trying to ignore. But
I just can't do it anymore. Um. She's almost never
at her desk, and when she is present, she won't
even pretend to log in and work. She has not
offered even one option for our projects that we've been
working on for weeks now. Meanwhile, give you an idea
(19:01):
how busy we are. One of my coworkers actually gave
up breathement time, missed his grandmother's funeral in order to
come and help use our workload. And meanwhile, my manager
keeps showing up my desk and asking me to like
sad the day by coming up with these magnificent answers. Um,
I know she makes more money than me due to
her prior role in the way um internal transfers work
(19:24):
in my company, and I'm finding it more and more
difficult to keep myself at an even keel. I'm just
getting aggravated seeing the lack of work on her heart.
I'm trying to remind myself that life isn't really fair.
How do I get my mind off of this before
I start showing my frustration in front of my colleagues.
(19:45):
I think you have three options here. The first one
is I wonder if you have tried directly assigning work
to this co worker. That may or may not make
sense in your context, but if you're all working on
the same project, it might be perfectly fine to say
to her, Hey, Jane, could you do X and Y
by this Friday? Or Jane, I'm swamped. Can you help
(20:05):
me with X. I can show you exactly what needs
to be done. It might be interesting to see what
happens when someone directly pulls her in like that. The
second option is to say something directly to your boss.
A lot of people are trained to think that they're
never supposed to complain about a co worker to their manager,
but you are allowed to raise issues that are directly
(20:25):
affecting you, and if you're having to pick up extra
work because of her, that gives you standing to say something.
You could say something to your manager, like, I am
working a ton of extra hours right now, which I
understand is part of the deal leading up to the
product launch, but I am wondering if Jane can share
some of the load. My sense is that she hasn't
taken on as much of the work as the rest
(20:45):
of us, and she has a lot of capacity, and
I'd love to be able to shift some of this
over to her. Is that something we could do. The
third option if that doesn't work, is to decline to
pick up her slack. When your manager comes to you
to save the day, you could say, well, if I
do that, I would need to push back X and Y,
(21:06):
as opposed to just saying yes, they'll do it all.
Or even if I do that, I won't have time
for X and Y. Is that something that Jane could
handle while you work on this. I do want to
note that it's possible that you're in a situation where
that just wouldn't fly right now. If you're in a
major crunch for a product launch. The reality is that
you might feel like you just have to do it
all and that you can't decline without seeming really tone deaf.
(21:30):
If that is the case, then I would say you
should talk to your manager after this is over, and
at that point say something like I want to talk
about how work was distributed leading up to the launch.
I was hoping to see Jane pitch in more, and
I felt like I ended up with a disproportionate share
of the work because she wasn't around. Is there a
way to ensure that doesn't happen again? Ultimately, though, if
(21:51):
your manager won't manage the situation, there may not be
much else you can do. But I would start with
these steps and see where it gets you. Okay, next color,
Hi Allison, My question is is a lack of mentorship
a good reason to move on? To add some context,
I was given a massive opportunity to head up a
(22:12):
new project's team at work, and I've been doing this
role for almost a year. Prior to that, I was
in my role for two years in a more established
area of the business. So far, it's been going really
well and I've delivered with praise. I found it demanding
and I have a lot of responsibility, and I've hired
and built a team from the ground up, learned on
the job and essentially shaping a role of my own.
(22:35):
And I've also become the advocate for the business for
this area. My line manager is a senior director of
the business and he's exceptionally busy. Furthermore, he doesn't really
understand what I do, And just to fill you in,
I work for the kind of business where we take
someone and we put them into a really new business
area and see how that goes. The problem is, with
(22:57):
all of this, I'm feeling as if I'm not growing
professionally to my full potential, and a year is a
long time to feel that. Specifically, I feel I have
a lack of mentorship and peers to sort of bounce
ideas off of, and nobody to learn from all with
at conferences. It's now clear that my development is behind
what's out there in the industry as well, and I
(23:18):
basically feel that I'm not experienced enough to head up
such a team right now. I don't find my role
to challenging, but it's more that I feel I could
be better at it and deliver better if I were
under the mentorship and direction of someone with more experience.
Mostly I feel like I'm working in a silo on
my own. So here's my question. Is it ever a
good reason to move on because you're lacking mendership? I
(23:40):
believe I really have the potential to be great in
this field, but I need the support to get there.
Would employers see this as a mission of not being
able to hack it or not being good enough? It
is indeed a good enough reason to move on. That
doesn't mean that you should move on, but it is
really important to have mentorship and someone to bounce a
d is off of and test things with, and just
(24:02):
someone who gets what you do. And especially if you're
getting the sense that you're not performing the way that
you could you had more support. That is a huge
reason to consider moving on. But that doesn't mean that
you have to. If you were in this situation and
you were fine with it, if you felt like it
was an exciting challenge, then great. But it doesn't sound
(24:22):
like you feel that way. It sounds like you really
don't like it. That said, before you make any decisions
about moving on, it's worth exploring whether there are other
ways to get that kind of mentorship from someone other
than your boss. Could you build a relationship with people
doing this work at a more senior level outside of
your organization? Is there anyone at your company who isn't
(24:44):
your boss but does get what you do? I would
look around and see if there are other options before
you conclude that this won't work. But if you do
decide that you'd rather move on, that's totally okay. And
when you're interviewing and employers ask why you're leaving, you
can say that you're the only person at your company
who does this type of work and that you've realized
you really enjoy having mentors or peers to collaborate with.
(25:07):
And you can say that your work is very siloed
and that you're looking to work as part of a team.
That answer is going to go over quite well with
a lot of employers who are looking for people who
want to collaborate. And it's also perfectly understandable. It's not
going to be a red flag or a sign that
you couldn't hack it. It'll come across fine. One other thing, though,
(25:27):
is I would maybe find ways to test your belief
that your development is behind where you feel like you
should be, or that you're not experienced enough to be
heading up this kind of team right now, because it
could be that your assessment of that is a little
bit off, that you're having a little bit of imposter syndrome,
and that maybe you are doing just fine. So I
(25:50):
don't know if your boss is someone who you could
talk to about that, or if there are other people
who you could kind of bounce that idea off of
and try to test it. But I would make sure
before you do anything like moving on, I would make
sure that your take on that is really grounded in
what's really happening, as opposed to just worrying that maybe
you're not good enough. That is our show for today.
(26:13):
If you would like to hear your question answered on
a future episode, you can record it on the show
voicemail at eight five five work that's eight five nine
six five. Or if you have a longer question where
you want to actually come on the show and talk
with me, email it to podcast at ask the Manager
dot org. That's it for today, and I will be
(26:34):
back next time with more questions.
My colleagues. We'll stop commenting on everything assist 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. Right 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
(00:24):
company party. Let's get started, Hi, and welcome to the show. Today.
We have a bunch of shorter questions from people, and
the first question is from someone who's wondering what's so
wrong with being chilly with people at work? Hi? Allison,
I've been reading your blog and listening to your podcast
for a while. There are a number of times you
(00:45):
describe certain things as coming off as chilly in some
of your answers. It clicked for me while reading your
response to the recent letter writer who didn't want to
interact with small children brought into their office. Since I've
experienced the same thing in my office, I completely ignore
it any time someone brings in their small children or
grandchildren for a visit. Fortunately, I've never been pushed to
(01:06):
interact with them. It made me realize I have a
chilly personality in general. I generally don't talk about anything
not related to work and return the topic to work
as quickly as possible when asked about something not work related.
I don't go out of my way to greet co workers.
I'll return good morning, but find it to be a
pointless ritual. Why, yes, it is, in fact morning. How
(01:26):
very observant you are is what I think every time
it happens. I opt out of most social events. I
often wear over the ear headphones while I work. They're
not noise canceling, but I've let people believe that they
are the only coworkers I'd say I have warm relationships
are those I work closely with or have in the past.
Fortunately this includes my manager. My question is, what if
(01:48):
anything is wrong with being chilly? It seems like a
good efficient way to get along. My experience is necessary
interactions occur, but those co workers whose work doesn't affect
mine are un likely to bother me with pointless bs.
The way I see it is that I come to
work to do work, not to socialize. I can fake
it in social situations, but it takes time and energy.
(02:09):
I'd rather put towards getting work done. Some background information
in case it's relevant. I'm a man in my very
late twenties. I turned thirty in a few months. This
job is my first professional job, and I've been here
for about four and a half years. The field is
accounting for a large corporation in a major metropolitan city
in the Midwest. I do my job well and I've
(02:30):
always gotten good feedback on my work. I'm definitely more
analytical than a people person, surprised and tend to be introverted.
I love this question because it's super logical. What is
wrong with being chilly? I totally see how it is
seeming more efficient to you because you're there to focus
on your work and you don't want to be distracted
(02:50):
by chit chat, And what is wrong with that. You
can live your work life the way that you described,
but there are downsides to doing it, and I would
just want you to be aware of what the downsides are,
so that if you choose to stay chilly, you're making
a deliberate decision with full awareness of the trade offs.
The biggest thing is that when you do have warm,
friendly relationships with your colleagues, your life at work is
(03:13):
often much easier in a ton of different ways. For example,
when you need a work favor from someone, you're more
likely to get it if you have a good relationship
with them. I'm not talking about just asking someone to
do their job, because anyone reasonably conscientious will of course
do that. I'm talking about the kind of thing where
you need someone to really help you out and do
you a favor something that they're not obligated to do.
(03:35):
Like let's say you are a client mess something up
and you need some help at the end of the
day when everyone is leaving. The person who can help
you is a lot more likely to delay their dinner
plans and stay late to help you out if you
have made the effort to build a warm, friendly relationship,
or to say, you know, yeah, we normally need three
days lead time on this, but let me push yours
(03:56):
through faster since I know that you really need it,
or all sorts of other favors, stuff that is going
above and beyond what they have to do, just because
you've been a nice person to them. Another way that
it can make your life easier is that you're more
likely to hear information that isn't public yet but could
affect you in a way that you would want to
know about, because people have informal channels of trading information
(04:20):
and they don't tend to do it with people they
don't know. Well. When you have good relationships with the
people you work with, you're more likely to hear things
everything from Hey, that job that you're interested in is
about to open up, and they're only going to interview
internal candidates, so speak up if you're interested, you should
let them know. Or hey, they're cutting the reserved parking
in half next year, so you should buy an annual
(04:42):
pass now if you want to make sure that you
keep a spot, or even just stuff like Bob used
to work with the new manager who's coming in and
he said it helps to do X, Y and Z
to get off on the right foot with her. There's
all kinds of not quite official information that gets passed around,
and you will generally get left out of at if
you're not building relationships with people. It can also benefit
(05:05):
you in more formal ways, because when people know and
like you, you're more likely to come to mind when
they're thinking of someone to lead a project or for
a bunch of other potential professional opportunities. And it's not
that they would never think of you without that relationship
just based on your skills, but when they've had a
chance to get to know you, they're more likely to
have a wider feel for the kinds of things that
(05:25):
you'd be interested in and good at, and what you
might bring to a given assignment, which is always more
than just your resume. But if you don't have a
relationship with them, they might just know you as basically
your resume. And another way that relationships pay off are
your network. When you're looking for a job in the future,
it really helps to have people who like you and
are motivated to help you and give you job leads
(05:48):
or references or suggest useful people to talk to or
vouch for you to someone who they know has an opening.
And again it's not that they would never do that
for you without the relationship, but you're going to get
way more fit when the relationship is there. Now, those
are all pretty self interested reasons, and there's nothing wrong
with self interest, but there's also the fact that when
(06:10):
you get to know people you work with, you're in
a better position to help them too. You might be
able to connect them with the perfect job lead one day,
or help them out when they really need last minute
help but won't bother you if they don't know you
well enough to ask you to stay late to help
them fix something. So it positions you to be a
better colleague in a lot of ways, and frankly, it
(06:31):
can also just make work more emotionally fulfilling. Not that
you need to populate your office with a bunch of
best friends, because you don't, and there can be real
downsides to doing that. So I want to be clear
that's not what I'm talking about. I'm not talking about
coming in and having an hour of deep conversation with
people every day, or sharing intimate details of your life.
I'm just talking about being warm and acknowledging them as
(06:55):
fellow humans, which is what good morning is about, by
the way, and finding points of connection, and frankly, just
liking the people who you work with. Being able to
grab lunch with someone on a particularly weird or slow
or stressful day, or being able to talk about something
funny that just happened in a meeting, or just having
camaraderie with people who know all of the characters and
(07:18):
the stresses of your work life. In a way that
people outside of work will never fully get there can
be real value in that. And that part might not
resonate with you, and that's okay if it doesn't. Just
focus on all the other reasons that I gave, but
I think you might be surprised by how much more
enjoyable it can make getting up and going to work.
(07:39):
We're going to get to a short break here and
then we'll come right back. I have two employees. Let's
call them Dufless and Diligent to be totally their Both
employees show up on time, interact pleasantly with coworkers and patrons,
(08:00):
and do whatever is asked of them competently. We work
in a library, and just like every other library in America,
our circulation is down. We can blame a decent economy,
the internet, or changing times, but my job is still
to raise circulation. I expect my employees to help me
with this task. Diligent has come up with some amazing
ways to engage the public. Enthusiastically embraces other people's ideas
(08:24):
and carries them out, and he presents new ideas that
are well bought out without taking offense that they are
just not the right time Dufaus to recognizes that our
library needs to grow, but refuses to believe it is possible.
He is involved with the federal program that will pay
some or all of his student loans if he works
for a nonprofit for ten years. His eyes on that
(08:45):
prize and he has no idea what he wants to
do once it is achieved. I inherited both of these employees.
Should I expend time and energy trying to inspire dufaus
to love what libraries do? Or maybe the better question
is do I worry about developing Dufus when I have
a diligent I feel like my job as their manager
is to help them grow in skills and competence. But
(09:05):
Dufiz has stated that he's perfectly comfortable where he's at,
aside from zero ambition or future of thinking, he's not
a bad employee. I just feel like I'm not being
fair to him if I don't try to help develop
those intangible qualities. Do we have an obligation of fairness
and development to our employees. I really appreciate your take
on this, so I'm going to argue something which may
(09:29):
surprise you, which is that, at its core, a manager's
job really isn't to develop employees skills and confidence. A
manager's job is to get results in their realm. Now,
very often getting results in your team's work will mean
helping your employees develop their skills. That is something that
most of the time a good manager is going to do.
(09:50):
But you're doing it not because developing people is the
end that you're aiming for. You're doing it because it's
in service of your organization's ability to meet its goals
and get great results. Developing people can help them get
better results, and it can help you attract and retain
good people. So it's a very worthy thing to do.
But ultimately it is a means to an end. And
(10:13):
I know that that sounds cold and calculating, and I
don't mean it to be. I just want to be
very realistic and clear eyed about why you put energy
into developing people. So when you have a situation like yours,
where someone isn't really interested in developing his skills and
trying new ways of doing things and taking initiative and
so forth, it's not your job to invest major energy
(10:35):
in trying to bring those things out in him. To
be clear, I would try it first, but once it
becomes clear to you that it's an uphill battle and
that it's not something he's interested in doing. You're not
obligated to keep investing that energy in him. I would
ask yourself whether he is the right person for the job.
Do you do you want to have someone in his
(10:57):
job who doesn't embrace new ideas and he doesn't operate
with much of a sense of possibility. It's possible that
for the type of work that he does, that's completely fine,
and that he's still able to perform at an excellent
level without those things. But for a lot of jobs,
those things really would hold him back from performing at
the level that you want. So that would be the
(11:18):
question that I would focus on. Is he bringing to
the job what you need him to bring. If he's not,
that's the conversation to have with him, to say, you know, hey,
what I need from this role is someone who will
help me come up with ideas to raise circulation, someone
who will generate ideas themselves, or at least enthusiastically carry
out other people's ideas. You've said that you don't believe
(11:40):
that it's possible for our library to grow, and we
need to figure out if you can change that. Mindset
or not, because to succeed in this job, you do
have to come at it differently. Now that's not exactly
what you're asking me, I realize, but it's an important
piece of this. Back to your question, it is okay
to invest your development energies in the place where you
have seen that they will pay off the most. And
(12:02):
that might mean that your enthusiastic employee does get the
bulk of your investment. That way, I would just be
very clear with the less enthusiastic one about why that is.
So that he's not drawing his own conclusions about what's
going on and thinking that you're being unfair or that
you don't like him. You want to be very transparent
with him about what's happening. Okay, here's our next collar.
(12:26):
Hi Allison. Firstly, I can't begin to thank you enough
for your words of wisdom. I especially into a management
role at a really young age and never got the
right training. So your podcast gives me a great guidance
on so many relevant topics. So here's my dilemma. I
work as a manager in a really small nonprofit about
six full time employees that's based in California. I've been
(12:48):
working with the organization for about three and a half years. Somehow,
over these years, our CEO and my direct boss, has
taken on a very paternal role in my life. About
his daughter's age. Turns out he grew up near where
my parents used to live. There are a lot of parallels.
When I took the job, I thought it would be
a two year option that would help me broad in
(13:09):
my career. Last year, about the two point five year mark,
my fiance and I decided to quit our jobs and
then moved to New York, where he had a job
lined up. It was a personal decision that I wholeheartedly
felt was the right one. I gave my boss a
six week notice, which I think is fair considering the
nature of nonprofits, especially this one. He didn't take it well.
(13:32):
He tuned into his fatherly persona and somehow convinced me
to give him another four weeks, a total of ten
to eleven weeks notice. When I left, I signed a
contract that when I returned from traveling abroad, that I
could help him remotely from New York. And because I
didn't have a job lined up, this seemed like a
short term blessing. It's now one year since I gave
(13:55):
him my original notice, and I'm interviewing with other organizations
in my area and I even have an offer on
the table. This short term remote work is really tough
for me. I wanted to tell him I'm leaving, and
I guess I have to, but I'm concerned he will
talk me out of it again by tapping into his
(14:15):
paternal role. How would it dost navigate the situation? The
good news here is this is one hundred percent entirely
within your control. He can't make you stay, and I
know it feels like maybe he can because he kind
of did that last time. But you've got to remember
that last time you capitulated and agreed to do it.
(14:38):
And I totally get that. I come from nonprofits to you,
and I know that there is an ethos that if
you care about the mission, you'll make those kinds of sacrifices,
and that if you don't, you're somehow letting down the cause.
I am here to tell you that is BS and
it's really damaging because it keeps people in bad situations
for too long, and it lets them be manipulated into
(14:58):
doing things they don't want to you and that aren't
in their best interests, and it is really really common
in nonprofits actually even in for profit businesses. I get
a ton of letters from people who let themselves be
talked out of quitting, or talked into giving way more
notice than they want to at real inconvenience to themselves,
or people who reluctantly agree to do contract work after
(15:20):
they go. People have a lot of trouble making a
clean break, So you have a lot of company in
this boat. But you've got to remember this is on
your decision. Your boss might try to pressure you to
stay because it would be good for him and good
for the organization. But you get to say no to that,
and you're not letting anyone down. You're not letting down
your organization or its mission. It is just a normal
(15:43):
part of doing business. People leave jobs and usually they
make a clean break, and that's just how it goes.
You have to really believe that, because otherwise you won't
stand up to the pressure. It helps to go into
the conversation knowing that he's going to pressure you and
being armed with some language that you will use when
that happens. So I would be prepared with sentences like
(16:07):
I appreciate the offer, but I've given it a lot
of thought and I've realized I need to move on,
or you know, I've really enjoyed working with you, but
I've accepted another offer and I'm committed to leaving by date.
And if he really pressures you, then you just say, hey,
I appreciate it, but I want to be upfront with you.
My decision is final and this time I can't change it,
and then immediately say something like, let's talk about what
(16:29):
the transition of my work should look like, so that
you're moving forward rather than staying mired in this one
spot in the conversation, the question of will you or
won't you? Now, you mentioned that he gets paternal with you,
and I wonder if that means that part of his
pressure will be stuff like telling you that you're making
the wrong decision for yourself, or that it will be
(16:50):
fine if you just give them another couple of months,
or that kind of thing. If he goes into that
kind of mode, just be prepared for it and just resolved,
hold firm. You really don't need to say anything other
than no, I can't do that. Truly. You don't need
anything else. You just need to be determined that you
won't change your mind. Also, be prepared for him to
propose just giving you less work but still keeping you around,
(17:14):
because he might figure that's a way to get you
to agree. Don't be tempted to give into that either,
because when you get this other job, you're going to
want to focus fully on it, and you should have
a clean break from this one. But really, the main
thing to know is this is your call. He can't
make you change it. That doesn't mean that he won't try.
And actually, years ago, very early in my career, I
(17:34):
quit my job and the head of the organization locked
me in her office, literally locked me in there for
two hours while she tried to change my mind. It
was very odd she kept playing good cop and then
bad cop all by herself. If that happened now, I
wouldn't have stayed for the whole two hours. I would
have gotten up pretty soon into it and said, you know,
(17:57):
I really appreciate you trying to find a way to
make it work, but I've given it a lot of
thought and this is the right decision for me, and
then gotten up, unlocked the door and left. But I
was twenty five at the time, and I did not
think to do that that is just to say there
are high pressure bosses out there, but they can't make
you stay at a job. You're not an indentured servant
(18:18):
and you get to do what's right for you. We'll
do one more break here and be right back, Hi, Alison.
My team is currently in a huge time crunch due
to an upcoming product launch. We have a new coworker
(18:39):
who joined us shortly before this huge time crunch, and
to be honest, I had concerns about her work ethic
from the start that I was trying to ignore. But
I just can't do it anymore. Um. She's almost never
at her desk, and when she is present, she won't
even pretend to log in and work. She has not
offered even one option for our projects that we've been
working on for weeks now. Meanwhile, give you an idea
(19:01):
how busy we are. One of my coworkers actually gave
up breathement time, missed his grandmother's funeral in order to
come and help use our workload. And meanwhile, my manager
keeps showing up my desk and asking me to like
sad the day by coming up with these magnificent answers. Um,
I know she makes more money than me due to
her prior role in the way um internal transfers work
(19:24):
in my company, and I'm finding it more and more
difficult to keep myself at an even keel. I'm just
getting aggravated seeing the lack of work on her heart.
I'm trying to remind myself that life isn't really fair.
How do I get my mind off of this before
I start showing my frustration in front of my colleagues.
(19:45):
I think you have three options here. The first one
is I wonder if you have tried directly assigning work
to this co worker. That may or may not make
sense in your context, but if you're all working on
the same project, it might be perfectly fine to say
to her, Hey, Jane, could you do X and Y
by this Friday? Or Jane, I'm swamped. Can you help
(20:05):
me with X. I can show you exactly what needs
to be done. It might be interesting to see what
happens when someone directly pulls her in like that. The
second option is to say something directly to your boss.
A lot of people are trained to think that they're
never supposed to complain about a co worker to their manager,
but you are allowed to raise issues that are directly
(20:25):
affecting you, and if you're having to pick up extra
work because of her, that gives you standing to say something.
You could say something to your manager, like, I am
working a ton of extra hours right now, which I
understand is part of the deal leading up to the
product launch, but I am wondering if Jane can share
some of the load. My sense is that she hasn't
taken on as much of the work as the rest
(20:45):
of us, and she has a lot of capacity, and
I'd love to be able to shift some of this
over to her. Is that something we could do. The
third option if that doesn't work, is to decline to
pick up her slack. When your manager comes to you
to save the day, you could say, well, if I
do that, I would need to push back X and Y,
(21:06):
as opposed to just saying yes, they'll do it all.
Or even if I do that, I won't have time
for X and Y. Is that something that Jane could
handle while you work on this. I do want to
note that it's possible that you're in a situation where
that just wouldn't fly right now. If you're in a
major crunch for a product launch. The reality is that
you might feel like you just have to do it
all and that you can't decline without seeming really tone deaf.
(21:30):
If that is the case, then I would say you
should talk to your manager after this is over, and
at that point say something like I want to talk
about how work was distributed leading up to the launch.
I was hoping to see Jane pitch in more, and
I felt like I ended up with a disproportionate share
of the work because she wasn't around. Is there a
way to ensure that doesn't happen again? Ultimately, though, if
(21:51):
your manager won't manage the situation, there may not be
much else you can do. But I would start with
these steps and see where it gets you. Okay, next color,
Hi Allison, My question is is a lack of mentorship
a good reason to move on? To add some context,
I was given a massive opportunity to head up a
(22:12):
new project's team at work, and I've been doing this
role for almost a year. Prior to that, I was
in my role for two years in a more established
area of the business. So far, it's been going really
well and I've delivered with praise. I found it demanding
and I have a lot of responsibility, and I've hired
and built a team from the ground up, learned on
the job and essentially shaping a role of my own.
(22:35):
And I've also become the advocate for the business for
this area. My line manager is a senior director of
the business and he's exceptionally busy. Furthermore, he doesn't really
understand what I do, And just to fill you in,
I work for the kind of business where we take
someone and we put them into a really new business
area and see how that goes. The problem is, with
(22:57):
all of this, I'm feeling as if I'm not growing
professionally to my full potential, and a year is a
long time to feel that. Specifically, I feel I have
a lack of mentorship and peers to sort of bounce
ideas off of, and nobody to learn from all with
at conferences. It's now clear that my development is behind
what's out there in the industry as well, and I
(23:18):
basically feel that I'm not experienced enough to head up
such a team right now. I don't find my role
to challenging, but it's more that I feel I could
be better at it and deliver better if I were
under the mentorship and direction of someone with more experience.
Mostly I feel like I'm working in a silo on
my own. So here's my question. Is it ever a
good reason to move on because you're lacking mendership? I
(23:40):
believe I really have the potential to be great in
this field, but I need the support to get there.
Would employers see this as a mission of not being
able to hack it or not being good enough? It
is indeed a good enough reason to move on. That
doesn't mean that you should move on, but it is
really important to have mentorship and someone to bounce a
d is off of and test things with, and just
(24:02):
someone who gets what you do. And especially if you're
getting the sense that you're not performing the way that
you could you had more support. That is a huge
reason to consider moving on. But that doesn't mean that
you have to. If you were in this situation and
you were fine with it, if you felt like it
was an exciting challenge, then great. But it doesn't sound
(24:22):
like you feel that way. It sounds like you really
don't like it. That said, before you make any decisions
about moving on, it's worth exploring whether there are other
ways to get that kind of mentorship from someone other
than your boss. Could you build a relationship with people
doing this work at a more senior level outside of
your organization? Is there anyone at your company who isn't
(24:44):
your boss but does get what you do? I would
look around and see if there are other options before
you conclude that this won't work. But if you do
decide that you'd rather move on, that's totally okay. And
when you're interviewing and employers ask why you're leaving, you
can say that you're the only person at your company
who does this type of work and that you've realized
you really enjoy having mentors or peers to collaborate with.
(25:07):
And you can say that your work is very siloed
and that you're looking to work as part of a team.
That answer is going to go over quite well with
a lot of employers who are looking for people who
want to collaborate. And it's also perfectly understandable. It's not
going to be a red flag or a sign that
you couldn't hack it. It'll come across fine. One other thing, though,
(25:27):
is I would maybe find ways to test your belief
that your development is behind where you feel like you
should be, or that you're not experienced enough to be
heading up this kind of team right now, because it
could be that your assessment of that is a little
bit off, that you're having a little bit of imposter syndrome,
and that maybe you are doing just fine. So I
(25:50):
don't know if your boss is someone who you could
talk to about that, or if there are other people
who you could kind of bounce that idea off of
and try to test it. But I would make sure
before you do anything like moving on, I would make
sure that your take on that is really grounded in
what's really happening, as opposed to just worrying that maybe
you're not good enough. That is our show for today.
(26:13):
If you would like to hear your question answered on
a future episode, you can record it on the show
voicemail at eight five five work that's eight five nine
six five. Or if you have a longer question where
you want to actually come on the show and talk
with me, email it to podcast at ask the Manager
dot org. That's it for today, and I will be
(26:34):
back next time with more questions.
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