It’s officially update season! From now through the end of the year, I’ll be running updates from people who had their letters answered here in the past. We have a ton of updates this year — and I’m still taking more so please email yours in if you haven’t already.
To kick it off, here’s an update from the person whose employee kept snapping at her when he was stressed or frustrated.
Thanks to you and the community for the wonderful feedback – I took it all to heart. The day after the article ran, I was having a check-in with my employee and we were reviewing a deliverable. He was supposed to be producing, say, a glaze for teapots and had decided on his own to pivot into puffy paint for decorating your own teapot. When I told him that we actually needed glaze (but that I’d be happy to discuss puffy paint another day), he … started to argue with me, then rolled his eyes yet again, and said loudly “I get it! You don’t have to talk to me like I’m a child!.
I responded based on the script you had suggested (which I had ready to go in my head, THANK YOU!) and basically said, “We talked the other day about you rolling your eyes and raising your voice when I give you feedback. I’ve been fairly lenient about this because I know that you’re new and you’ve been struggling. It just happened again, so I want to be clear that this is a serious problem that can’t continue. Receiving feedback is an important part of any job, and I need to be able to give you feedback and have it be received without eye-rolling and argument.”
I then paused, and he went into a torrent of frustration about how I don’t treat him like an equal and how his ideas aren’t sufficiently appreciated. I let him speak until he ran out of steam, and then I said, “Thank you for sharing that. I’m always open to your feedback, and we can talk more about that at our next check-in. For now, however, we need to focus on how you receive feedback. You’re smart and capable, and I understand that it can be hard to hear feedback about your work, especially when you’ve put in a lot of effort. I’d like you to understand that in the workplace, constructive feedback isn’t necessarily a negative the way it is in school – it’s just a piece of information to help us all move forward together more effectively. I need you to find a way to receive feedback constructively going forward. Do this make sense?”
That was basically the end of the conversation, but unfortunately not his poor behavior. He continued to be passive aggressive with occasional requests (e.g., after emailing him a deliverable request, he would respond with “It seems like it would just be easier for you to do it yourself”). That said, the situation became easier for two reasons. First, I got a lot better at calling out unacceptable behaviors immediately, in fairly direct / blunt ways combined with short and simple directives. (For example, after the “It seems like it would just be easier to do it yourself” email, I responded with “When I send a request like this, I need you to focus on turning around the work in the requested timeframe rather than providing input on who you think should own the deliverable.”) After two months of this, the behaviors I wrote in about slowly tapered off. In retrospect, as you pointed out, I made a major mistake in not addressing the behavior immediately. Lesson learned!
The second reason the situation became easier was because I gave myself permission to not care about his emotions. I realize this could sound bad, but after reading your response and all of the comments, I realized I was investing way too much energy in trying to make my employee happy/successful. When I stopped caring about his experience and just focused on everyone getting their work done, I immediately felt lighter. I hadn’t realized what a weight I’d been carrying.
So what happened? All of the behaviors I wrote in about eventually stopped, and I realized that my team’s work wasn’t a great fit for his skills. We identified other areas of interest and I found him opportunities to explore those interests elsewhere in our company. Last month, he transitioned into that team full-time; he is adding significant value in his new role, feels great about his efforts, and his new manager says all is going well so far.
As for me, throughout this process I had little to no support from my manager (which is an entirely different letter). I’ve become pretty disillusioned with my company overall over the past year and am now ramping up a job search.
update: my employee gets stressed and frustrated and snaps at me was originally published by Alison Green on Ask a Manager.
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