It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go…
1. My boss shakes hands with men, but fist-bumps with women
My manager does this thing that annoys me but I don’t know if I should address it or just let it go. Whenever he says goodbye to my male colleagues, he shakes their hand. Whenever he says goodbye to me (or any of my female colleagues), he opts for a fist bump. There are more men than women on our team so oftentimes there’s a whole bunch of handshakes and then I get an awkward fist bump. It’s frustrating because it makes me feel singled out and separate from the rest of the team. I’ve even tried sticking my hand out and forcing a handshake, but the next time I see him we’re back to the fist bump. (He did shake it when I essentially forced him to, but he looked a bit uncomfortable and there was definite awkward laughter.)
I have a decent relationship with him, but he doesn’t seem very aware of how women are treated differently in our very male-dominated workplace. I think I could address it with him, but it will be awkward and I don’t know if it’s worth the effort. Should I just let this go? Any advice?
Yes, address it. This is a workplace, and he shouldn’t be treating men and women differently, even with something like handshakes vs. fist bumps.
I’d simply raise it with him in private and say, “I’ve noticed you frequently shake the hands of the men here, but seem to avoid doing it with women. Any reason?”
There are some people who doesn’t shake hands with the opposite sex for religious reasons. If that’s the situation, it would have been better for him to explain that up-front rather than leaving you to wonder why he was treating you differently, but it’s also possible he thought he could avoid calling attention to it that way and thus lessen people’s discomfort, not realizing that the mystery was actually adding to it. (And really, if that’s the situation, he might be better off stopping the frequent hand-shaking altogether.)
But if that’s not the case, and it’s just some weird issue of his about Shaking the Delicate Hands of Ladies, then you can say, “When I’m at work, I’d like to be treated like everyone else and not seen as a woman first and a colleague second. So going forward, if hand-shaking is happening, can I ask that you not distinguish by gender?”
2. Streaming Netflix at work
I have a relatively low stakes sort of question I’d love to get your take on. What’s your position on streaming (Netflix, YouTube, and the like) at work? I work in an editorial position for a digital media company. More or less, I spend eight hours in front of my computer, editing articles, emailing writers, and dealing with our freelancer budget. Sometimes I’ll stream clips from Last Week Tonight or other late-night interview shows on my phone. I never use the company wifi (I’ve been blessed with a large unlimited data plan) and the content is safe for work. I walked past a coworker’s desk a few times the other day, and she was also watching a show on her phone. In my mind, I equate this to listening to music or a podcast, but I can see how some higher-ups might not love the idea of people catching up on TV while working.
I know everyone hates the word “optics,” but … this is a situation where optics matter. The reality is, if someone can see that you have a TV show playing while you work, to a lot of people it’s going to read as “not fully engaged in her work” — especially to people who don’t interact with you much or realize that the nature of your work lets you do this without impact. And the opinions of some of those people will matter, if they’re higher up than you and have influence over you directly or indirectly.
This is silly, because most people wouldn’t have the same reaction if you were listening to a podcast via headphones. (Actually, some people even feel uneasy about that — just not nearly as many of them.) But it’s a real reaction people have, and you need to factor it in.
When something is just about how something looks and doesn’t have any real work impact, there’s a temptation to say, “Well, screw it. People shouldn’t think that, and therefore I’m not going to cater to that.” And sometimes that makes sense. But when it’s about something like your ability to watch TV while you work — i.e., not hugely important or something with high stakes — sometimes you’re better off accepting the optics won’t be good and choosing a different option.
If lots of people in your office do it, then it’s fine in your culture. But if hardly anyone does, I’d stick with audio content instead.
3. My colleague is taking months off while his parent is ill, and I’m overwhelmed
I began a new job in February and am one of two people working full-time to start up a large, international project. My counterpart, Fergus, has been at the company for over 10 years, and is a wealth of knowledge at this critical time in the project inception.
My first two weeks, Fergus was on vacation, and on his last day of vacation he contacted our manager to say that his mother was very ill and he would be taking additional time off. Fergus’ mother is dying — it could be a matter of weeks or it could be many months. Fergus understandably wants to spend as much time with her as possible. Fergus is 50, so I assume his mother is in her 70s or 80s.
During my two months on the job, Fergus has been in the office three days, and is scheduled to be in the office for a couple of days in early April. Beyond that, it seems we’re operating on a “wait and see” basis when he will come back to work. I’m coordinating an international workshop to kick off our project in May (normally it would be both of us coordinating this workshop, with him taking the lead), but he has said that is his participation at the workshop is not guaranteed. We might not know until the very last minute whether he will be leading sessions, etc.
I’ve talked with my manager about having her take on some of Fergus’ tasks, which she has been willing to do and I’m very grateful. But I’m curious as to what the norm is in this type of situation. At what point do I insist on getting additional support to cover Fergus’ work? I’m trying to balance my compassion for Fergus (knowing that I, too, would ideally want to spend as much time as possible with my parent) with my own feelings of being swamped every day at work and not knowing when support may come. I feel like I can’t mention my work frustrations without coming across as an insensitive jerk. My company has a *very* generous leave policy, so this could conceivably go on for months. And if/when his mother does pass away, I expect Fergus will take bereavement leave as well. I just had my first performance review for my probation period, and I’m meeting expectations — but I had been hoping to excel in my new role, instead of just scraping by, overwhelmed. Any advice?
Talk to your boss. Your message here isn’t about Fergus at all; it’s not “he needs to come back” or “he’s shirking his work.” It’s “I’m still fairly new, and I’m overwhelmed covering this work while trying to excel at my own — what other resources can we bring in?”
It’s great that your company has such a generous leave policy. But the implementation of it can’t be “you take off all the time you want while your coworkers are under major strain.” Your company and your manager have an obligation to step in and help you figure out how to make things work while Fergus is out, which might mean hiring temp help, bringing in help from another part of the organization, pushing some work back or eliminating it altogether, or even just making it clear to you that your team is going to get by as best as it can right now but no one is expected to excel under this kind of strain. It sounds like the latter would be frustrating to you — you want to excel! — but it just might not be realistic right now. Or rather, you and your manager might both need to redefine what excelling looks like right now.
But lay out for your manager what you’re worried about and what you need. You can do that without saying “I’m frustrated Fergus is taking so much time off.” You can say something more like, “I had been counting on Fergus’s wealth of institutional knowledge around X and Y. With him gone and me still being new, I’m really concerned about projects like A and B. Can we talk about what other support I can pull in while he’s gone, since he was going to be taking the lead on those? Is it possible to bring in additional help?”
And you can also ask about redefining your goals for this period, saying something like, “Can we talk about what I should be aiming for in my own work over the next few months? I want to make sure we’re aligned on what I should be accomplishing, and what might not be realistic while we’re down our most senior person.”
4. My staff member assumes she’s invited to meetings when she isn’t
I supervise someone fabulous and wonderful, and I very much support her professional development. I go to great lengths to bring her into as many conversations and decision-making moments as possible. But sometimes it is not appropriate for her to be in certain meetings, especially ones organized or requested by external partners. Two recent examples have been with important funders (we are a nonprofit) who requested a meeting with me and weren’t responsive when I asked if they wanted her there, too. When I tell my staff member about the upcoming meeting as an FYI, she responds in a way that reads as though she assumes she is also invited.
I’m looking for an easy script to use when she assumes she is invited to these, and for some reason i am struggling with it.
Be straightforward and matter-of-fact! If you treat it as something delicate that you need to break to her gently, it’s more likely to be weird.
Ideally, you’d be as clear as you can when you first mention the meeting — saying “I am going to meet with X” rather than “we (meaning “our team”) are going to meet with X” and so forth. But if she responds in a way that sounds like she thinks she’s attending too, you can say something like, “This one will just be me and X, but I’ll update you when I get back about how it went.” Or, “Because we’re going to be mainly talking about Z, I’m going to go to this one on my own.”
If you notice she’s regularly bristling at that or seeming put out by it, you can address that head-on by explaining whatever context will help her understand — like that it’s normal for external partners to want to talk directly with a senior counterpart, but that you’ll bring her on later for X and Y elements (if that’s the case; you don’t have to find a way to make that be true if it otherwise wouldn’t be), or that you’re keeping a certain meeting small because the partner prefers that/it’s more efficient for this topic/you need her focused on Z right now/etc. Or you might frame it as a general “let’s talk through the times when I’ll ask you to attend and times when I may not, so that we’re both on the same page and you’re not wondering each individual time.”
5. Can I ask why I didn’t get an interview?
A couple months ago, I applied for a job that I thought I would be a very strong candidate for. I received an automated response saying that theh has received my application, but I didn’t receive an interview, nor am I expecting one anymore. But I feel thrown off! I didn’t think I was a shoe-in exactly, but I felt like I was much more qualified than many other candidates would be, and qualified for a first round interview at least.
How annoying would it be if I wrote to the hiring manager and gently requested information about why I wasn’t selected for an interview? If I made a grievous spelling error in my cover letter, or if she perceived that I was lacking experience in some field that I didn’t anticipate — no matter what the reason, it would be really useful for me to know why I wasn’t considered to be in the running.
You can try and it’s not terribly annoying to do that, but it’s rare to get a substantive response when you weren’t ever interviewed. (Even if you were interviewed, you won’t always get useful feedback, but you have a higher chance of it after they’ve actually spoken with you.)
But the thing is, it doesn’t really work the way you’ve laid it out here. For most jobs, you don’t automatically get an interview just because you are highly qualified. You get an interview if you’re one of the most qualified candidates. And if there are 30 highly qualified candidates, probably only four or five of them are getting interviews. If those four or five people were just stronger matches for some reason, then you’re getting rejected — and that doesn’t mean there was anything wrong with you as a candidate, just that others were better.
So it’s very likely that any feedback you get will be some version of “we went with candidates who were a better match.” That doesn’t mean that you can’t or shouldn’t try asking anyone, because occasionally there’s something else to be learned. But if you’re really just asking because you’re surprised a seemingly qualified candidate didn’t get interviewed … well, this is almost always the answer.
my boss shakes men’s hands but fist-bumps women, streaming movies at work, and more was originally published by Alison Green on Ask a Manager.
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