Giving good feedback is an art. So is recovering after a feedback conversation has gone off the rails.
Listen up, managers: this one’s for you. Today we’re hearing from letter-writers who’ve been struggling with giving feedback to their direct reports. One dilemma involves a team member whose work isn’t up to snuff—and their manager is putting in way too much overtime trying to fix it. Another deals with a team member who went over their manager’s head…and now the manager’s reputation is at stake. Listen in as Sara and Jen help these letter-writers get clear on what went wrong and how they can move forward—so they can show up as the great managers their teams need.
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Sara Wachter-Boettcher 0:00 People shut down. It's a human behavior. Your life as a manager is gonna get a lot easier if you get comfortable working with people through those periods.
Jen Dionisio 0:27 Sara, did you know it's my one year anniversary of leaving my job and coming to Active Voice full-time?
Sara Wachter-Boettcher 0:34 Honestly, Jen, I cannot believe that it's been a year.
Jen Dionisio 0:37 I can't either.
Sara Wachter-Boettcher 0:37 There's part of me that feels like it has only been a second. And then there's another part of me that's like, "What do you mean? You've always been here working with me. I couldn't do this without you.
Jen Dionisio 0:47 I know, I feel exactly the same way. I was like, "Oh, no, I've only been here a couple of months." And then I was like looking at this calendar and realizing, nope. A full cycle has passed.
Sara Wachter-Boettcher 0:59 We did it. We made it. And, hey, we don't even hate each other yet.
Jen Dionisio 1:03 I know. We don't even have to use our own conflict resolution skills.
Sara Wachter-Boettcher 1:07 I think I like you more.
Jen Dionisio 1:09 I feel the same way, Sara. So shall we get into this podcast?
Sara Wachter-Boettcher 1:12 Let's do it. Hey, everyone. Welcome to Per My Last Email, the show about what to do when work gets weird. I'm Sara Wachter-Boettcher.
Jen Dionisio 1:20 And I'm Jen Dionisio. So Sara, what kind of weird are we talking about on my one-year anniversary?
Sara Wachter-Boettcher 1:22 Okay, so today we are answering letters from managers who've tried to give tough feedback to a direct report, and let's just say it's not gone as planned.
Jen Dionisio 1:37 Oh, God, it never does. You know, after our last episode, somebody in the Active Voice community Slack mentioned that it would be really cool to have an episode from the manager's perspective, and it kinda looks like we got it here then.
Sara Wachter-Boettcher 1:51 Yeah. So Jen, you had a long stint as a manager, probably several stints as a manager. What's the biggest challenge you ever had with a direct report?
Jen Dionisio 2:01 How much time do we have?
Sara Wachter-Boettcher 2:03 Not that much time, not that much time. We got people to help.
Jen Dionisio 2:06 Okay, I will say the top contender for difficult challenges with direct reports is when I found out that one had been pretending to go through a divorce and a health crisis when actually they just had a second full-time job.
Sara Wachter-Boettcher 2:22 Gosh.
Jen Dionisio 2:24 Yeah.
Sara Wachter-Boettcher 2:25 Okay. On the one hand, kind of gotta hand it to them. Right? Like, "get your checks," plural. On the other, that's not ethical. It's probably not legal. And like, also, wouldn't it hurt your soul to live that way?
Jen Dionisio 2:38 Yes for me, oh, I don't know. I mean, but it must not because this sort of story of people working two jobs was a pandemic cliche that I think kind of everyone experienced, you know, it ended up on a lot of our bingo cards.
Sara Wachter-Boettcher 2:53 Yeah. Somebody at my husband's workplace was doing it.
Jen Dionisio 2:57 Yeah. But man, I'll say Sara, like I had a once-a-year streak for a while where I just kept getting hit with some absolute doozies from people on my teams. You know, like 90% of the people were like, amazing, so talented, so wonderful. But once a year, it just turned into a situation where it's like, were you body swapped? Did you fall into a portal and come back with your other dimension self? Like, who are you?
Sara Wachter-Boettcher 3:28 Yeah.
Jen Dionisio 3:28 But really hard stuff that ended up making some pretty good stories I'll tell you offline.
Sara Wachter-Boettcher 3:35 Well, speaking of good stories, this week's submitters have some real doozies. And I don't think either of the people we're going to help are quite at the "look back and laugh" place with their particular challenges. But I'm hoping that we can help them get maybe just like a little bit closer to that point today. So are you ready?
Jen Dionisio 3:53 I am.
Sara Wachter-Boettcher 3:58 Okay, our first question is from a content design manager working in the public sector.
DM 4:02 One of the content designers I manage is completely wrong for the role. Let’s call her Sam. I had my doubts about her when I hired her, but the other two interview panelists preferred her to another candidate who I thought was better but wasn't a perfect match for the role either (the job market was in a much different state then!). Being new to management at the time, I thought it was the "right" thing to do to go with the majority decision, even though I'd be responsible for managing her. Fast forward two years later, and it's clear my initial doubts were spot on.
My initial doubts were about her writing skills, but she showed a keen appreciation for human-centered design and had done a lot of professional development in this area, which is what swayed the other interview panelists.In her first year, any writing SAM produced was completely unreadable. It was even a shock to me how poor her writing was, because while I was skeptical during her application, her cover letter was nowhere near these levels.
Over the past year, I've done a lot of work to plan out a development path to improve SAM’S skills. To her credit, she has improved a lot. I sent her on a writing course, which helped immensely, but at the end of the day, her content has gone from completely unreadable to now just being poor quality. I'm still putting in a lot of hours to help her edit her content to get it to an acceptable level to be published.
It's not sustainable for me to keep putting in so much effort to get her work to meet standards. It's been draining on me, and I don't like that it has limited my capacity to support the other content designers I manage. I work in the public sector where dismissing someone from a role is difficult, and HR even suggests not to go down this route if possible. I also have no interest in dismissing her in this terrible job market.
The approach my boss and I have agreed to take is to somehow suggest to Sam it's in her best interest to find a new job more aligned with her skill set. She absolutely loves this job and our team despite her performance issues, though, and is the type of person who shuts down when receiving negative feedback. How do I approach telling her to find a new job in a way that will convince her that that is the best option for her and the team?
Jen Dionisio 6:02 Whoo, Sara, there is a whole lot to unpack with this one.
Sara Wachter-Boettcher 6:06 Oh, there is. There is. I don't envy anyone in this situation. So Jen, let's call this person DM for “drained manager." Where would you tell her to start?
Jen Dionisio 6:18 Well, I would start with just a little bit of affirmation to say that I have been here and it sucks.
Sara Wachter-Boettcher 6:28 Yeah.
Jen Dionisio 6:28 You know, it's really unfair that everyone on DM's team had some concerns about her writing, and yet DM is the only one who's kind of stuck with the consequences. And it's incredibly unfair, DM, that you've had to do all this extra work to like make the content publishable, and that it sounds like it's kind of coming at the cost of your own wellbeing. It's unfair that your other content designers aren't getting as much of you as they might want or need because you're having to spend all this extra time on Sam, and you know that this is sucking up the time that you could be spending on more fulfilling parts of your job.
And I'll just say last, it sucks that HR has no real solutions for you because that's usually what the next step is in this situation. So I'd say, back to DM's question, there is a little bit in the phrasing that gives me pause, Sara, like mostly that line of like, "How do I convince her?" Because I don't think that's actually possible. I mean, not completely impossible, but probably quite unlikely.
Sara Wachter-Boettcher 7:40 Like, maybe a misguided goal.
Jen Dionisio 7:42 Yeah, I mean, it sounds like in the past year, there's been a lot of improvement in Sam's writing. But because they were so far behind expectations, "much better" isn't nearly good enough. You know, and I've actually been talking through this with a lot of clients who are experiencing similar things, and the trouble is, quite often, those direct reports aren't really aware that not only are they not meeting expectations, but they might even think that they are exceeding them because there has been some improvement. Sara, you and I have been reading a whole bunch of research to prepare for the Manager's Playbook about how many people are really suffering because their expectations at work are completely unclear.
Sara Wachter-Boettcher 8:27 Yeah.
Jen Dionisio 8:28 And that might not be the situation with DM. You know, I'm not accusing you of not setting expectations by any means. But I also think you just can't guarantee that someone's expectations were actually understood by somebody else. You know, a lot of times people don't want to hear them. And if, as DM said, like, Sam tends to shut down when getting negative feedback, I think that's probably an additional barrier to her being able to hear what you've been trying to get across.
Sara Wachter-Boettcher 8:56 Yeah, in fact, actually, I'd love to talk about that piece of it because when I read that Sam shuts down when getting negative feedback, it made me immediately wonder like, "Well, what kinds of negative feedback are we talking about? What has Sam been told specifically?" And then, when DM says that they shut down, what does that mean? How would DM actually describe the specific behaviors? Because if Sam's going to be on the team for a while, no matter what DM does, which seems likely, then I might argue that the most valuable thing DM could do right now is actually help Sam get to a place where they can receive feedback. Like that might be the biggest long-term win for everyone.
Jen Dionisio 9:34 God, yeah. And actually for Sam's entire career and future moving forward.
Sara Wachter-Boettcher 9:39 Right. Right. Yeah.
Jen Dionisio 9:41 So where would you kind of start?
Sara Wachter-Boettcher 9:43 Mhmm, well, two things: so first, I will suggest that DM take a closer look at their approach to feedback. Then second, I'd suggest that DM try to better understand what's going on with Sam. So let's talk about that first part. So DM, take a moment and kind of step back and ask yourself like how have you been giving feedback? Because one thing I noticed in your letter is that you mentioned rewriting and editing Sam's work quite a bit. And I know that's because it's a writing-focused job. But you know, Jen, I've also edited a lot of writing over the years in a lot of different contexts, and something I realized about myself is that when I have a vested interest in the work, like when I feel a sense of ownership or responsibility for the final product, I can get so focused on fixing the writing that I forget about supporting the writer.
Jen Dionisio 10:31 Oh, yeah.
Sara Wachter-Boettcher 10:33 Yeah, and I'm not proud of this. It's not how I want to be. But the more responsible I feel for that end product, the more careful I have to be to consider the writer and not just the content. For example, Jen, you write stuff for Active Voice all the time. And you do it beautifully: newsletters, website copy. It's lovely, and I feel like it's actually very easy for us to meld our voices, which is great. But sometimes I do have some thoughts on like, "Ooh, I feel like this part misses this important point about this program or whatever." I easily find myself jumping in hard with fixes, right? Like rewriting chunks of it.
Jen Dionisio 11:12 Yeah.
Sara Wachter-Boettcher 11:13 And in a lot of ways, it's because that feels very easy, easier sometimes to do it than to try to talk through how. I think it's also though because I feel so close to the message that goes out, and I understand why, right? Like, I built this company. Things that go out the door for Active Voice do reflect me personally, and it's okay that I care about that content very deeply.
It's okay that I am a little bit protective of the brand, or however you want to put that. However, I need to be mindful of doing that at the right time and the right place and kind of modulating how much of that is going to happen during the editing process. Because if I'm always jumping in and controlling things, then I'm effectively hanging on to custody of the writing. Like, I still own it. And that puts you in a position where you're not really owning the writing, you're just like drafting some stuff that's ultimately mine.
Jen Dionisio 12:04 Yeah.
Sara Wachter-Boettcher 12:05 And that's not good for you or me, right? Like, it's like not good for me offloading things, it's not good for you getting to a place where you 1,000% get the needs of the brand or whatever. It's not something that's going to necessarily make you valued in the way that I want you to be valued. There's a whole bunch of stuff that doesn't work if that's how I see it. And so if I instead provide comments and then let you own how you want to solve those concerns, then the writing is still yours. And that's something I'm still working on, you I'm sure notice that sometimes I'm like, "Uhh do this," when I probably don't have to be.
Jen Dionisio 12:43 Yeah, But I actually, I will say, I have noticed that shift over this year. I think too, it's kind of like almost like training wheels as you are getting more comfortable with a brand. You know, and I can say I take feedback actually pretty generously, because I have a writing background. Like, I used to get my stuff ripped apart in crits all the time. And I also know what it's like to learn a brand voice. But I think in this situation too where DM said that Sam actually doesn't have any kind of writing background, those expectations, I imagine, are even harder to kind of wrap your head around.
Sara Wachter-Boettcher 13:20 Right. And so I'm wondering if some of what's going on here is that is the feedback about fixing the writing or developing the writer? Because if it's about fixing the writing, I can see a couple things happening. I think, one, I can see why somebody would shut down because they just feel like they're being torn apart. They can take it very personally. And then two, I can see how they can like distance themselves from it and sort of like not feel like responsibility to change their approach because the writing doesn't feel like theirs because you're just rewriting it before it goes live anyway.
And I think that that can actually create some really big challenges because it can set up this dynamic where Sam might be feeling like, "Why bother," right? Like, "Why bother trying harder if I don't actually have control of what goes out the door anyway?" And I don't know. I don't know what's going on in Sam's head. But I do think looking at how you're giving feedback, DM, would be really, really helpful here. So DM, when you give feedback, what I'd suggest that you do is really step back and ask yourself, "How might I flag issues without taking over custody of those issues? Can I surface them?" and then ask Sam to share their perspective on the things that you flagged and then see what questions they have.
And then set an expectation where Sam needs to tell you what they want to do to resolve the issues that you surfaced. They may not be very good at that yet. This is not their background. They don't have a lot of experience, it sounds like, using language to solve problems, which is really what we're talking about. They may have to learn and develop that muscle. And maybe you're right: maybe this isn't the best fit job for them in the world. But I think that if you continue down this path where you are rewriting so many things for them, you stay on this path where the writing stays yours and where you stay frustrated.
Okay, the other side of this: DM, you said Sam is the type of person who shuts down receiving feedback. Oh, Jen, I know, you know where I'm going with this. I don't know if you considered that phrasing when you were writing this, DM. But I really want you to reconsider that framing because I don't believe that "shuts down on receiving feedback" is a personality, and actually I bit you don't either. I think that is a behavior. And what I have definitely learned doing this kind of work is that shutting down is a behavior that people engage in as a response to fear and distress.
So DM, I would challenge you to invest some energy in figuring out what it is about feedback that causes fear and distress for Sam, takes them to a place where they feel like they have to shut down, and then look at what you can do to help her feel safe and calm before giving her feedback. Because, you know, even if Sam does get a new job, this is going to come up again. If you are in a management role, you are going to experience employees who shut down. They shut down when receiving feedback, or they shut down when dealing with like a stressful situation with a colleague.
People shut down. It's a human behavior. Your life as a manager is going to get a lot easier if you get comfortable working with people through those periods. So what I might suggest is even like starting a separate conversation with Sam not about a project or a piece of writing, but about her response to feedback. This is what I always call the meta conversation, so like the conversation about the conversation, and I think they're so important, and we just don't have enough of them.
Jen Dionisio 16:52 It's so hard to almost bring yourself to like, introduce what can feel like friction when actually it is the initiation of solving that friction.
Sara Wachter-Boettcher 17:01 Yes, exactly. And so that might sound something like, "Hey, Sam, I've noticed that when I've given you feedback recently about XY and Z, you responded with this specific behavior. When you do this behavior, I can't tell if you've really heard me or whether we're on the same page, and we're not able to have a collaborative conversation about what to do next." So that's you kind of naming the dynamic that you see happening and using some specific examples of it, not laundry-listing every example since the beginning of time, but a couple recent and specific examples so that you're being concrete, you're not just saying "you always shut down."
Okay? Once you've done that, though, you have to do the really hard part, DM: you have to try to understand Sam's perspective. What's going on with her when she hears negative feedback? What might make those conversations work better for her? And you know, that might take some time to figure out because A, if she doesn't feel safe, she might be reluctant to tell you. And B, she might also not even be clear on it herself. Like she might not know how to answer those questions. So to help her get there, I might suggest asking some gentle, curious questions like, "What would be a better way for me to broach feedback conversations?"
Or, "What would help you feel more comfortable having a conversation about feedback on your work?" And you can also provide a few options, you could say, you know, "One thing we could try is just sharing the feedback and then having you take a day to process it and having a second conversation to discuss it later." Or you can say, you know, "Would it help if I wrote it down and shared it with you in writing, and then let you think about it and process thoughts, write them up, and then we meet?"
But really setting the expectation that you can flex on how you deliver the feedback and how you create space for those conversations, but what is non-negotiable is that she engages in a conversation with you to work through those issues. Okay, again, Sam might not know the answers to all those questions right off the bat. You might ask her, "What would be a better way for me to have this conversation?" and she might be like, "I don't know." So something I'll suggest is that you can tell her that it's okay if she's not sure. It's absolutely reasonable if she's not sure. You're not on the spot, you can have some time to think about it. But being able to receive feedback is an essential part of the job. And you not giving her feedback is just not an option.
So you can say, "Look, it's okay, if you don't know the answers right now. Why don't you take the next week to think a little bit about what might work for you and what makes it hard for you to be present in these conversations. And when we meet for our next one-on-one, we're going to come back to this, and I'm going to be expecting you to show up with some ideas or requests for how to make this process work better for you so that we can go about working on this together."
Jen Dionisio 19:49 Sara, I think you're nailing something really important here. Back to that word "convincing": You know, convincing is really one sided. Like, "I have an agenda, and I want you to adhere to it." But what you're describing here feels a lot more like collaboration: "How do WE make this work better for both of us?" so that DM isn't constantly in the weeds, and Sam feels like they have some ownership and say in what's going on.
Sara Wachter-Boettcher 20:15 Yeah, I think this is a classic case of really trying to shift the framing from thinking of the other person as the problem to looking at the problem as something else. It's not another person, right? The problem is this other entity, and both parties need to be oriented towards solving the problem. Otherwise, they're just playing tug of war. And right now, the sense that I'm getting is that DM sees that there's a problem, but a lot of DM's energy is sort of pointed at the ways in which Sam isn't performing.
But what if the problem were a little bit different? What if the problem were, "We need to find a way to get content out the door that doesn't take so much from me." Like, "We need to find a way to publish more efficiently because what I'm doing right now is not sustainable." Like what if that's the problem that you focus on solving? How would that change things? And again, I think that that really connects to this idea of setting clearer expectations, clearer expectations about who owns the content, clearer expectations about who's doing the work, but also clearer expectations about like who's responsible for solving this?
Right now, it feels like DM feels deeply responsible for all of it. And I'm not getting the sense that Sam feels responsible for resolving this. And that sounds like something that's worth trying to shift or at least setting down some of that burden on DM's side, whether Sam picks it up or not. And so I'm curious, Jen, you know, kind of going back to this concept of expectations, beyond expectations about how feedback happens, and when it happens, and who's responsible here, what else do you think DM should do to shore up expectations with Sam?
Jen Dionisio 21:52 Yeah, you know, I think what you said about DM doing all the heavy lifting and Sam maybe not realizing or not feeling empowered to kind of support as well, that kind of dynamic is where I would almost always recommend an open coaching conversation and think it could be really impactful so that DM does understand more of what's going on in Sam's head, how she's feeling, what ideas she has. But I will say, this is for our listeners, Sara and I are never going to recommend or say it's ethical to coach someone on a topic when you have an answer that you want them to land on. So like in this situation, that's that, "I want Sam to decide to leave their job for the good of the team."
DM, in order to kind of open up this kind of conversation, I'm curious if you could let that outcome go into a drawer for a little bit while you take like kind of one last opportunity to really understand what's going on in Sam's world, without any attachment to what the conversation will lead to, whether that's actually a really improved situation, diminished situation, or kind of status quo, just continuing on. Because I think what you'll learn will give you a lot of clarity and direction on how to kind of have this next steps conversation in a way that's going to be meaningful to them. And I think those conversations may actually really help Sam figure out some clarity and direction that they might not have been able to come to on their own.
Sara Wachter-Boettcher 23:30 Okay, so what would you suggest that DM tried to know or understand?
Jen Dionisio 23:35 So a few questions that popped into my head: one was is Sam happy that her focus is so writing-centric? Was this the expectation when she took the job? I know it is a content role. But I've worked in plenty of content roles where I did not touch words in any way. You know, I'm also curious how proud or excited or "insert feeling here" is Sam about the progress that she's made? Is she feeling good about it? Is she feeling like, "Problem solved, I'm done," or is it more of a, "Oh my god, I'm still so scared of messing up that it's kind of keeping me from getting any further than where I've been?" I'd also be curious how aware she is of the time DM is spending revising her work and how much more time that is than what it sounds like DM is spending with the other content designers.
Sara Wachter-Boettcher 24:31 Yeah.
Jen Dionisio 24:31 I really feel strongly, and I was just talking to a client about this, that so often when we have kind of a trouble employee, it's not the nicest way to say it, but I'm just going to put it that way, all of your energy and attention goes to them. And everyone who's just like doing a good job, meeting expectations, sometimes like doing amazing, they get no attention and support. So I really think being able to kind of show how lopsided that attention is might actually kind of open Sam's eyes a bit.
Another question I'd have around expectations is like, how clear is it to her that on the spectrum from unreasonable content to brand standard content, does she realize how far she's still is over on the left-hand side? She may not actually have a sense that it's still just mediocre. You know, and I think one of the most fundamental questions I have for Sam is, is she up for another year of heavy edits in feedback? DM, you said that she loves this job. And I don't know if that's because of how she's spending her time or who she's spending it with.
Like, if that's more about really enjoying the culture and the environment and the people than it is about her actual like duties and tasks. But I can't imagine that after having a year of a lot of intense scrutiny on your work that having another year of that is going to feel good. I wonder if asking Sam, how she kind of feels about this real training and growth process continuing on is something that she's up for.
Sara Wachter-Boettcher 26:12 You know, it actually really made me wonder reading this, the fact that Sam loves her job, but also shuts down when given feedback, and her work is not good. I was like, I can't figure out the math here. And it made me really wonder how much DM is protecting Sam from hearing the truth about her work because DM seems afraid of the response to feedback. Because I have this sense that's like if you were being really honest with her, and you were routinely going back to her and asking her to rework things, and you were leaving it in her court to fix them, I don't know that she would love this job.
Jen Dionisio 26:49 Yeah.
Sara Wachter-Boettcher 26:49 You know? I mean, because you would really be setting the expectation that she, again, stays present during all that feedback and works through it. And it doesn't sound like that's happening. And so I think DM, this is a place where I would really, going back to, you know, like how have I been approaching this, I think it's really helpful to look at where are you maybe protecting her from sort of the scope of work that you're doing to cover the fact that she's not up to the writing task yet. Because it does sound like that's really getting in the way?
Jen Dionisio 27:18 Yeah, and I think too, you know, if you're able to crack that nut open, you're not left with no other options once Sam says like, "No, I'm not up for that." Because that conversation can continue, DM, where you can really be supportive by helping her figure out what her skills and strengths actually are so that then she can start thinking about what rolls either inside of your org or outside of your org might take less of a toll on her. But I think if you ask her questions about how she feels like her progress is coming along, and she's like, "I'm kicking ass, I'm perfect," I worry that you may need to get a little bit more formal with written, very direct feedback and conversations that help her understand where her work fails in comparison to her peers, and how that's impacting everyone.
Sara Wachter-Boettcher 28:18 Yeah. And you know, the other thing I want to note here is like, DM, you have a job. Your job is being a manager of this team. And that means protecting the overall health and wellbeing and work quality of the team. And you said yourself that the way you're doing this work right now with Sam is not sustainable and not fair to the rest of your team. So I suspect that you will not really like to hear this.
But one thing I would suggest is that you stop carrying this load. Stop fixing Sam's work, meaning that you know, your organization hired her into a role where you had concerns, you raised those concerns, and then you coached her, you got her extra training, you've been told that you can't fire her. So you've done a lot to try to resolve the concerns that you raised when she was hired. And you've done a lot to make things okay. But the burden is too heavy for you alone. And right now you're the only one carrying it. You're the one who's covering the problem. So what happens when this becomes an organizational burden? What happens when you let the organization carry it by effectively letting some of Sam's content go out the door without as much intervention?
And I don't mean that you do nothing to it. But I think it's more like what happens if you give it the same amount of attention as you would give another writer and that means you have uneven quality? That means your users aren't getting as good of content as you'd like them to get. And that might bother you. You might not like how that feels. But I think it's really important for you to refocus on what is your actual job here. And your job is not "make all the content perfect forever and hold on my fingers and all the holes in the dam," you know your job is to manage his team as a whole.
Jen Dionisio 30:03 Yeah, Sara, I'm really glad you brought it up, because we've been talking a lot about how DM can support Sam. But also like, DM, you need support too. In the same way that Sam might not be aware of how much people are struggling with her work, DM, you might not be fully aware of what your leadership actually and truly expects out of you. Is it to make sure every piece of copy that goes live is 100% perfect? Or is it to grow and support your team, particularly people on the team like Sam who are struggling? So DM, I'd really encourage you to think about what kind of support you've gotten over the past year while you've been working with Sam, and where that has been helpful and where that hasn't.
I think that might start to give you some clues about like, what support do you need moving forward? How do you want your boss and your leadership and the organization in HR to handle situations like this with Sam or with anyone else you might experience in the future? If you feel like you've had a lot of great support, like that's amazing. But my gut reaction from what I heard from you, DM, is that a bunch of people are all kind of washing their hands of responsibility and leaving it to you. And if that's the case, that is completely unfair. And so if Sam's firing is fully off the table, regardless of how your conversations with her progress, I'd love to know how your org can make this better for you.
Since DM said that they work in the public sector, if we are specifically talking about government, I know that they can be really conservative about firings. But they also have really elaborate and specific job specifications, like those are not loosey goosey expectations. How recently has Sam really kind of looked at that list? Is she at the right level? Is it that like maybe she could be pulled down a step so the expectations aren't as high? And now that might not feel good to her. But it also might feel a lot fairer both to you and to the other people on the team.
You know, I'm also curious about like, what kind of flexibility there is within that team? Maybe Sam has writing taken off of her plate so she can focus more on some of the other like human-centered design skills that you said she does have? You know, maybe it's an opportunity for her to shift her reporting line to a more UX-aligned manager instead of a content-aligned one. How can the team double down on the things that she does bring and pull back on the things that she's not really able to meet expectations on?
Sara Wachter-Boettcher 32:53 Yeah, and I'm also even wondering, none of the other team members have been mentioned here. Is this an opportunity for other team members to do more pair writing, mentoring and coaching, and for them to grow so that if Sam does need a ton of support, it's not all on DM to provide that support? Because I feel like that didn't come up at all. And that would be something I would look at as well.
Jen Dionisio 33:13 Yeah, that's such a good like leveling up opportunity for the other people on the team. And like, it might be awkward, especially if they have the same title. But that also might start to call a little more attention to the differences between the level that Sam is working at and the level that her peers are. And I'm also curious, is headcount an option? Can you hire somebody that takes on the part of her role that she is not excelling at? Like, again, in my head, like, that's ridiculous, and not a great way to solve this problem, but also when you are not allowed to fire anyone, and you can't guarantee that their progress will move as quickly as you need it to, what are some creative solutions here?
Sara Wachter-Boettcher 33:57 Right.
Jen Dionisio 33:57 I feel like a lot of these questions I'm asking, DM, you're probably shaking your head and like rolling your eyes a little and saying like, "No, no, no, no, no." But I still want you to think about them so that you remember that this burden isn't just yours to carry. There are things that perhaps could make this better for you. And what are they? Because, God forbid, even if you and your boss have this perfect, candid conversation with Sam about how you think it's time for her to look for something else, and even if she 100% agrees with you, like, what if there's nowhere for her to go? She might be job searching already and you don't know. But what do you do if even her being aware of the fact that it's time for her to leave, she's still in that role? Like you still got to make that collaboration sustainable somehow.
Sara Wachter-Boettcher 34:56 Okay, Jen, we have spent a long time talking about why we think DM may want to take some different approaches than trying to tell Sam to find a new job or trying to convince Sam to find a new job. But that is the question that DM asked. And so I want to kind of circle back to that. How might DM suggest, or should they suggest to Sam that they should leave?
Jen Dionisio 35:18 I think from the moment that I first kind of heard this dilemma, a thought in my head just went straight to legal. And that might be my own bias. I also have not worked in the public sector. But my thought was telling somebody that you want to usher them out can put you at some real risk. I don't know if that's the case in this situation. The fact that your boss is part of this conversation, makes me think maybe that's not as much of a concern. But I do want to flag that because it put up a little fire alarm in my heart. But if you know that there's nothing to worry about on that front, I think it's really applying a lot of the same principles that we've been talking about, Sara. It's things like create a situation where you and her and your boss are looking at a problem as separate from the three of you. And the three of you are collaboratively working to solve it.
So it doesn't mean that you're not calling attention to the fact that she's not meeting expectations. But it is giving her some agency in thinking of ways that she can either make some changes, and from what it sounds like make them pretty quickly, or start getting curious about what other options are out there for her so that you can be a support in helping her figure out what she's good at, where she can excel, and what environment would be best for her. I would say, DM, to your kind of core question, "How do I have this conversation?" my recommendation would be to not treat this as a single conversation. Like this is a discussion and a dialogue that I know has been in progress for a while.
And this is a different flavor of it. But it's not going to be solved in one 30-minute meeting with the three of you on a Zoom. And so really thinking about what you want to understand, what limits you have on your time and your energy, and what options are there if nothing changes might put you in a situation where the work that is going into trying to improve things doesn't feel quite so pointless.
Sara Wachter-Boettcher 37:31 Yeah. DM I know that the situation has been really tough for you, particularly as a newer manager. But I know that you will get through this. And so will Sam. We're rooting for you.
Emily Duncan 37:46
Hi, folks, it's Emily, PMLE's producer. So often when we read your dilemmas, we wish we could go even deeper with you in real time, not only to unpack your situation, but to help you navigate it over time. If you could use that kind of help, good news: Sara and Jen offer one-on-one coaching, and they have some open spots for new clients this spring. Want to learn more? Go to https://www.activevoicehq.com/coaching. Again, that's https://www.activevoicehq.com/coaching.
Sara Wachter-Boettcher 38:21 Okay, Jen, are you ready for our second question?
Jen Dionisio 38:23 I am. Who are we hearing from?
Sara Wachter-Boettcher 38:26 Okay, so this one is from an experience manager who works in the financial sector.
BB 38:31 I hired someone as my first full time hire on a team working to solve a complex product build. I had already onboarded a few contractors to help round out the team. It was a tough project, our executives did not understand what we do, and I had to constantly prove our value. It was not easy to gain their trust and the project was a big design problem to solve. The product owners had given us preliminary requirements and I had asked my full time hire to help me go through any user stories in Jira that would help us understand what the product team was asking us to do. It was a messy, hard project especially in the beginning.
My full time hire was the only other person with access to our internal systems on the team and I really needed her help. I had talked to her about this during a 1:1 as an immediate priority and I had also outlined her objectives for the week in an email. What happened next – I got pulled into a meeting with my boss after she went above my head and literally cried to him that I was an abusive manager. Apparently she claimed that I had yelled at her and misbehaved with the team. Unfortunately I never really recovered from that in my boss's eyes. He saw me as aggressive and never allowed me to express my side. She did get moved to a different project stream and seemed happy to get off of my project. She was eventually let go from the company for similar behavior.
What bothered me the most was the betrayal I felt both from her and my inability to change my boss's mind regarding my perceived "aggressiveness" (even after she was let go). I had never yelled at my team and my boss never bothered to follow up with my contract hires or the product team to get their perspective. This was a highly collaborative, hands on assignment and we were in the thick of it together as a team.
I very much felt gender bias from my boss while I worked with him (I was 1 of 2 female managers on a team of 10 reporting into him; the rest were cis gendered white men). What do you do if a direct report refuses to take your direction / feedback and instead goes above your head to your boss to make unsubstantiated complaints?
Sara Wachter-Boettcher 40:26 Ooh, Jen, I'm going to call this listener BB for "bothered and betrayed."
Jen Dionisio 40:32 I would be bothered and betrayed too, BB. I am sure that there is a lot of nuance to this that can't necessarily be captured in a quick dilemma. But my first reaction is I just want to give your boss some real strong advice on how they should have handled it because this isn't it. I have painted this sort of picture in my head in the past minute or so where it's like, your boss feels like they got stuck dealing with some silly lady drama, and then made it their goal to get you both out of their hair and wrap up this conflict quickly as possible.
You know, that's such a bummer, because all of the evidence you've shared here suggests that you weren't being abusive to this employee. But let me ask like, what if you were? Shouldn't that have been investigated? Whisking someone away to a new team instead of addressing claims of abuse is, frankly, a terrible fucking way to run an organization and the source of a lot of harm at a lot of organizations. So, Sara, I am on a soapbox and a tangent. Can you ask me the question again?
Sara Wachter-Boettcher 41:41 Well, no, you know, I don't think it's a tangent. Like, I agree. This is a huge miss on BB's boss's part. And I think it's worth pausing on that because, you know, BB brings a lot of big feelings in their letter, right? Like betrayal is a big feeling. So there's a lot of emotion and hurt. And that's okay. It's okay to have those big feelings. But it actually really does make me wonder, is there a chance that BB came into that meeting with their direct report kind of hot? I've definitely done that. And maybe I didn't yell or do anything overtly abusive, but I also know that there are moments where I wasn't at my best, where I wasn't as calm or as kind as I'd like to have been, or maybe where I was feeling frantic about a project, and the energy I brought into a meeting was frantic energy.
Again, that doesn't mean that BB was abusive. It doesn't mean that this direct report is painting an accurate picture. But I think it would have been really healthy for BB's manager to check in with both parties and to have a conversation about what happened and different perceptions and what are some of the specific behaviors that we're talking about here. Because BB, if you did go into that meeting a bit hot, that would be an important learning opportunity for you. And because you didn't have a meaningful conversation with your boss about your side of things, your boss basically didn't give you that learning opportunity. They missed the chance to engage you in a reflective conversation that might have helped you grow as what sounds like a new manager. So that's a miss on their part.
And again, BB, I'm not saying you did something wrong. I wasn't there. I have no idea what actually happened. I'm going to take you at your word in terms of what you wrote in the letter. But I just think that whenever communication goes off the rails, it is healthy to look at ourselves and to kind of go, "What role might I have played in this?" And a good boss should be helping you do that. So it was a miss on the manager's part. And Jen, I can see how this would leave BB feeling really burned. But here they are. It's happened.
Jen Dionisio 43:39 Yeah.
Sara Wachter-Boettcher 43:39 They're betrayed. And they're asking us like, what should they do in a situation like this? And when I read this question, I read it less like, "How do I solve this problem?" because it sounds like there's not a lot to do about the thing that happened. But more like, "What do I do if this happens again? Like how do I respond to this kind of behavior if it happens again?" So Jen, what might BB do if this comes up again in the future?
Jen Dionisio 44:05 Yeah, I do want to say explicitly, like, there are cases when it is okay to go over your manager's head, like if they are being abusive or biased or unethical. When your manager has more power than you, it's not always going to be safe for them to come to you directly with their concerns. But, my big but there is I have been dragged into hundreds of escalations when two people really just needed to have conversation with each other. So my suggestions here are really going to be through that lens.
As a manager, it's perfectly normal if this happens, and if you have a lot of feelings about it. You are allowed to, but I do think in the future if this happens, before you fall back into, "Oh my god, this is happening to me again," I think it's really important to try to understand what happened on the other side and led someone to feel like they couldn't come to you directly.
Sara Wachter-Boettcher 45:05 Mmhmm.
Jen Dionisio 45:06 Sara, I'm kind of thinking of the 3P's here.
Sara Wachter-Boettcher 45:09 Oh, yes. One of my many little frameworks that I love to use with our clients.
Jen Dionisio 45:13 So good.
Sara Wachter-Boettcher 45:14 Yeah. Okay, so the 3P's: the 3P's is a tool for understanding someone else's point of view, whether that's like a cross-functional partner, or in this case, a direct report. And so they stand for perspective, pain points, and priorities. I guess there's kind of four P's in there, but like only three things, I don't know. Okay, so perspective, that's just like, what do things look like in this other person's world? Like if a report is going to your boss about an interaction that they had with you, have you thought about how the interaction might have felt from their side?
Like you were saying, Jen, what made it hard for them to go directly to you? And then pain points: like what do you know about the pressures and the challenges that they face? In BB's example, BB was really stressed about the project that they were working on, which they said was really messy, right? But what was their direct report feeling as they were jumping onto this team and jumping onto that project? What might have been hard for them? What could have made them feel like they were being yelled at even if they weren't actually being yelled at? And then priorities: like, what do you know about what matters to them? What are they trying to accomplish? What are their career goals? What are some of the things that are hard for them? Like just really understanding, you know, what makes them tick.
And so I think the 3P's can be really valuable to just starting to try to really force yourself to get into somebody else's point of view, even when you don't totally want to, because you're feeling upset about what's going on.
Jen Dionisio 46:39 Yeah, and understandably so. And BB, like, it makes sense for you to pull up 3P's for yourself too. This approach will really help BB find some common grounds or empathy from which to bring up to this person why this happened and how they want to move forward. You know, and I don't mean to say that in the future, BB should go into fixer mode, because like we said before, a relationship involves two people. You need to solve a problem collaboratively. And your 3P's matter too, you know, and it sounds like in this situation, your perspective is that you were giving this person all of the instructions and guidance that they needed to get their work done successfully. You had a whole lot of pain points on this project from like having to prove your value to a lack of trust from leadership. And I'm sure your priority was just getting through this absolute mess of a project with the help and the focus of your team.
When I've been on big, messy, stressful projects where I was the lead, I was privy to a lot of pressure and drama that the delivery folks were not privy to by design, like that was my role to protect them from all of that stress and all that chaos. So hearing how you were really trying to hold this project together and facing all these pressures, I'm curious how aware this person was of what you were experiencing, and if they knew that, and you were able to share that after this experience, maybe there would be more of an opening for understanding and a chance for repair because they are starting to see why you reacted to things the way you did. And like, I could imagine this sounding a little like, "We've all been under a lot of pressure on this challenging project.
I know I've been struggling to keep everything and everyone on track. I'd love to understand how I could have made it easier for you to come to me with your concerns, so it doesn't happen in the future." And what I hope you can hear in that phrasing is it expresses your 3P's. It lets you get curious about theirs. And the questions that are being asked aren't about correcting behavior but understanding it so that you can decide together how you want to do this differently if it ever comes up again.
Sara Wachter-Boettcher 49:06 Yeah, it's like moving it from like, "How dare you throw me under the bus," to, "What made you feel like that was the next step you needed to take to resolve things?" This is really speaking to the importance of relationships here. And you know, one thing I do want to flag is that I think in the future, BB, something that I would really suggest is thinking about, "Have I invested in the relationship with my direct reports before stressful situations have arisen?" And I get that you were like immediately thrust on this project.
But I'm wondering if the immediacy of the project made you put off any of that more relationship-building because it felt like, "I can't do that right now. It's not urgent enough." And I might encourage you to rethink that if that's kind of the way that that came out. Because, you know, one of the reasons people go above you is they don't feel safe or comfortable talking to you directly. And if you haven't had a lot of conversations about your working relationship, if they don't have a relationship with you outside of like, urgent, urgent project stuff, then that's going to increase the likelihood that they're not going to feel comfortable coming to you.
And I think it's important to note that like, a lot of us will do anything to avoid having conversations about our relationships. So many managers don't start conversations about working relationships with their employees because it feels weird. It feels awkward. It is a little awkward. It's like the meta relationship thing, right? Meta conversations again. And like, you can think of the parallel that happens all the time in our personal relationships where, I don't know like, Jen, have you seen, for example, somebody hold out their phone and like, show like seven people a text from a romantic partner and being like, "What do you think they mean by this? What do you think this means? Do you think that they're saying this? Do you think they're saying that?"
Jen Dionisio 50:53 Oh yeah.
Sara Wachter-Boettcher 50:53 And they're so worried. Yeah. They're so worried about like, "What does this mean?" But you know, what they're not doing? They're not asking the romantic partner, because that feels uncomfortable. Like, "Hey, can you tell me what you meant by this? I'm not sure where we stand," right? Talking about like, where do we stand in our relationship and what do we both want from this relationship?
That is a bit more vulnerable, because you might find that you're not on the same page. And we carry that over into all kinds of relationships, including at work, where we are avoidant of having a direct conversation about how we want to work together and what makes working together actually function. And instead, we kind of hint around, we guess we assume, maybe we make some passive aggressive comments. And maybe we talk around it, we talk to other people, but just the like, honest conversation about how we work together, me and you, doesn't happen.
So BB, one thing I'd suggest is that you look at how you can start having more regular conversations about your working relationships with any and all direct reports in the future. And other partners cross-functionally too. Like, what's our vision here? What does a successful relationship look like? What do we need from each other? And also, having conversations in advance about how do we want to treat one another when things go sideways?
Jen Dionisio 52:14 Yes.
Sara Wachter-Boettcher 52:15 Because I think, you know, things are gonna go sideways, like is BB's found, they can go sideways, so fast, and the stronger your relationship is going into that, the easier it's going to be to come out of that. Now that said, if a rift has already happened, right? Like your direct report has gone above you, then it's a little bit of a different conversation, right? Like you're having a conversation after the fact. And that's something I might call more of a repair conversation, which is like, how do we want to repair trust in the relationship so that we don't find ourselves here again? How do we hold ourselves accountable for maintaining that trust?
Jen Dionisio 52:47 I love that. That takes conflict resolution a step further than just like fixing the problem or like fixing the issue. And instead, it's really creating like a set of practices and agreements on how you navigate situations like this if they come up again, the opportunity that you would then have isn't in preventing any conflict from happening in the future, but having ways to make that conflict be productive instead of destructive to the relationship. If any of this sounds a little like "Take three steps to better relationship," it's not the intention here. But what is important is for both of you to know how the other person is most able to take in uncomfortable feedback, so that you can break through any defensiveness or fear or avoidance that may come up in the future.
Sara Wachter-Boettcher 53:37 Yeah, defensiveness and avoidance, man. Such common defaults. Okay, Jen, we have talked a lot about how BB might engage differently with their direct report in the future. But I'm curious, what about with the boss like, if a situation like this has happened? What can they do to talk to their boss about it?
Jen Dionisio 53:55 You know, I am very tempted to say, just go to your grandboss and have them address it with your manager. Throw it right back. But that is definitely petty and probably not the best.
Sara Wachter-Boettcher 54:09 "You let my person go above me. So now I'm gonna go above you."
Jen Dionisio 54:13 Yeah. How does that feel?
Sara Wachter-Boettcher 54:15 Tempting, but rarely actually useful.
Jen Dionisio 54:18 Yeah, unfortunately. But I actually think like the process probably doesn't look all that much different than, you know what we were just describing with BB talking to their direct report. The only difference is that BB is the more vulnerable person in this scenario. You may find that you try to have this conversation with a manager and are completely shut down. And if that happens, I think it's 100% appropriate to say to your boss, like, "I would like to get a mediator involved. It doesn't have to be you. But somebody needs to help us figure out how to move past this situation and address it."
Because somebody has got to give you a chance to share your perspective. It is just simply unacceptable to not have any opportunity to do that. And I'd say depending on your relationship with your other team members, I would wonder if you might be able to find some people who are willing to advocate for you to that manager. It may not fully change their point of view. But again, it's an opportunity to get an impartial perspective on what happened down on the record, and kind of show that there are multiple facets to any kind of conflict. It's never just one perspective is 100% right.
And if that fails, it may be worth a conversation with HR. And I know in some organizations that is helpful, and many it's not. But again, at the very least, it gets your side down on the record because if your boss has written you off as aggressive, that could really have some long-term effects on your career at this company. And that's really fucking unfair if it's just based on hearsay and bias.
Sara Wachter-Boettcher 56:12 Yeah, absolutely.
Jen Dionisio 56:14 So BB, I hope this gives you some ideas for how you can manage an experience like this in the future. But I know it doesn't actually change what's already happened. And although your report's been already let go, and you no longer report to this boss, it does sound like this experience is still really raw for you. So Sara, I think I want to close with this: is there any kind of support or closure, BB, that could help you heal from this experience you had? Are there things that maybe you need to forgive yourself for doing or not doing? Are there any affirmations or reminders that you need to get down on paper about what you're proud of doing in this situation, or what you learned that you'd do differently next time? I don't know if hearing that you can approach this differently in the future is a comfort. But I really hope it is.
Sara Wachter-Boettcher 57:06 BB, I'm sorry that this happened. And I'm sorry it left you feeling undermined and betrayed. I'm glad you're naming those feelings. And you will move on from this. And I think the more you reflect on those questions Jen just posed, the more you can actually grow from this experience and really put it behind you.
Jen Dionisio 57:23 Thanks for writing BB. We are really hoping that you don't find yourself in this position again.
Sara Wachter-Boettcher 57:35 And that is it for this week's episode. Per My Last Email is a production of Active Voice. Check us out at https://www.activevoicehq.com/ and get all our past episodes show notes and full transcripts at https://pmleshow.com/. This episode was produced by Emily Duncan, and our theme music is (I'm A) Modern Woman by Maria T. Buy her album at https://thisismariat.bandcamp.com/. Thank you to Drained Manager and Bothered and Betrayed who submitted their stories for today's show. And thank you for listening. If you've got a work dilemma that's eating away at you, send it to us. Head over to https://pmleshow.com/ to submit your story. See you next time.