A reader asks:
I manage a team and have run into a problem with “Bob,” one of my employees. Bob loves this job. Tells me almost every day how much he loves being at this company. But as much as he loves his job, he’s not very good at it. He’s gotten us incorrect information and turns in incomplete notes. He tries to tackle more and more projects, but it’s leading to him misinterpreting information, making erroneous conclusions, and generally dropping the ball. His colleagues are frustrated because they cannot rely on his research — it often results in more work for them as they fact-check his information.
He also peppers me with suggestions to improve the team — I’ve gotten up to 10 emails in a day: we should use Slack, we should get t-shirts and hats made, we should send autographed cards to people who write to us. Not bad ideas, per se — just not ideas that are particularly effective or actionable. He also wastes my time by giving me the blow-by-blow of his projects, and asking for my approval before taking next steps on them. I’ve let him know before if I don’t have time for lengthy conversations on these updates, but he just comes back later with more.
Bob has started asking if he can attend production meetings, which is absolutely not a part of his job, and I fear his overly-helpful nature will lead to him disrupting the meetings.
I guess what I’m asking is: how do I crush this man’s spirit in a productive way? He wants so badly to help and do more — but he’s messing up on basics of his job as it is. I need him to slow down, take more time with his actual work, and rein in all the extras, but I don’t want him to lose the drive that makes him a dedicated worker. And he is a dedicated worker — punctual, energetic, willing to help out in a pinch, always thinking about how to make things better. Do I break it gently and couch it in praise for his good attributes? Or do I take the no-nonsense approach and give him just the cold hard facts?
I answer this question over at Inc. today, where I’m revisiting letters that have been buried in the archives here from years ago (and sometimes updating/expanding my answers to them). You can read it here.
You could tell him exactly what you said here:
I need him to slow down, take more time with his actual work, and rein in all the extras, but I don’t want him to lose the drive that makes him a dedicated worker. And he is a dedicated worker — punctual, energetic, willing to help out in a pinch, always thinking about how to make things better.
Which is accurate, clear, to-the-point, and diplomatic.
I think a performance review is in order for this situation. Go over with Bob what he’s doing right, what is wrong, and where he needs to improve. Be factual and straightforward about it – don’t leave room for arguments.
Acknowledge his work ethic, enthusiasm, etc., but make it clear that until/unless his performance in his core duties improves, that he will not be permitted to take on other projects. Point out that he will not be included in production meetings because this is not part of his role.
Bob sounds like one of those people who is either really dedicated but not very good at their job, OR someone who isn’t actually really interested in their role, but wants to obfuscate the issue by taking on tons of other things and then not being accountable for anything.
I had the same thought about obfuscating
LOL have you ever run into that Super Organized (TM) person that has a whole 8 color color -coded system, specific places for everything, and very complicated and detailed rules on how to engage with them (and their pristine desks lol)? And all they are doing is … organizing? Like no actual work ever gets done because all time is spent oscillating between meticulous color coding things and and arguing with others about The Rules Of Engagement. They are the master obfuscators!
That’s me and my gardening. I have a neat color-coded database of seed packets!
But nothing actually planted in the ground? That sounds like many of my projects.
I fall into this trap all the time because I like organizing things a lot. It took me a while to recognize that the organizing thing is more a hobby than a means of being productive, and until I did, it was a real problem. I’d feel accomplished without actually accomplishing anything of concrete use.
Now I scratch the itch by reorganizing things (my Kindle library, my pantry, my email) extracurricularly on my own time, not deluding myself that it’s productive work. Or by playing video games that are all about sorting, straightening, categorizing, and organizing things. (Nothing quiets my brain like playing half an hour of A Little to the Left while listening to rain sounds.)
Organizing at work for me is a good thing to do when I’m bored during a useless meeting, or on a Friday afternoon when I have two hours left and can’t bring myself to do anything more useful, that kind of thing.
I have a friend who gave up writing ‘ because she had to organize things’, and somehow never quite got it done. Or got back to writing.
And then there’s the SNL Too Busy Woman, I think we’ve all met her too.
YES otherwise known as my former boss, who made ever-more elaborate Google sheets yet never met any of her deadlines.
Same here. I inherited a couple of Bobs at my last job. They came off as young and eager and enthusiastic, and were always quick to volunteer or offer advice. A few key people – including their former bosses – found them charming and insightful and made a point of deferring to their every whim. Yet despite having clear, up-to-date job descriptions and clear expectations, they never actually did what we were paying them to do. They hated me because saw right through their BS, and insisted that my holding them accountable or saying no was “stifling their creativity” and “crushing their spirit”. Ironically enough, the fact I was actively managing those two was what endeared me to the rest of the staff.
Unfortunately, a few years later we got a new director with no experience and no boundaries. The Bobs immediately glommed on and became insufferable. The rest of us threw up our hands and updated our resumes.
Long story short – the OP’s Bob needs to be told nicely but firmly and consistently to stay in his lane. Believe me, the rest of the staff knows what Bob is up to and finds him annoying too.
Wow, your saying that just made me realize that it describes someone I used to work with. He had his hand in so many pots and was very personable but never seemed to deliver anything we actually needed. Eventually he went on to become a manager at a competitor :-).
My office has a version of this. She always comes up with fun little side projects or decides to do an insanely rigorous version of one of her minor duties, and somehow generates tons of work for the rest of us in the process. But when you ask her to actually do something difficult but useful to the rest of the office you get a huge list of excuses for why it can’t be done, and then she goes back to micromanaging her side projects. All while her main project rapidly approaches the point where it’ll become a key failure point for like half of what we do here if she doesn’t address that critical problem. I used to quite like her but she’s driving me up the wall now.
Oh, I worked with someone like that too. It was maddening, especially since they had been brought on to help me with my workload. And then once the project was done, with them contributing almost nothing, they took credit for it. So frustrating. They moved on to another job, and last I checked, their LinkedIn still showed them as having completed the project themselves.
Yeah, if he realizes he’s not well suited to his job (either because he had noted the negative feedback – unlikely, more likely he just doesn’t like it) it’s reasonable in a certain light to try to prove value somewhere else. But OP presumably needs *this* job done, so she has to focus on that.
Or instead of obfuscating, he took this role in order to get into the company, and now he sees himself getting an internal transfer to where he really wants to be. Mentally he’s skipped the part where he needs to show that he’s good at the job he has and can do that before any kind of transfer is considered, but some people think a foot in the door is all they need.
And he’s probably been told more than once what he needs to do to move up, but is convinced that his inherent intellect and obvious superiority entitle him to jobs that require years of experience and education. After, he has SO many good ideas!
I picture Bob as the Tasmanian Devil flying around and just spouting out whatever thoughts pops into his hyperactive impulsive little head. That sounds mean haha but it makes the situation more tenable. I personally think its ok to call it what it is in your mind as at least it will give you a sense of direction on how to approach it. Dude lacks an some serious focus and self control, and you need him to figure that ish out. And then spell out for him what that focus is. And at the end of the day, is it worth all that effort for something that he should already be aware of about himself and have learned to control before entering full adulthood (assuming this is an adult man and not a child)?
Ahg nesting error.
The real issue here is ‘how do I manage this guy out’ or when do we start the PIP. or ‘how can I fire him.’ All those suggestions may be hs way of trying to distract you his manager from his incompetence. He knows he isn’t any good at this so he is being extra helpful and branching out.
First of course give him very clear feedback on the main issue i.e. failure to provide reliable research that people can rely on. Then monitor that for the next month and if he does not turn it around, then a PIP and then fire him. A person who is to provide research for others and gives faulty information is a liability — you would be better off with no one in the job.
I well remember the researcher who gave a respected legislator a briefing in which she provided exactly the wrong data/conclusion for a policy that would cost a lot to implement — which blew up in his face. The organization was a long time recovering from that if ever.
I was with Bob up to the t-shirts and hats. I loath corporate pep rally stuff, like this is high school. For that matter, I loathed it in high school, too. Pushing for this while creating extra work for everyone else? Very on brand.
All hat, no cattle. Bob is in the wrong job. This This corporate branding/rah rah stuff doesn’t seem like it’s part of OP’s department. OP is not saying, “Bob has an idea for using branded pencils in house instead of using plastic pens for our EGS campaign, but doesn’t follow through.” Bob just…has ideas. Ideas he comes up with when he should be focusing on projects. Bob would benefit from being told exactly this. Gotta walk before you can run, Bob. Be a great worker and people will want to support your ideas, even when it’s more work for them. Because if it happens, it’s a benefit to their reputations, too. But nobody is going to hitch a wagon (Yes, I was reading about Roy Rogers and Dale Evans today) to an unreliable coworker.
Really? He lost me in the first paragraph.
Loving your job is great, but it pales in comparison to actually doing it well. He’s failing at the projects he’s already covering, and trying to add more to a plate he can’t clear.
…Although tbh I hate branded stuff full stop. Most of it I won’t wear, and I can’t help but to think of the environment whenever someone offers me that stuff.
I agree. Trying to tackle a bunch of extra projects and being extremely bad at them is typically worse than not doing them at all. At least if we know that nobody is working on those projects, we can plan for that ahead of time, which is almost always better than thinking something is covered then whoops no it isn’t scrambling. Co-workers needing to double check every single piece of research you produce can also take as much if not more time than if you just did the entire thing from scratch.
I’ll also just note that his suggestion of “we should use Slack” seems odd too. Nothing against Slack, but it’s sufficiently ubiquitous that if your company isn’t using Slack (or Teams or a similar alternative), there’s almost certainly a reason why not.
That reminded me of a student coming home so excited to tell you about his 101 level class. “There’s this thing called Slack and we could…” Aww, good for you, Bob. Like he read and article and thought, wow, do people KNOW about this?
I think of it as bad luck. Whenever I get branded clothing, I inevitably leave that job. The only branded thing I ever hung onto was a very nice leather padfolio from 2016Job. I took it to a million interviews and no one ever seemed to notice or care that it had a company name discreetly stamped on it.
It sounds like he’s not managing to actually do his job, so who knows what he loves? His job ain’t it, since he’s too busy drumming up ideas that aren’t his job, and making a poor go at the stuff he is responsible for.
Honestly sounds like he needs a career change so he can focus on those things he likes. But perhaps he’s just an ideas guy and if he was in charge of t-shirts and hats, it would still end up not being done well
I wish there was an update to this. Without being direct and having an action plan to correct Bob’s performance issues, nothing is going to change. I worked with a Bob, but he hated his job, which made for an even more demoralizing team dynamic. Took 10 years for the company and a competent manager to finally make necessary strides to terminate his employment. The relief was palpable.
I’m not 100% convinced that Bob does love his job. IME whenever someone starts with a lot of ideas to “improve” things and volunteering for projects or teams outside of their job, it’s because they really don’t like their job and want to be doing something else — they may not want to quit the company or department, they just want their job description to be something else.
I agree with Alison’s advice but to add – is there some other job he would be better suited for? It seems a shame to lose someone with his drive and enthusiasm if it’s just a matter of fit.
I was wondering this. I fear I became Bob at my last job. I was originally a “rockstar” in my role but became bored and wasn’t allowed to branch out or grow. Not proud of the fact that my performance began to suffer but I learned something very valuable about myself AND that organization.
This was my thought as well. His personality doesn’t seem to fit a detail-oriented research role. I bet he has skills better suited to another type of role – even if that’s at another company.
I would have put Bob on a PIP. I wonder whether his “I love it here!” is a defense mechanism to cover up his failings.
I’ve worked with people like Bob before, though they are usually more pompous, thinking they are great at their job and everyone should be itching to learn from them when they very much are not. They usually don’t last.
You can improve skills if someone is willing to learn. People with this sort of cognitive disconnect usually don’t listen well or improve IME.
All those ideas are probably his way of appearing valuable and protecting himself from dismissal for his abysmal performance.
I have had experience with people saying “I love it here!” but doing poorly or not being interested in the job duties at places that could be described as “mission driven.” They really love the mission or values but don’t actually like or, often, even know much about the day-to-day requirements of their position. They may be qualified on paper but just can’t deal with the day-in, day-out focus and tasks.
Saving the rhinos is great, but if you’re in accounting, your work life is going to be way more spreadsheets than wildlife interactions. The “I love it here!” can fuel people for a while, but eventually the reality of the spreadsheets (or presentations or whatever) sets in.
Bob is a classic example of what someone does (IME, I mean) when they are low performers and know they are low performers. They distract with lots of questions, give compliments too much, want more tasks, and eventually start overly watching what others are doing.
I’ve seen this happen. I had to suffer on a team with an “enthusiastic” colleague who had “great ideas” but was terrible at his job.
Of course when he thought nobody was looking he was NOT enthusiastic about his job and mostly spent time on dating sites.
Yeah, I was on a team with someone who did that. He alternated between worrying verbally about being laid off, and cheerleading the team. It was really painful to watch. He wasn’t contributing and eventually became widely disliked. It was tough for everyone, no one wanted to see him laid off, but he wasn’t suited for the job.
I had to get good at sniffing this type of person out. At the time, I ran the marketing department of a smallish business ISV. Marketing positions at software companies tend to attract “ideas” people who have no idea how to research, build out requirements, and execute. Ideas are great if you can implement and then iterate on them depending on the organization’s needs. If you can’t, I have no use for you.
I’ve been that person and this rings very true. You get really anxious about it and start scrambling around for anything else makes you look and feel less like the dead weight you know you are for the team.
It’s not fun for anybody and the only real solution is to get a better job (or get way better at your current one, but in that scenario that’s rarely an option)
It can also be what happens to somebody who thinks they’re great at their job because nobody really explains to them that they’re not. I once had a friend who, thanks to a terrible previous manager, had been left alone to do her work without management and had assumed it meant she was doing everything right. Unfortunately this made the next managers job much more difficult because she had years of bad habits to train out of. She did get better in the end but both she and the manager had to struggle a lot to finally get there.
lol I work with a Bob. Unfortunately my company is a hot mess and my bosses prefer making a show and outgoing > actual results
One thing I’m wondering. If Bob is “giving me the blow-by-blow of his projects, and asking for my approval before taking next steps on them,” how are all of his mistakes still getting through without the OP catching at least some of them? Is he only sharing the stuff that he is doing well?
Yeah, it almost feels that Bob is aware he’s making errors and trying to account for them by giving the boss the opportunity to give feedback before he moves forward. I question as well how those errors are getting through.
It might not be appropriate that he’s asking for such detailed help, but it might be what he chose to do in the absence of concrete advice or feedback.
One possibility here is that his blow-by-blow details are about the methodology but *not* the most nitty-gritty numbers. For example, imagine OP asks “do we have everything arranged for our big shipment to the client on Friday”. He responds by going into details about his planned delivery strategy, which types of boxes we will be using, the volumes of trucks, that he plans on overestimating by 10% to account for waste, etc. All of that detail is provided, is way more than OP needed, and OP is thinking that it all sounds good.
But while everything he mentioned does sound good, it turns out that he also based all that work on an assumption of product weight that he forgot to mention. Or that buried in his Excel calculations are a bunch of typos that you can’t instantly catch just by glancing at it (e.g., missing decimal points or forgetting to convert pounds to kg). Or some similar small-but-crucial screw-up that sends the whole thing off track.
It could be that Bob’s blow-by-blows are long without being suitably detailed to give feedback or correction. Or that he’s relaying information about his work on the Volunteer Optional Inter-Departmental Committee to Reorganize Adjourned Projects and not his core duties. But OP could redirect! “Bob, I’m glad you’re excited about VOIDCRAP but I’m hoping to hear more about the data Jane needs to finish her report.”
It was cut from this reprint but in the original letter, OP elaborated on his blow-by-blows being “he just comes back later with another reenactment with a conversation with a source. He does voices, too”; he can easily do that, coming to OP repeatedly saying “I talked to X, should I now talk to Y?” and yet never realising that who he was supposed to talk to in the first place was a completely different person with the same name as X.
I would guess that he’s giving her all the details of what he plans to do, or what he meant to do, but not executing them effectively in real life, so she thinks she’s going to get one product and then gets something very much less, or doesn’t get it at all.
Meet with Bob! Just talk to him with clear idea as Allison said.
“Bob, your work is not at the level it needs to be to maintain your position long term. The problems this causes our team are a, b, c. Right now there are 3 major things I want you to work on. 1, 2, 3. I appreciate your ideas and your interest in the company and in X days/weeks/months, we can revisit some of your ideas for the team ince I see you successfully working in your contracted role.”
Poor Bob.
It sucks when you want to do well, but can’t seem to make it happen.
I would love an update on this one – I hope OP and Bob were able to sort things out.
Yes, especially if he really does enjoy the work/the company as much as he says. It is very demoralizing to love to do something and just … be bad at it. (Part of my job involves people who want very much to write for publication, so I know how that goes.)
I actually don’t see signs that he truly wants to do well but rather wants people to think he’s doing well.
Agreed. All I see is excellent self marketing from Bob. What a surprise, a man who is not good at his job but maintains the goodwill of his boss by…. Having the right vibes? Yikes.
You’re probably right. Or he’s one of those people who thinks if he keeps saying it, it will all become real.
Could be both. He probably knows he’s making major mistakes, and that he’s headed for a firing if his reputation keeps going down like that.
I don’t see how you could possibly have enough details here to know that.
I agree with Alison. And everyone else. AND. Put this in writing. Time for a performance improvement plan.
Bob is NOT good at his job and I am pretty sure he knows it, hence all the distractions and requests for hand holding.
He can LOVE the company but this job is a bad fit.
I had an employee like this. They loved their job! They were visibly cheerful and overly helpful. And the only things they did well were not actually their job.
I had to put a stop to all of her “helpfulness” and discover that she was unable to do the basics of her position (that she had for 6 years) Every time a ball dropped it was at her desk.
Do not get sucked into being “helpful” to this employee or “retraining.” You will be accused of micro-managing.
Right now- speak to your supervisor, loop in HR, and document.
This. I rather suspect that Bob doesn’t really like the job he was hired for, but really wanted to get on the payroll at Great Company, hoping something more congenial would turn up. It hasn’t, so he entertains himself with side projects that go nowhere.
The LW needs to worry less about Bob’s “spirit” and focus on managing his actual performance on the job he was hired to do. I spent 35+ years in academic libraries, and I’ve seen far too much managerial energy go into sparing the feelings of “nice” people who were in the wrong jobs.
Brief your supervisor. Brief HR. Document, document, document.
really wanted to get on the payroll at Great Company, hoping something more congenial would turn up
I’ve seen advice to do this from so-called experts. I’ve never understood it.
No one wants Slack or (uggggggggh) company logo apparel, or at least not nearly as much as they DON’T want colleagues whose poor performance greatly increases their workloads and who wouldn’t know a professional boundary if it bit them right on the backside. Bob needs a PIP and perhaps the boot.
I will take a competent, if somewhat grumpy, coworker over a cheerful, but totally incompetent, coworker any day.
Yup. I always end up befriending the grumps anyway.
You can lead a Bob to water but you can’t make him think.
Lol! My best friend at work is a self-described grump. But she’s excellent at her job and I have the highest amount of respect for her. It’s just that we are both a bit burnt out.
I wonder what the connection is between being a bit burnt out and a bit of a grump. I think maybe this could be some sort of question Alison could throw out to the readership. We could hear some interesting stories, I would think.
When I joined my current team, we were required to wear the department t-shirts for some events and for pictures. The only size available was 4XL. I’m overweight, but not 4XL. I look like I’m wearing a tent in the damn thing. and it’s rather humiliating. No sign of new shirts coming in a variety of sizes.
I had a serious migraine last picture day.
There are roles where that peppy cheerleader attitude may be an asset. Marketing? Sales? But research is not one of them, and Bob might benefit from a referral to the EAP for some career counseling if that’s an option.
Aaagh, please don’t send Bob to us! We have too many already!
Bob sounds like yet another man that has figured out that he can skate by on “being a go getter.”
I don’t think this is fair
Elle sounds like she tends to analyze people without even speaking to them.
“He also peppers me with suggestions to improve the team — I’ve gotten up to 10 emails in a day: we should use Slack, we should get t-shirts and hats made, we should send autographed cards to people who write to us. Not bad ideas, per se — just not ideas that are particularly effective or actionable.”
“Bob has started asking if he can attend production meetings, which is absolutely not a part of his job.”
Honestly, it sounds like Bob should transition into production. I know this is an old letter, but this sounds like a scenario where a manager COULD potentially say, “The expectations for this role are xyz, and I need you to be okay with that. However, you seem to be very interested in the production part of the business–have you considered exploring that? If it interested you, these would be the steps to learn more about it and make an internal transfer.”
I had a Bob… it’s hard to deal with.
What I found was that I had to essentially micromanage his work. And I never was a micromanager, so this was outside *my* comfort zone. We’d have regular check-ins and I would give him detailed directions on what to do and when. He couldn’t be trusted with independent work, and I rarely let him do things he would volunteer for.
I was lucky that he liked me, (mostly) understood the reason for the micromanaging but only because he was aware that he had screwed up multiple times, and remained cheerful. There were a lot of times it was exhausting.
In the end, I was glad I stuck with him but it was hard.
That sounds way more than exhausting. Kudos for you for getting a result you could be glad about.
Why were you glad you stuck with them – were they eventually able to turn around and be independent after enough coaching? Having to be a long haul micromanager doesn’t sound like a win but if it was temporary it’s good to know maybe the problem is just lack of training/experience/confidence and will get better (how long did it take?)
Does Bob have a job description? That’s what I haven’t seen mention of. He needs a job description that delineates what he needs to be doing and how well he needs to be doing it. Then LW has a very gentle way of telling him to stay in his lane.
“I guess what I’m asking is: how do I crush this man’s spirit in a productive way?”
What? The goal isn’t to crush his spirit. You should have a frank conversation with Bob. Point out the good and bring up his mistakes. It’s also okay to set boundaries. Nothing wrong with telling him that you won’t be taking any more suggestions.
Does he has a list of job duties? A clear job description? Could be that he is trying to make the job the way he wants it. But it could be a large lack of focus.
I’m seeing a bit of conflicting behavior here from OP. You say that he is missing information, making erroneous decisions, and dropping the ball. But you also don’t want to discuss the details of his work and say that you don’t want to hear details about his projects, or have him asking for your approval before taking next steps on them.
It sounds like he is attempting to get corrections and learn how to handle these things and is trying to get input from you. The blow-by-blow is something I used to do when I was uncertain if I was doing all the steps/decisions correctly and wanted my supervisor to tell me what parts I had wrong so that I could learn and correct it for the future. Especially if I kept getting told that I was making poor decisions. Refusing to discuss these details with him is part of the inability to improve his performance.
If coworkers are fact-checking his work, is it being sent back to him to make the corrections so that he sees the amount of rework being caused as well as seeing what areas he is missing?
You need to manage Bob. Yes, he needs to slow down, more time, rein it in, yada yada, but it ain’t happening.
Put him on a PIP – and be clear that it’s jeopardizing his job.
He will likely violate your restrictions at first – because you have let him get away with unprofessional crap and poor work.
Your lack of management is currently unfair to the staff that have to spend time proof reading and fixing all the mistakes that are sent their way.
So, you have to mentally put yourself on ” a personal pip”, and learn what new skills or new views of your authority, that you need for successful management. We all face these realizations, believe me; but we can grow and learn.
You need to manage Bob.
This +100. If Bob is giving information and asking for approval for next steps, then he should not be given the brush-off. I’d recommend setting up a regular 1:1 with him to listen to what is happening and take that opportunity to clarify his job description and your expectations.
exactly! I was surprised that Alison didn’t make the connection that he may be giving updates about his work because he is looking for feedback and/or realizes that he is not doing the best. But he doesn’t know because he isn’t being managed or given the feedback he needs.
PS: I feel that I was a bit hard on the manager. Yes, the OP and Bob first should have an honest and hopefully productive meeting as to how to proceed.
OP, we have all had to” learn on the job;” in the art of managing, which is a complex
skill, but rewarding as well. Thanks for your courage by writing in to 76 people today.
“how do I crush this man’s spirit in a productive way” is one of the most beautiful sentences I have read recently.
I cringe at the number of letters that come in to the effect of “my employee is doing a poor job, and everyone knows it but nobody says anything”. Maybe I’m just outing myself as a potential Bob here, but I can’t help but wonder if my colleagues think this way about me. Are managers really this scared to give feedback? I would hope that if I was performing at a firing-worthy level, I would be told so instead of floundering obliviously.
Agreed. And a really excellent question.
A few thoughts:
1) Some people just don’t know how to deliver bad news. They can describe what they need to do pretty eloquently in a letter to a person on the internet, but doing it to a real-life person you have to see every day is another matter entirely. The “how will I face this person tomorrow?” fear is strong with them.
2) Some people are conflict-averse (which you can’t be if you’re goint to be a manager, really; handling conflict is part of the job) and fear that this up-until-now happy person will start an argument or start crying when they are given bad news. (I would add: we have seen plenty of letters here where this is exactly what happens, but it’s rare, I believe.) This is why so many household pets don’t die, they just go off to live on a farm that’s so far away we can never visit them.
3) Some people have only been trained to handle the bright, sunny side of management, but have not been trained to handle situations that require you to wear a black cap. This is a fault of the training program.
4) Some people are highly sensitive to the emotions of others, and don’t want to upset other people. (And again, we have seen the opposite here plenty of times: insensitive managers who go on and on about their rich people’s problem while their employees are just barely scraping by.) Humanity is a rich tapestry.
5) Human beings tend to like the status quo. So while Bob is definitely a problem, people figure out workarounds so they don’t have to deal with actually handling Bob. This is why missing stairs are a thing. People learn to jump over or around that missing stair. Upsetting the status quo involves a bit of pain for the people who have to do it.
6) A lot of people (notably women, minorities, and poor people) are taught that they can do nothing to improve their situation and to just be quiet and suck it up. And thus, mediocre white guys tend to get a pass. This isn’t meant to be a political comment; it’s simply the way it tend to be.
7) Some people hope that situations will just resolve themselves over time even if they do nothing. But situations like this tend to not do that; like a leaky water pipe, the leak just gets worse over time. But it does so slowly, so when the few drops you see every now and then become the few drops you see every day, and then become the steady stream that has to be mopped up, it doesn’t really register with you that it is a far more serious problem than you realize, because it all started with just a few drops. Hope is powerful, but without action, it is nothing.
You are quite correct though. In the absence of any kind of feedback, we tend to assume “no news is good news”. There are plenty of people in this comment thread who are assuming the worst of Bob, that he’s just a mediocre white guy who has learned to get on on by being relentlessly positive. But applying Hanlon’s Razor to this situation–if nobody has told Bob he sucks at certain aspects of his job, and he’s not put on a PIP, and only gets positive feedback, and has continued employment, why would he think otherwise?
This is an excellent analysis. I am trying to get better at delivering feedback to my touchy direct report…we have all learned to step over that stair instead of delivering an awkward-in-the-moment message that will drive improvement.
It sounds so easy in the advice to be clear and direct about what’s needed, but the minute you start talking in person the derailment possibilities (and crises of managerial confidence) multiply moment by moment!
At my work there is even this annoying tendency for people to “recognize” an underperformer when they complete a fairly normal task because they feel sorry for them or because the underperformer whined so much about the magnitude of the task while they were doing it.
Our feedback system needs work, sigh.
I would say that it isn’t “firing-worthy” levels that don’t get feedback.
It’s the mediocre people who aren’t doing as well as others that make it harder to fire or coach. I work in a very nerdy department where almost everyone is incredibly smart, self effecient, and comes up with amazing solutions to problems that we face. When we get someone who is average, it sticks out like a sore thumb. Especially if they don’t have enough experience. It would be easy for a lazy manager to overlook Bob’s behavior because they rather have a nice person who doesn’t get everything done over a mean person who is a good worker. Managers don’t always know how to develop their people.
Yes, I have this problem. Like I know how to do the first thing people suggest, but when it doesn’t work, people just say ” the first thing people suggest” and I never get any more information or help so I’m just blowing in the wind.
I think Bob is overcompensating.
1. I’m thinking that Bob is giving updates so often because he knows that he is dropping the ball or that his coworkers are unhappy with his work, and he is trying to get feedback. And if the OP just agrees or doesn’t really comment, then he probably thinks he’s doing well.
2. I think that him wanting to be more involved might be his way of trying to figure out where he is going wrong. Not knowing exactly what the industry is or anything, I could see him thinking as a researcher he should be in a production meeting, so he knows just exactly what his research is used for, how he could be better based on what they are doing.
3. He probably knows his teammates are frustrated with him and so he wants to have more team building and thinks that these ideas would help.
Agreed. I think he sort of knows he’s treading water.
“I guess what I’m asking is: how do I crush this man’s spirit in a productive way?”
You probably don’t.
Odds are – what you are looking to achieve is impossible.
So you’re probably going to have to make a choice to take him as he is, or change him and lose the enthusiasm/productivity.
If he really is bad at the inherent parts of his job and performance management doesn’t work, could you get him transferred into a job he would be good at?
Well, one might not exist, or there might not be an opening, but also this sounds like his work habits in general are not that great and there is a reasonable chance he’d be a hot mess in the next job, as well.
He may be in the wrong industry altogether, but that’s not on the LW to fix.
I would rein him in!
“He tries to tackle more and more projects…”
Okay, so, no. No Bob. That isn’t your job. I didn’t ask you to look into that, who did? Alrighty, well we can discuss your workload at our regular 1:1 catch-up. I expect you to be working on [Projects] and [Tasks], if you have no [Tasks] to work on, then you can ask Coworker 1 and Coworker 2, and then ask me.
And if that’s insufficient, I’ll be more clear later – Bob? Yeah, no. Don’t invite yourself into other Projects. You want more work or different work? That’s fine, but until you are successful in your assigned work, you won’t be considered for them.
And as for the suggestions? 1:1 catch-up is where they belong.
Honestly, I just don’t know how it’s gotten to the point where you could confidently say “His colleagues are frustrated because they cannot rely on his research — it often results in more work for them as they fact-check his information.” Like, *how many times* does this fella need to balls stuff up before you… manage him? Manage your team’s reputation? Manage your own reputation?
seriously – “often” results in more work?
OFTEN?!
The people saying to steer Bob towards another role – unless cheerleading is the only significant duty, this is a bad idea. I certainly would refuse to put my reputation on the line by facilitating the transition of an employee I’ve never seen be successful at their job. I’ve been the recipient of one of those and would never do that to anyone else. Nice guy, but simply not a strong (or even reasonable) performer. So the hard work of firing a low-performer fell to me instead of the original manager who should have done it and wouldn’t. And if you’re thinking, “internal transfer, new probation period” you should know that many places with those kind of policies don’t actually adhere to them (i.e., the transferred employees are not considered “on probation and easier to get rid of” from an HR perspective).
My spirit was crushed by my boss.
I was doing a ton of work and was well respected by my colleagues.
My company required initiative and rewarded improvement suggestions.
Maybe I was delusional, but I made suggestions, as well as training new hires in my team.
My boss ordered me to “stick to my core tasks”, which I did. No further details when I asked, the ordered was repeated loudly and my job was threatened.
Boss later told me I did not qualify for the company career program (which required initiative).
Catch-22…
Turns out boss liked to play favorites and wield power.
I’m sorry that happened to you, but what does this have to do with the letter?
That was a “don’t do that, Dave” story.
But there was no indication that the LW was going to do that?
This isn’t what’s going on with Bob, though.
I used to work with a Bob. I was his trainer/onboarding mentor when he started, and could already see the issues then, tried to redirect and let his manager know/deal with it.
When I was promoted to manager and the teams were rearranged, he was not placed in my team. He was sad about that, but I was relieved. Very nice enthusiastic guy, and I am happy to know he thought I was a great trainer/mentor, but as a newbie manager I was just not ready to effectively manage his issues. I think his actual manager slowly worked through the problems with him though. No idea if he ever became a “good” employee, but he stayed for several years, even after I left that job.
I am semi-supervising–I am not generally her supervisor but she is assisting me with a project that is primarily mine and the parameters of which are my decision–someone who is a game worker but has a slippery grasp of spelling and grammar, and who prides herself on mowing through tedious work. And we need someone who is willing to mow through tedious work! There is a lot of it in our discipline! But I spent two full days last week correcting the part of the project she had already done but from which she had omitted basically all capitalization and punctuation; thank goodness for Excel find and replace. The finished project will need to be searchable so key terms need to be spelled correctly, and it will be visible to the public so it needs to look as though we have heard of punctuation and format. There was a pointed discussion yesterday about how speed is nice but it cannot take priority over accuracy and presentation.
You can appreciate his enthusiasm and still need to rein him in and keep him in a narrower lane. He doesn’t get to distract himself with extra projects and sparkly ideas until he can handle the basics, but he needs to be told that in plain language if he hasn’t been yet. I can’t promise that you can save this, though.