Ask a Manager

A reader writes:

My department just underwent a massive restructuring and my boss is trying to sell me on a new position that would be doing more of what he knows I want to do. However, the new role would mean working more closely with a manager I absolutely cannot stand.  He is rude and dismissive and treats me (and many others) like I’m something he wiped off his shoe. 

It would make sense for me to take the position, since it is more of what I want to do than what I do now. But how do I say, “I know I said I want to do this, just as long as it’s not with this guy”?  Is there a proper way to say that I don’t work well with someone?  The two managers have worked together in the past at a different company and I can’t imagine, based on their personalities, that they are best buddies.  But my manager has never said anything bad about him and I don’t want to badmouth another manager.  Nor do I want to work on fixing our working relationship, I just want to avoid him altogether.

If you have a good relationship with your manger, you can explain your concerns, but you need to go about it carefully.

* First, your own standing matters – a lot. Managers generally wish that everyone would put personality differences aside and just get the work done, even though the good ones will understand that it’s reasonable not to want to work with jerks. But if you’re a highly valued employee who produces excellent work, your manager is more likely to take your concerns seriously and respect your stance than if you’re not an especially high performer.

* Don’t make outright demands about who you will and won’t work with. That means that you shouldn’t say anything like, “I’ll do this job, but I won’t work with Bob.” The reality is, working with Bob might be part of this new job, and it might not be an option to alter that. If you sound like you think you can structure a job to work only with people you like, you risk sounding out of touch with the realities of how businesses work.

However, you can express reservations about working with Bob and can explain that your concerns are a factor as you consider the job. For instance, you could say, “I’m really interested in this role and I so appreciate you working to create it. However, realizing how closely I’d be working with Bob is giving me pause. Between you and me, I’ve found him to be dismissive and challenging to work with, and I’m not sure I’d be eager to take that on.”

(Only say this if your manager is both reasonable and discreet. You don’t want to share things like this if you think you’ll be penalized for your candor or that it might get back to Bob and cause problems for you.)

* Third, realize that you might not have a choice. Some jobs do require working with people you can’t stand. You can carefully share your preferences with your manager if you do it in the way described above, but if the job requires working with the Director of ABC, there’s probably nothing you can do about that, no matter how sympathetic your manager might be. (You can leave or turn down the job, of course, but often that’s the only alternative.)

* Fourth, it’s worth considering working with the person you don’t like anyway. You’re never going to be able to eliminate difficult people from your work life entirely (unless you’re astoundingly lucky), and sometimes figuring out how to minimize their impact on you can be really valuable. After all, if you leave for another job, you might encounter a coworker just as unpleasant, or even more so.

Sometimes simply realizing that difficult people’s behavior is about them, not you, can make them easier to deal with … and sometimes knowing that you’ve dealt with a difficult person well can be surprisingly satisfying on its own. It’s worth considering, at least.

This is from a friend of mine, who agreed to let me use it as a question here. She writes:

I work in a male-dominated field, and don’t have the same technical background that many of them do. I was hired for my communications, organizing, and project management skills, but have noticed it takes some uncomfortable and awkward time for some of the new, older male members of my team to “accept me” for my leadership role. In most cases, the relationships have improved over time, but not after I had to uncomfortably speak up for myself and prove myself to them.

A new guy who just started last week reflects a similar situation. He waltzed in and started criticizing existing processes and speaking in a condescending manner about just about everything. He refuses to look me in the eye when I’m talking to him, and has already treated me in a subtley offensive way.

I’m 30 years old and have worked my ass off for the last decade and have the resume to prove it, as well as a boss who specifically recruited me because I worked for him previously and he knows I’m great. Apparently, my face looks like a 23-year-old’s and this may be a factor in older men being uncomfortable with accepting the fact that I’m an equal.

I don’t want to type too much here, but I think there’s enough here for you to get a basic grip of what I’m dealing with. I’m tired of it and it makes me angry, sad, and upset.

Dr. Phil says “You have to teach people how to treat you”, and I’m trying to figure out how to apply that to this situation without causing a stir. Any advice?

I once found myself in a similar situation — in my late 20s, I was working in an office staffed nearly entirely by much older men. I’d been brought in by the head of the organization specifically to make changes, and they Did Not Like It. Frankly, they probably wouldn’t have liked it if I’d been a 55-year-old man either — these were not people who welcomed change, regardless of the face of it — but it really didn’t help matters that they saw me as a little girl.

I decided I didn’t give a crap. I was going to do my job, I was going to do it well, and they could either get on board with it or not, but I was going to do what I was there to do. I ignored the condescension and their assumption that anything I said was rooted in inexperience, and I just went about my work. In time, some of them changed their attitude toward me and began treating me like a peer, and a few didn’t. I decided I didn’t care; I wasn’t going to let my ability to do my job well be held hostage to their attitudes about my age (or my gender, if indeed that was part of their issue), and my work would speak for itself. They could change their minds or not; it wasn’t my problem.

Now, obviously, it becomes your problem if they’re actually getting in the way of you doing your job. And if that happens, you need to speak up — just like you would do if someone were obstructing you for reasons that had nothing to do with your age or gender. You’d call them on it — pleasantly and professionally, but assertively. You’d tell them clearly what you needed, and if talking to them directly didn’t solve the problem, then you’d escalate it appropriately. In other words, go about this just like you would if it wasn’t about your age or gender at all, and instead were just about a coworker being obstructionist or difficult.

But the stuff that isn’t actually getting in the way of your work and is just annoying, like the condescension, the mistrust before you’ve proven yourself, or the not looking you in the eye? That more subtly offensive stuff you ignore, because that’s their problem, not yours, and it only has to bother you if you let it. Instead, you act as if of course they respect you, of course they’re behaving normally, because why the hell wouldn’t be they be? And you act that way until it’s true (or until you’re sick of it and go somewhere else).

Now, is it a pain in the ass that you have to do this? Of course. But it might be helpful to keep in mind that some of this — possibly a lot of it — is really about age and experience level, not about gender. And that can be pretty easy to overcome once you show that what you have to contribute doesn’t line up with their preconceptions about your age and experience level, as long as you’re dealing with at least semi-reasonable people. (And if you’re not, that’s a whole different issue, and raises fundamental questions about the organization where you’re working.)

You have the support of your boss, and you know that you’re awesome at what you do. Ignore the condescension and focus on your job. Eventually they’ll either come around or look ridiculous, or you’ll get sick of it and go somewhere where people look you in the eye.

A reader writes:

I travel for work about once a month, sometimes domestically and sometimes internationally. I’m lucky enough to have friends in many of the places I travel, and I often make plans to see these friends either in the evenings (if there’s no possibility of a work-related event or meeting) or by staying the night if the meeting adjourns in the afternoon/evening and my job will pay for an additional hotel night. I’ve had the awkward situation a few times where I’ve had a colleague from work who is also on the trip and who doesn’t have dinner plans when I’ve made arrangements to see my friends. It’s especially awkward when I’ve taken the trip with just one other person from my job. In that situation, had I not had a friend in that city, my colleague and I would have had dinner together.

If my colleague asks if I want to have dinner, is it okay to say something like, “I’m actually meeting up with an old friend,” and leave it at that? Or is the right thing to do to invite them along? I would much prefer to have one-on-one time with my far-flung friends, but I don’t want to damage work relationships either.

Absolutely, it’s fine to simply say that you’re meeting up with a friend, and you’re not obligated to invite your coworker along if you don’t want to. Your off time is your off time, whether you’re traveling for work or not.

That said, if you’re traveling with someone who you think is likely to assume you’ll be having dinner together (or who will want to), it’s kind to let them know ahead of time — for instance, as you’re going over arrangements for the trip, mention, “By the way, I’m going to meet up with a friend on Tuesday for dinner.” Or, if you aren’t meeting anyone but just know you’ll want to have time to yourself, you can say, “I should warn you — when I’m traveling, I usually go straight back to the hotel and crash in my room after the work day.” That way, they have advance warning and can make other plans if they want to, or at least aren’t caught off-guard by it at the last minute, their dreams of bonding over sushi and karaoke shattering into the cold hard reality that you are in your room reading Sense & Sensibility for the fifth time. (Not that I’m speaking from personal experience here or anything. Actually, I’m currently reading The Godfather, and it is fantastic.)

But even if you don’t have opportunity to mention your plans ahead of time, it’s still fine to go off and do your own thing once you’re no longer working.