Ask a Manager

It’s four answers to four questions. Well, three questions and one story. Here we go…

1. My employee keeps venting to me about his divorce

I manage a team of 20. I have two supervisors on my team and one is going through a divorce. He (male, 55) calls me (female, 33) constantly wanting to vent, and he sends me long-winded emails telling me how great a manager I am and how much he feels valued and appreciated. It’s gotten uncomfortable. I try to redirect conversations and only keep them about work because he will consume my time and end up telling me all about his wife and their troubles. I don’t want to hear about it, it’s a waste of my work day, and I’m not his therapist. He often asks for advice and what I would do in a relationship, which I try to deflect.

I don’t want to be mean and I try to support everyone on my team, often letting staff cry in my office when they are going through a tough time (death in the family, difficult customer, project failures, etc.) but he is draining, I feel like he’s crossing boundaries, and honestly the guy has an unhealthy crush. He’ll call multiple times a day asking if he can vent about his wife! He even started texting me after hours! I never respond to the texts and only halfheartedly say things like “that sounds tough, I’m sorry you’re going through this.” How do I professionally let him know that I’m not his sounding board without damaging the professional relationship I need to maintain?

“I know you’re going through a tough time, but since I need to be your manager I’ve realized I can’t be your sounding board about this. I need to keep our conversations focused on our work.”

And then if he keeps bringing it up after that: “I’m sorry to interject, but I’ve got to keep my manager hat on here so we can’t delve into this. But I did want to ask you about (work topic).”

You might feel awkward saying this — it’s inherently a bit of an awkward message to deliver! But the only way to address it is by saying it and getting it out there … and it’s in his best interests to have you clearly set that boundary before he goes even further with it.

Also — keep in mind he might be waylaying other colleagues with this as well (especially female ones, if he’s the type of guy who sees every woman as a potential therapist) and keep an eye out for that too.

2. Trust-building activities that actually work?

My fully remote department is about to have its first-ever in-person retreat. The pandemic has been a roller coaster for my team in many ways (high burnout and turnover, abrupt changes in leadership, crises of values/mission, etc.), and our department lead has asked us for suggestions for activities. I am hopeful that this might be an opportunity to restore trust, build comraderie, and create a more sustainable foundation moving forward. However, I am well aware that many team-building or trust-building exercises are ineffective, invasive, or inappropriate (having read as much from others who have written in over the years), and would like to avoid that. Do you or other readers have any suggestions for trust-building activities (or other types of team-focused exercises) that actually work?

I honestly don’t think they do. Trust-building exercises won’t fix the damage from the sorts of things you describe; your organization needs to address the core issues themselves. Even in companies without those kinds of deep-rooted problems, the only real way to build cohesion and morale is by creating a positive, cooperative culture year-round, not just for the duration of a team-building event. In fact, when companies try to use these events as a substitute for more meaningful work, they can end up lowering morale instead.

One thing you might try instead is using some of the retreat time to listen to what people think is needed to move forward in a more sustainable way, and coming up with actionable steps from that. (But if realistically nothing will change as a result of that, doing it is likely to add to the existing problems by just increasing people’s cynicism.)

3. Should I ask interviewers if they have internal candidates?

I’ve seen some viral posts on social media advising job candidates to ask interviewers whether they’re considering any internal candidates. The idea is to have a more realistic idea of your chances, or possibly to know whether you should emphasize traits an internal candidate might not have. Do you think this question is a good idea? It’s definitely tempting, but I don’t know if hiring managers would appreciate it.

Most of the time it won’t tell you much. Sometimes there are internal candidates who have no chance of being hired (see yesterday’s letter about that). Sometimes there are solid internal candidates but the company wants to hire someone external with a fresh perspective, or they’re committed to hiring the best person regardless of whether they’re internal or external. So the answer won’t really tell you much about your chances, even though a lot of candidates are convinced it will.

4. A cautionary tale about using your internet username on a resume

A humorous horror story and healthy reminder to never use your personal username/email on anything related to your professional persona:

A few years back, I had a friend who made an impressive amount of money through her side hustle of making custom Funko Pop toys. She was very good — people got Pops of themselves to use as wedding cake toppers, of their favorite characters from old shows, of people they knew to give as gifts, etc. It took up all her free time, so if I wanted to hang out with her, it made sense for me to learn to make some, too.

To make them, you pick the head and body that most closely resemble the character you’re building (typically two different Pops), boil the dolls to soften the rubber, pull their heads off, swap them, cut off unwanted parts with a heated knife, sculpt new accessories in clay and attach, and then paint the whole thing. Kinda cool. I did three sets before I lost interest, and saved the photos in some Picasa-style online album (not a social media site) so I could show other people.

Fast forward to this year, and I was making some new business cards for an upcoming conference. I’ve always used the same email address and username for everything and it’s never been a problem. I’ve googled the email address to make sure that nothing bad came up, and it was always fine. But this time, I decided to google just the first part of the address (the part before the @) just to make sure.

There, on the top of page 1: doll parts. Vats of boiling dolls. Dolls with their heads ripped off. Dolls getting body parts chopped off with hot knives. Tubs of dismembered doll parts that had been cut off but saved, just in case they fit the need of a future custom. I looked like a full-blown psychopath.

I wasn’t in the photos, and it was my friend’s home instead of mine, but the username is distinct enough that there could be no mistaking whose account it was. The photos have all long since been deleted and I had thought they were all set to private, but the internet has a long and pervasive memory. I guess they’re going to stay on Google indefinitely, despite the files not actually being hosted on the site anymore. I have to wonder, now, how many hiring managers took one look at that and decided to file my resume directly into the trash.

So let this be a reminder to all: select a unique username for all your weird hobbies, and make sure no part of it (no matter how small) is re-used in your email or on your resume!

Oh noooooo. Consider the reminder issued.

It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go…

1. My predecessor keeps taking over the event that’s supposed to honor my work

I’m in year 2 of being a support clerk with my city’s planning office. Every year we celebrate the huge numbers of applications we’ve processed. The very extroverted person who held the position before me created the role from scratch and was very effective. Therefore, she has been invited two years in a row to attend our celebration dinner. The problem is that she takes over the dinner and praises all of her past work accomplishments and very little, if any, space is left for me to be given credit for the work I’ve done keeping everyone on track since (which includes modernizing all of her paper-based processes). Trying to speak up for myself at this event or prior seems like being petty as she’s retired and was a staff favorite. Am I just being a small person here? Could this mean I’m not as effective as I think in my job and should just suck it up and accept that this party will forever be a downer and leave me questioning my value there?

I wouldn’t take this as any indicator of your own performance; it sounds like it’s about her, not about you — and she’s being allowed to run roughshod over you, possibly because of the strength of her personality or possibly because people are just happy to see her and aren’t thinking too deeply about it beyond that. (It’s also possible that a third year of this will start to seem strange to people, who knows.)

Can you take some control of the agenda ahead of time? Approach your boss or whoever organizes the event with a list of the program’s achievements that you want to make sure are recognized at the event (you can call them “the program’s achievements” even if they’re all yours; there’s an event being held to celebrate the work, so it’s completely normal to frame it that way). Frankly, if you have decent rapport with your boss, you could also say, “The last two years, Jane ended up running the presentation and focused on the work she did while she was still here. Since we have two years of new accomplishments to talk about now, I’d like to propose we do X this year.” (X could be you running the event, having a set list of speakers that doesn’t include a long-gone employee, having a slideshow focused on this year’s achievements, or anything else you think would work well.)

And ideally someone would be ready to intercept Jane if she does try to take things over and/or to tell her in advance that the program for the night will be X and the org will be hosting her as a guest but not a speaker since the focus will be on more recent work. Arranging that would require a pretty candid conversation with your boss, but if you have the kind of relationship with that allows for that, it’s a very reasonable thing to raise. It’s not petty in the least to point out that the event should honor the team’s current work.

2. My team lead spends hours venting to us — but tells our boss he’s training us

After being at my job for one year, things have started to go sideways. I recently rotated to a new team with a different team lead, Henry. Henry will video call me without notice and without asking if I’m free to chat. He is an absolute chatterbox! One of these unscheduled video calls will last around 30 minutes to an hour, usually multiple times a day. The meetings turn into a vent session for Henry while I sit there quietly until he stops talking.

We bill our clients and set a budget before we start an assignment, but with these unscheduled, long, irrelevant meetings, my work has been severely affected. Unfortunately, Henry “cold calls” each of us on the team (there are 3 of us) and our budget is severely dwindling.

Due to the budget problems, Henry mentioned to my manager that the reason the assignment is taking so long is because “there are three new people on this team who ask a lot of questions.” I feel like Henry is completely throwing the team under the bus and not realizing that his ineffective meetings are part of the problem. My manager is unaware that Henry is conducting these calls to each of us. The other two people on my team are new as well and we are afraid to mention something to our manager. Should we say something or are we overreacting?

Whoa, no, speak up! Frankly, you should talk to your manager about Henry’s calls even if he weren’t throwing you under the bus, simply because they’re so numerous and distracting. But with him claiming the budget shortages are due to your training needs, you really need to say something. (And if you’re worried about being believed, your manager probably already knows Henry is a talker and it’s likely to ring true.)

You could say, “I feel awkward raising this but Henry calls so regularly to chat — usually multiple times a day, for up to an hour each time — that it’s significantly slowing down my progress on the X project. These calls aren’t for training or to answer questions, and we don’t accomplish any work during them. I can see how much it’s slowing down our work, but I haven’t been sure of how to handle it.”

Read an update to this letter. 

3. Hiring externally when staff expect an internal hire

I am in charge of youth services and have one direct report, who has been here since before I was hired but will soon be moving on. This means I will need to hire for the first time since starting. After working for a number of years with a youth services assistant who has no experience working with children (and has frankly stated that they don’t like kids), I have a clear idea of the experience I’m looking for in a new hire and how I’d like the position to evolve, both of which will be the biggest factors when I interview.

My organization has a very strong culture of promoting within — in the six years since I started, the only external hires in my department have been for part-time entry-level jobs and a position that requires a specialized degree. The general rule is that if someone within the department is interested in an open position, they get the first opportunity to apply and interview before we open to external hires, which makes sense most of the time and almost always results in an internal hire. My issue is that there is no one in my department who has the skills or experience that I am looking for in this position. Normally, we would hire internally even if they don’t have all the requisite experience and then train them up to the level we need (that’s how my current assistant got their job). However, my service area works heavily with children and families and I can’t train people into having experience working with kids and parents or enjoying that type of work. (My director agrees with me that no one in our department would be a good fit for the position.)

I’m hoping people will self-select out, given my service area, but I’m afraid that the desire to move up within our department will cause people to apply even if they aren’t interested in family programming and don’t have the skills needed. We haven’t announced the open position yet, but most of the potential internal applicants work in the same service area and every time my soon-to-be-open position comes up in our management meetings, their supervisor makes a point of talking about internal applications and how great their reports could be at this position. If they do apply, I would be obligated to give them an interview, but I don’t want to make anyone feel bad about not getting the job, especially since I know I don’t plan on hiring internally.

How can I temper my coworkers’ expectations that I will hire internally, when I know that I definitely won’t? Besides being very clear in the job description and in my expectations for the position, is there anything I can do to keep people from getting their hopes up about this job opening?

Being very clear in the job description is the place to start, including explicitly labeling specific skills and experience as “required.” From there, be similarly clear with anyone who approaches you about the job (“I want to be up-front with you that I’m committed to hiring someone with XYZ experience, which could mean an external hire if we don’t find that experience already on staff”) and in those required interviews (“you probably saw that the position requires XYZ and I want to be up-front with you that that’s an obstacle for your candidacy — would you like to talk more about that?”). You should also fill people in on your thinking at those management meetings when it comes up — let them know you’re holding a high bar on XYZ and haven’t been able to find that in internal applicants.

Read an update to this letter. 

4. How to quit when my two jobs are related

The short version: I work two jobs and I want to quit one of them. The sticky part: Job 1 introduced me to Job 2, and they sometimes work together on projects (but sometimes are competitors).

I’ve been at Job 1 for almost two years, and it’s … fine. It was a nice place to land after leaving a toxic job with a mercurial boss. But I’m a contractor with zero benefits and my hours are the first thing cut when times are lean. Which brings me to Job 2. When Job 1 had to halve my hours recently, they asked if I might want to go help out at Job 2, where they needed someone with my talents.

Job 2 is amazing. I’m an actual employee for the first time in my life, with some benefits even as a part-timer. There’s a real culture of appreciation there — bosses and coworkers constantly thank me and praise my work, even though I’m the lowest-level employee there. They also praise each other’s work and strengths. I keep being given more responsibilities and interesting tasks to work on. I feel like my opinions and ideas are respected and like I’m seen as a whole person, rather than a tool to get tasks done. While Job 1 has kept my hours reduced for months, Job 2 is happy to give me as many hours as I want, while remaining flexible about Job 1’s needs and my personal needs.

Every sign in the universe is pointing to me needing to quit Job 1. My spouse thinks I should quit. My friends ask why I haven’t quit yet. I got a tarot reading for the first time in my life on a lark, and even the cards said I should quit my job.

But again, Job 1 and Job 2 are friendly. They work together. I often get info from Job 1 for Job 2 and vice versa. I read enough advice columns to know I can’t control how other people react to things and sometimes there’s no way to not hurt feelings. But do you have any advice to help soften the blow for Job 1 when I leave them for their cooler, more successful counterpart?

It sounds like Job 2 is willing to offer you full-time hours or at least consistently more hours than you get from Job 1, so that’s the easiest explanation to lean on — “They’re able to offer me full-time work, which I really need.” That’s a very clear, easy-to-understand reason and people will understand the need for more hours. Plus, any job that halves someone’s hours is well aware that it means the person might seek work somewhere else, so they’re unlikely to be shocked.

5. Why are recruiters asking about where I am in my job search?

I am not aggressively looking for a job at the moment as I’m currently employed, but have recently had a few exploratory recruiter calls. They each ask some version at the end of “where are you in your job search?” or “are you actively interviewing/fielding offers that we should be aware of?” For the most part I’ve been honest: I’m still in my role currently, just starting to look, but no real urgency on my end. But what are recruiters looking to learn by asking this question, and what is the right answer for someone in my current position?

They want to find out whether you’re in the final stages with other employers/expecting an offer imminently/already have offers, so they know if they need to try to expedite their process with you. Your answer is completely fine.

It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go…

1. I’m nervous about having to write up an employee

I am a new-ish manager (just under a year), something I never saw myself doing in a field I sort of fell into. In general, it’s going well, but I find myself getting quite anxious when I need to handle discipline of a staff member. I have to share a write-up with someone tomorrow concerning their behavior, and I have an awful stomach ache about it. In the past when I have had to have these conversations, it always goes better than my imagination was creating ahead of time, but I’m still agonizing over it. Do you have any suggestions on how to prepare better or ease my mind prior to the interaction? Is this just another form of stage fright, in that the more I do this, the less difficult it will become?

Part of the problem is probably that you’re thinking of it as “discipline,” which implies a strange parent/child dynamic that doesn’t fit the context. I know some employers call it that, but it’s a weird framework to use. Instead you should think of it as coaching/feedback, because that’s what it is — or at least what it should be. The idea isn’t to be punitive; it’s to share clear feedback, explain where they’re not meeting the mark, and lay out what they need to do differently in order to succeed in their role.

You might dread it less if you see it as helping them be successful in their job (and not get fired or miss out on raises/promotions/other things they might want) — so it’s in their interests, not something that needs to (or should!) be adversarial.

And yes, the more you do it, the more comfortable with it you’ll likely feel. But changing the way you’re framing these internally should help you get there.

Related:
what’s the deal with write-ups?

2. Coworker seems annoyed that I might hire her employee

I work for a company of about 2600 people. I’m hiring a replacement for one of my employees who is leaving and have received over 500 applications. One of those applications was from an internal employee, Susie, who has been finishing a masters program that is highly relevant to the position. I scheduled a first round interview with her, and on the day of her interview, her supervisor, Jane, sent me a message on Slack that essentially said, “I know Susie is interviewing with you today. Please tell me why you’re considering her and what your timeline is for hiring her. She just joined my team a few months ago, and it would be very inconvenient to have her leave this role so soon. I look forward to hearing more about her being considered for the position.”

This threw me for quite a loop. If I decided to hire Susie, would Jane, who I have to work closely with, hold it against me? Do I need to take her current supervisor’s dissatisfaction with Susie’s interest in the position into account? Should I respond? And finally, why is this my problem? Shouldn’t Jane be having this conversation with Susie?

I’m curious what your thoughts are, and if/how I should respond. If it makes a difference, I likely wasn’t going to move her on to a final interview, and at the same time, Susie decided to withdraw her candidacy after the interview, as she does want to spend more time learning her current role. I’m also wondering if I should tell Susie what Jane said (though that feels like gossip, so I’m inclined not to do so).

So, this depends heavily on how your company handles this. Some companies won’t consider internal transfers without the candidate’s manager in the loop after a certain stage, or even without their sign-off. Partly that’s because if there are performance issues with the employee, the company has an interest in making sure the manager who’s hiring knows that. Partly too though, it’s so managers don’t feel like their own company is blindsiding them with a personnel change that they could have been looped in about earlier. Obviously this can make things very awkward for the employee seeking a transfer and in some cases it discourages people from applying at all, which can mean the company loses good people they otherwise could have retained.

In your case, I’m guessing your company doesn’t have that policy or you would know about it. It’s possible Jane comes from a company that does … or she’s looking at you less as “manager of an independent team conducting independent hiring” and more as “colleague who is trying to lure away someone I’m depending on to get our work done.” The latter is short-sighted — if someone wants to leave, they’re going to leave one way or another, and it’s in no one’s interests to hold on to an employee who doesn’t want to be there — but it’s pretty common.

But you could seek guidance from your company on how they typically handle situations like this; there may be political concerns you need to take into account, at least in responding to Jane. If you were still considering Susie, I’d say you shouldn’t hire her without getting Jane’s assessment of her work at some point, but you could do that much later in the process if she were still in the mix. In that case, I’d also ask Susie about it when you interviewed her, both as a way to make sure she knew Jane was aware of her application and to find out if there were dynamics on that team that you’d have to navigate. (And since she’s only been there a few months, presumably that would come up naturally when you talked about why she’s interested in moving.)

Read an update to this letter. 

3. Returning heavy office furniture when resigning

I work from home for a smaller company under a larger corporate umbrella, at a location an hour away from the local office. I moved to this location at the start of the pandemic. In the beginning of lockdown, our parent company was posting things like “look how easy it is to make a standing desk at home — just stack two storage bins on top of your kitchen table!” and other absurd ideas. I asked my company whether I might have a small standing desk, as I have a disability that is greatly mitigated by a standing desk, and they bought me one. I already had a tall office chair I’d brought home with me from my cubicle. Once it became clear that we were all working from home for the foreseeable future, I realized that this tiny desk wasn’t going to work. I went through the proper channels and asked the corporate office for a better standing desk — they said no, they were not purchasing any furniture for anyone, disability or not. The head of my company ended up going to bat for me and using their corporate card to buy me a very nice (very large and heavy) motorized standing desk, which was delivered to my home.

I’m in the final stages of interviewing for a job, and it’s becoming more likely they will make me an offer. If I leave, what am I supposed to do about this desk and chair? They are both big and heavy, won’t fit in my car easily (if at all), and would have to be driven an hour+ away to be returned. Is it my responsibility to bring this up and return the items? Should I wait until they ask? Is it up to them to arrange for pickup for things that their disabled employee cannot even lift? Would they possibly want me to pay them to keep the items? (I can’t afford that.)

Returning the furniture is a business expense (for them, not you). If you resign, mention to your boss that you have a chair from your office, plus the standing desk the company bought you, and ask what they’d like you to do with them. Say, “They’re too large and heavy for me to transport, but if the company wants to arrange a pickup, I can have them ready to go.” It’s very unlikely that they’ll want you to pay to keep the items — they might offer it in case you want that, but you can say no. These are business items for them, and it’s reasonable to assume they’ll arrange and pay for their pickup (or just tell you to keep them free of charge if that’s cheaper for them).

Read an update to this letter.

4. Asking for a different in-office schedule

My partner works in an office where they are in office two days a week. Let’s say the whole team is in on Wednesdays, then the subteams are each assigned one other day. This schedule was implemented about a year ago and the “other” day was assigned to each subteam arbitrarily. Unfortunately, my partner was assigned to come in on Wednesdays and Fridays, with Fridays being the most undesirable day across the board.

Fridays are most undesirable for a few reasons: (1) We work in a big city and traveling in and out of the city on Fridays takes more time. (2) If you don’t have to commute home on a Friday, you essentially get 1-2 hours more weekend time than those that do commute. (3) Many on this team travel, and there’s a huge convenience factor for those who can work remotely on Fridays. (4) More people take Fridays off, so for those in the office there’s often some slack that needs to be picked up, which isn’t as prevalent on other days.

Management is currently updating the in-office schedule from two to three days in-office and my partner would like to ask about changing or making more equitable who is in the office on Fridays. Management has historically been opposed to this (no real reason given why they can’t change it), but given they are making updates anyway, my partner would like to bring it up. What is the best way to get management to consider a change to who is in-office on Fridays? How can they get management to consider making a fairer in-office schedule?

The thing about pushing to work from home on Fridays in the face of opposition is that it’s easy for it to sound like you’re looking for a long weekend, rather than treating Friday like a real workday … which companies obviously don’t like very much. So if your partner brings it up, it’s important to frame it in terms that make it really clear that’s not the case. In his case, that might mean the strongest argument is to say, “My commute is up to two hours longer on Fridays; would it be possible for me to swap it with a different in-office day, or at least rotate it with other people?”

5. Reapplying to a job I previously declined to interview for

At the end of last year, I applied for a job at a company in the next town over, roughly an hour drive from where I currently live. Unfortunately, pretty much the same day as I got a response asking to schedule a Zoom interview, I also got some other bad news that kind of wrecked any of my plans to relocate (or make a commute work).

Fast forward about six months, and my situation has changed again and the position is still up on their website. For the most part, my mindset is mostly “it can’t hurt to ask” (especially since my change in situation isn’t really because anything has improved, just more than I’m running out of options) but is there a certain amount of time I should wait before applying again? Does applying, “flaking,” and then applying again so soon make me look unreliable or wishy-washy?

You won’t look wishy-washy. You could apply again now with a note that says they invited you to interview last year and you ended up needing to withdraw but are now available and would love to be considered. One caution: try to be really sure you’re up for the commute this time, because if you enter the process again and then withdraw for the same reason (especially if they knew the reason last time), that will look wishy-washy and could make them less inclined to consider you in the future. But otherwise you should be fine!