Ask a Manager

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

1. Boss wants us to “disagree” over LGBTQ inclusion

My big boss is currently obsessed with having “disagreements” despite being very hard to disagree with. She has recently posted on our internal website encouraging us to talk and disagree about our organization’s attitude to LGBTQ colleagues because she has said she is concerned that colleagues with gender critical views feel silenced in the organization. We currently have a LGBTQ staff network and those staff and allies are allowed to wear rainbow lanyards if they want. People are also allowed to share their pronouns and it is currently a place where it would be expected that people respect those. Our big boss has suggested that to make the organization more open to different viewpoints, it might be appropriate to not have the network, not allow people to share pronouns, and ban rainbow lanyards.

This is generally really upsetting to me. I’m trying my hardest to engage with the disagreements but she is refusing to listen when we tell her that her attitude is harming staff morale and making LGBTQ staff feel unsafe. Is there anything I can do to improve how I respond to this? Or is it unreasonable for me to want to keep the network, lanyards, and pronouns? In case it’s relevant, I live and work in the UK.

WTF? To make the organization “more open to different viewpoints,” maybe you can also debate whether women should have the right to vote and whether slavery is wrong. Your boss is just a bigot and she’s dressing it up as wanting dialogue. It makes sense that LGBTQ staff feel unsafe now, because your organization has become unsafe for them.

Beyond UK law (which I can’t speak to), what you and your coworkers can do depends on how much pressure against this you’re able to mobilize and how much power your boss has. (How high-up is she? If “big boss” means anything other than the very top, start by going to someone above her.)

2. Should community leaders have privacy when they leave?

I’d love your thoughts on a situation I’ve now seen twice. One happened years ago in my friend’s church. The other more recently in another friend’s choir. In both cases, a leader (a minister, the conductor) left their position suddenly and without explanation. Both of my friends were outraged and felt that they were owed an explanation and a chance to address the situation before the person left. One friend had contact information for the person in question and reached out privately but never received a response. The other was discouraged by remaining leadership from reaching out to the person who left. Both vented to me extensively about how wronged they felt and how unprofessional this behavior was.

I disagree that this behavior was unprofessional. Over the course of my career, I’ve seen plenty of people leave without providing an explanation to their coworkers. Even the VP of my current company left with nothing more than “Jack is moving on,” and I felt that was sufficient. But my friends argue that because these institutions are more about the community, more is owed to that community.

So what say you? Is a community entitled to an explanation when a leader leaves, regardless of the reasons? Or can someone leave a public position for private reasons without having to expand further?

I don’t think anyone is ever owed an explanation for why someone else chooses to leave a group, but it’s also true that community leaders have more of an obligation to care for their “flocks” (I’m using that term loosely) than in purely business situations, and that can mean sharing a bit more about their decision to leave when that is something they are comfortable doing — and when it’s not, to at least try for bland, if uninformative, messaging (“other opportunities”). Similarly, though, I’d argue that community members have somewhat of an obligation to assume good will and to figure that if someone leaves without offering an explanation, they probably have a reason for not sharing more, and to respect their privacy.

Members are not owed a chance to address the situation before the person leaves. It’s great when that can happen, but there are some situations where it can’t. And it’s not always something the community would be able to address anyway — the leader could be leaving for personal reasons that have nothing to do with the group.

I think your upset friends would benefit from thinking about the many situations where someone might want to keep their reason for leaving private. Why not instead think, “This is someone who was part of our community who we respected, and if they chose to keep their reasons for leaving private, they presumably had cause for that, even if I’ll never know what it was”?

(A big exception is when the person is leaving because of their own wrongdoing. The head of your local games group doesn’t need to share that’s he’s leaving for health reasons. But a church leader told to leave for, for example, exploiting vulnerable members is something the remaining leadership should be transparent with the rest of the community about.)

3. Professional hairstyles for a man with very long hair

My husband has beautiful, well-maintained waist-length hair. He is applying for jobs and will likely interview in the near future. What should he do with his hair? He is a remote worker and normally wears it down, in a low ponytail down his back, or pulled on top of his head in a bun. He works in an academic setting (non-faculty) and has never received negative feedback on his hair, and we live in a liberal, fashion-forward West Coast city. I don’t think it’s a problem but realized that while I as a woman, also with long hair, have some go-to hairstyles I might use for an interview, they would be fussy and unnatural on him (a French twist, for example). I can imagine him interviewing somewhere slightly more conservative or old-fashioned than his current work place and I wonder what the lowest-key way to manage his hair would be. Interested in any ideas from the commenters, too!

I vote long, low ponytail, or possibly a bun (but you mentioned a bun on the top of his head and that will look too casual; a bun for an interview should be lower).

4. My lunch break should be my own time, right?

I work in tech and even before the pandemic, I was working almost entirely from home. A few months ago, I got a new manager who encourages us to come in one day per week — all on the same day, so we can have an in-person team meeting.

I don’t mind coming in one day per week, but my question is about my lunch break. On the days we’re all in the office, we have a team breakfast, a long (multi-hour) team meeting sitting together, spend the whole day sitting in the same office room, and generally have lots of smaller meetings amongst ourselves. It’s nonstop interaction.

My boss also wants us to do a team lunch when we’re there. I usually attend, but honestly, I find interacting with my coworkers for eight hours straight, with zero breaks, to be exhausting and overstimulating.

I have other friends who work at my company and this past week, I got lunch with them rather than my team, and it was so nice to get a break and be able to decompress a bit; turn off my “work persona,” so to speak. But when I got back from lunch, my manager was kind of digging for a reason why I didn’t join them and I just pretended like I didn’t notice.

I shouldn’t have to explain myself, right? The lunch is just at the company cafeteria, so it’s not like it requires any planning or it makes a difference if I’m not there. Any tips for how to handle this going forward?

It’s your lunch break so no, you shouldn’t have to explain yourself — but it sounds like you might need to anyway. If it comes up again, you could say, “Oh, I always need a real break at lunch” (personally I would add, “so my brain works the rest of the day”). Or, preemptively as you’re parting from the group, “I made lunch plans but I’ll see you back here at 1!”

And that day does sound exhausting when you’ve been used to working on your own.

5. I’ve been using my work computer as my personal computer too

I joined a small, new company a little over a year ago as a remote freelancer, doing work on my personal computer. A few months after I went full-time, my boss asked everyone at the business if they needed anything to make their work easier. My computer was on its last legs at this point, so I asked for and received a new laptop (they knew this was because my computer was about to break). At that time, I transferred all my files — including personal files — onto the new laptop and have been using it for both work and non-work purposes ever since. This was naivete on my part; I’m new to this sector and just thought it was nice of them. Now, I’ve received a message that next week all our work computers will be set up in the company’s new management system. What should I do? Do I need to buy a new personal computer to transpose all my non-work files onto, or can I keep my personal files on the same computer? How much surveillance am I opening myself up to? How badly have I messed up, and is it appropriate to talk to a manager about it honestly (saying that all my non-work files are on the “work computer” and asking what I should do) or does that open me up to being punished in some way?

You should buy a new computer for your personal use and move your personal files on to it. The computer they sent you is a work computer — it’s company property, you’ll almost certainly need to return it to them when you leave, there is indeed the possibility that they’ll be able to surveil what you do on it, and there’s even a risk that they’ll be able to do things like remote-wipe it after you leave.

You’re not likely to be punished if you explain to your manager what you did — but it won’t change the fact that you still need to move your personal stuff to your own computer, so you might as well just go straight to doing that.

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

1. My manager and coworker are divorcing their spouses and secretly dating

My coworker, Frank (who is above me in the chain of command, but only occasionally acts as my supervisor), just confided in me that he is dating my manager, Lauren (who is also HIS manager). We work closely together on a small team; I suspected they were having an affair for some time now, but hoped I was incorrect and never mentioned my suspicions to anyone.

Frank says they are both divorcing their spouses. I know my manager is applying for other roles in the company, but neither of them has informed HR about their relationship. They are worried that if they tell HR, Frank will be forced to move to another location, as it might be easier and quicker to find him a new role vs. finding one for Lauren. What, if anything, should I do? Their behavior already made me uncomfortable, but having it confirmed makes it even worse! We have an anonymous way to report things to HR, but they will probably guess I am who ratted them out. Should I just pretend I don’t know/keep their secret? I feel complicit now, and that’s making me feel really icky. I liked both of them and we get along just fine, but I’m really disappointed in their judgment. Especially with yearly reviews coming up soon — how is it ethical for Lauren to distribute a merit increase (or not) to Frank?

It’s an extremely serious ethical violation for Lauren to date someone she’s managing, and it’s a legal liability for your company. At a minimum, it will create the appearance of bias and favoritism once people learn about it (and they almost definitely will), and it can also mean Frank’s performance won’t be assessed appropriately, he won’t be given adequate feedback, and/or his accomplishments will be seen as suspect by everyone else, and it can open your company to charges of harassment down the road (“I wanted to end things but she implied it would affect things at work”).

Now, none of this is your problem to solve. If you want to do nothing, you can. But you’d be on very, very solid ground in letting HR know. This is a big deal and Frank and Lauren know it’s a big deal (that’s why they’re trying to conceal it), and it shouldn’t be your burden to carry around for them.

2. Boss will never award “exceeds expectations” because he has “high standards”

My previous boss said he never gives more than a “meets expectations” on performance reviews because he has really high standards, and a person would have to do a lot to exceed his expectations.

However, these ratings affect pay increases, so it seems like a penalty to be told, “You’re doing your job at a level that meets my very high expectations” but also, “You don’t deserve the highest raise I’m allowed to give you because you haven’t exceeded those high expectations.” What are your thoughts?

That is BS and not the way performance ratings are supposed to work. A company managing evaluations well will work to get all managers aligned around the same definitions of “meets expectations” and “exceeds expectations” and will clearly spell out what each of those categories looks like, so that managers and employees are all working from the same definitions, rather than each manager using their own subjective understandings. (Setting clear goals for each position makes this a lot easier, too.)

“I have really high expectations that no one can ever meet” shouldn’t be part of the discussion at all.

3. Should I include feedback from client surveys on my resume

I am in a client-facing role, and my current firm places a lot of importance in third party services that measure our net promoter score and client satisfaction. I tend to be kind of “meh” about the whole thing (I mean, our marketing team pays a lot for these services!), but in the last round of client satisfaction surveys, there was an option to provide feedback to individual professionals at the firm. I specifically received some very positive reviews in this last review cycle (for example, “Jane is always very helpful and meets the deadlines set internally.”). Can I include these reviews in my résumé? How would I present it? Also, as a point of respect, would I anonymize the companies who provided that feedback?

If some of the feedback is really impressive, yes, you could quote one or two examples — for example, “lauded by clients for ‘superb insights on some of our trickiest briefs.’” (Don’t name the client since they didn’t give permission for that.)

The big caveat: Anything you quote should be truly superlative, so don’t include the stuff like “always very helpful and meets deadlines” — that’s too close to “meets expectations” and doesn’t rise to the level of resume-worthy.

4. A question about tea

I think tea-making is an essential skill! I am pushing 40, have made tea for my team members higher and lower on the ladder all my life, and now I’m senior, continue to do the same every day without thinking about it. However, I am low-key irked when the occasional long-term colleague never offers to make me/anyone a cup, or if they don’t bother finding out HOW people take their tea/coffee (equally important). Or they make tea for visitors but apologize, saying they’re “bad” at making tea. Knowing how to make tea is not only good manners, but it’s an essential small team thing, and shows you care! It’s giving minutes of your time for Good Will.

Yes? No? Mountain over a tea-hill?

(I’m from the UK.)

I laughed at your ending parenthetical, because obviously.

For non-UK readers who don’t know about this, the UK has very specific rules of engagement for tea-drinking at work.

Unfortunately, though, I can’t answer this question because U.S. office culture has no equivalent to the UK’s tea-making expectations, not even with coffee. The American viewpoint on this is that while it’s lovely to offer to grab others a beverage when you’re getting one, there’s no obligation to do that, it’s not weird if you don’t, and you definitely don’t need to learn how to prepare a beverage you don’t drink yourself. In fact, many non-coffee drinkers here make a point of not learning to make good coffee so they’re not conscripted into coffee duty. (There are some exceptions to this, like if you’re an assistant who needs to get coffee for visitors.) But the American viewpoint is irrelevant, because that’s not the culture you’re in.

All of which is to say, I’m no help here but I’m sharing this anyway as a fascinating look into a different work culture.