Ask a Manager

This is a transcription of the Ask a Manager podcast episode “The Talkative Intern.”

Alison: Managing interns can be rewarding and also can be a little weird. When people have no experience in the work world, sometimes your job as their manager is to coach them on things that might seem very basic, but aren’t always clear to them when they’re just starting out. Our guest this week has an intern with a habit that she is going to need to intervene on. Hi and welcome to the show.

Guest: Hi!

Alison: Why don’t you start by reading the letter that you sent into me and then we’ll talk about it?

Guest: Sure. I could really use some advice on managing an inexperienced person. I have an intern this summer who is a loud, nervous talker, and who occasionally slips into inappropriate topics of conversation. When discussing her work, she goes on and on reiterating a question three or four times and explaining why she’s asking – all without taking a break to let me answer even the most basic questions. For example, I manage our social media for the company and when she asked what our Twitter handle was, she asked, “What was the Twitter handle? I just want to write it down so I don’t forget. Or I guess I could look it up, like duh, that wouldn’t be that hard. I should probably already know what this is, but I haven’t been on Twitter that much. I mean, I posted those things you asked me about, but it wasn’t like on Twitter to do it, so I didn’t notice what the company Twitter handle was.”

Once or twice I have interrupted her by saying “Okay,” and holding up a hand, kind of like a slow down gesture, and answered her question. That went fine but didn’t change anything. She shows no sign of getting comfortable and I don’t know that she’s aware she’s doing it. I know it’s because she’s nervous. This is her first office job and she’s pretty young, even for an intern. Other people have noticed and started avoiding her a little bit, and it has only been three weeks.

Alison: Interesting. And you painted a very vivid picture there of what’s going on. Do you find that most of this is about her explaining and overexplaining why she’s asking for something, like with that Twitter example, or is there more variety to it than that?

Guest: It’s primarily overexplaining, like the example I sent in. That’s the most frequent, but I’ve also noticed even if she is talking about something that happened in her personal life, she will sometimes just keep going, even for small anecdotes. Although I have to say, we haven’t had a ton of time to have personal conversations. It’s almost like she’s a little bit afraid of silence, which makes it hard for people to have a normal conversation with her because she never lets them get a word in.

Alison: Yeah, I have a theory about this. I think a lot of times when people do this, they don’t trust that it’s enough to just say the thing and stop there. They don’t trust that that alone is sufficient to warrant someone else’s time and attention. And so they keep going out of nerves and out of insecurity, which we can be sympathetic to, but she still needs to stop because it’s annoying and it’s a bad use of people’s time and also because it’s going to make people less enthusiastic about working with her, and that can really hurt her professionally.

Guest: I do think that’s where it’s coming from. And that’s also what makes it hard for me to correct her, because I don’t want her to feel like I think she’s wasting my time, and at worst think that I think she’s annoying because I don’t. But it’s a hard thing to address because I feel like the reason she does it will be amplified if I try to correct her on it.

Alison: Yeah, I know what you mean. And I think too, with any interpersonal habit, sometimes it’s harder to give feedback on those than it is on the quality of their work, because it’s just more personal. But you know, especially because she’s an intern, I think you can frame it as this feedback just being a normal part of the internship – that it’s just part of the deal when you’re interning that you’re going to be learning a lot about how to be in an office, and that it doesn’t need to be weird or embarrassing. And I think hopefully she will take her cues from you and you might just need to make them very, very explicit.

But let me ask you this: do you have any kind of regularly scheduled check-in where you give her feedback on her work and talk about how things are going?

Guest: Yes. We have a weekly update meeting on how things are going, what she’s working on, if she needs help.

Alison: Good, okay. That makes this much easier. As an aside, I want to say to managers listening, it’s so much better to have regularly scheduled check-ins with anyone you manage, in part so that you’re able to stay engaged in their work, but also because it normalizes the idea of feedback – we have time every week where we meet and talk about how things are going, and we give feedback. And when it’s a regular thing it feels more normal and it doesn’t feel like this big huge deal when you do have to talk about something a little more serious or interpersonal. If you’re not meeting regularly, then when you do ask to sit down and talk, it feels much more serious.

So, it’s great that you’re already doing that. I think that’s going to make this easier and I think it could just be a conversation that you bring up at your next weekly meeting. And I think you could frame it like this. I would say, “I want to give you some feedback on something I’ve noticed. I’ve noticed that when you’re asking a question, you tend to repeat it a few different times and ask it a few different ways. And this is something that I’ve seen in a lot of interns and people who are new to the work world, and I suspect it just stems from nerves, which is really normal when you’re new.” Now it may or may not be true that you’ve seen it in other people, but it is a thing that is out there and a lot of people and I think saying that can help her save face and not be completely mortified.

And then you could say, “Because we’re all pretty busy here, you don’t really want to repeat the question so many times. It’s okay to just ask it once and then stop and let the person tell you if they need more of an explanation. So, when you’re asking me about our Twitter handle, really all you have to do is just ask what our Twitter handle is. You don’t need to explain why you need it. Does that make sense?” And then if she does seem embarrassed or horrified, you could say very explicitly, “Hey, please don’t feel weird about this because we all come into the work world with our own communication quirks. And part of the point of interning is to learn about things like this so that you’re more polished when you’re going after your next job. And this is a super normal conversation that we have with interns all the time.”

What do you think? Would you feel comfortable taking an approach like that?

Guest: I would, I like that approach a lot. I have been told throughout my life that I can be intimidating at times, so when I think I’m having a normal, approachable type conversation, it is sometimes interpreted as I’m explaining what I know and not open to opinions. So I’m kind of sensitive about sounding too critical. And I was having a hard time finding an approach that was softer, because I didn’t want her to walk out thinking that everything she does is wrong.

Alison: I think if you are very explicit about saying, “Hey, this kind of thing is a very normal part of an internship. We’ve seen this in lots of people, it’s totally normal for us to be having this conversation.” I mean, don’t overdo it, but I think if you frame it for her, she’s more likely to receive it within that framework rather than being mortified.

Guest: Right.

Alison: I do want to say, I think it’s pretty unlikely that one conversation will fix the problem because things like this can be pretty ingrained, so it’s unlikely that she’ll stop overnight, but you’ll have brought it to her attention and then there’ll be a frame of reference so that when she’s doing it the next time you can nicely cut in and say, “Hey, this is what we were talking about. I just need the first part of this.” And ideally over time she will start to hear what she’s doing and train herself out of it, but don’t expect results right away and don’t feel like you failed if you don’t get results right away because I do think it’s something that’s going to require some reinforcement.

Guest: Sure.

Alison: Now you had also mentioned that she sometimes slips into inappropriate topics of conversation. Tell me more about that.

Guest: Yes, and again, I think this is from inexperience. We had an event and she had to be in a set post for the entire event. There were some areas of the space we were in that required a key card to access and I was actually coming to give her a break. In fairness, she didn’t know that, but there were clients around and she asked if she could take a bathroom break and then went on to say “I don’t need to go right now but I’ll probably need to go soon. So if I could get a bathroom break soon, that would be really great. It’s not an emergency or anything.” And I was just kind of like, “Yep, I will be right there. I’ll be right back.” It’s just in my brain sort of going like, “No, stop!” And I didn’t know how to address it other than kind of like, “Okay, got it!” And I came back and gave her her break. And every once in a while, she’ll throw in details to a story like that – and asking for a break isn’t the issue, obviously. It was more being so specific about having to use the restroom. That’s not what we want our clients to be thinking.

Alison: Right. And over and over, sort of dwelling on it.

Guest: Right. And now it’s been probably two weeks since then, so I feel like with that particular incident, I don’t know if I can address now just because it’s been awhile. I feel like I should have said something to her the next day or at the end of the event when it was more immediate.

Alison: Yeah. Is that part of a broader pattern when there’s also been other times when she’s had the wrong judgment about what to talk about?

Guest: Yeah. In one instance, I was able to address it at the time because she was doing a piece of writing for me that had a personal anecdote in it and in editing it I asked her, let’s take this part out because we don’t want the reader thinking about that aspect of this project.

Alison: I think your instinct that it’s too late now to talk about the bathroom thing is probably right. It probably would be mortifying for her to realize that you’ve been thinking about it for a couple of weeks, but let’s talk about how you could have handled that a little closer to it because maybe that basic advice will be helpful for if this kind of thing comes up with her in the future. I think, again, check-in meetings if you’re doing them weekly can be really useful for this. And you could say, “I know this stuff isn’t always intuitive, but in general when we’re at work functions and clients are around, don’t spend a lot of time talking about bathroom breaks. You know, if you need a bathroom break, go take it. But it shouldn’t usually be a topic of conversation because people often consider that a private topic and can be squeamish about it.” Again, I think it’s too late to do it now, but if something similar comes up you can have that conversation pretty quickly afterward.

I think if you’re seeing lots of instances of it, you could address the pattern now. You could say something like, “Here’s another thing that is just totally normal to have to learn in an internship. There’s some topics that you want to avoid at work, things like using the bathroom or x or y or z. You might talk to your friends about those things, but at work it’s just part of having professional boundaries. And you know, this stuff isn’t always intuitive, and no one teaches it to you in school, so one good way to learn it is to just pay a lot of attention to other people at work and internships are great for this. They’re an opportunity to observe people in the field you want to work in and pick up cues on how to navigate those more nuanced pieces of work life.”

I think if you frame it to her like that, like previously, you’re telling her, “Here’s the framework to take this in. This stuff isn’t intuitive. You are not a disaster because you didn’t already know this. No one has been teaching it to you. Part of the point is for me to teach it to you.” That might help her take it well.

Guest: Okay, that makes sense.

Alison: And again, similarly to what I was saying earlier, it’s possible that you’re not going to fix this all in one summer and that is okay.

Guest: Sure.

Alison: Your bar for success here is not that you completely revamp her work personality and that she leaves you fully polished and professional. That probably won’t happen. Maybe it will, that would be great, but it probably won’t. I think your bar for success should just be that you address the stuff that you see, you give her some pointers, and you hope that it’s helpful to her as she progresses in her career. But some of this might be seeds that you’re planting for later and you might not see the full pay-off of it this summer, but it’s still going to be a really helpful thing to do for her.

Guest: Yeah, I think that’s a really good way to think about it too. The goal is not necessarily 100 percent perfection, but helping her so that hopefully in the near future it has an impact.

Alison: Yeah, and I mean interns are always going to have some rough edges to one degree or another. She sounds like hers are particularly noticeable, but some amount of this is really normal with interns, and I think if you get yourself in the mindset where you really believe that – and it sounds like you do – that that’s likely to come across in the way that you talk to her about it.

Guest: Right, right, and I do think she’s rougher than most because she’s so young. She’s a year younger than what we normally take.

Alison: Ah, yep.

Guest: And so, she has just kind of figured out what she wants to major in and I think it’s possible this is her first job ever, period.

Alison: You could even frame it for her that way. You could say “You have this huge advantage that you’re starting to intern when you’re a little younger than most of your peers do, and so you’re going to be learning these things earlier, which is great. That’s a huge advantage to carry forth to your next internship and to your next jobs.” I think if there is a way to make her feel just normal about the whole thing, it’s easier to really process and incorporate the feedback into her behavior going forward.

Guest: Yeah, I hadn’t thought of that. I like that a lot.

Alison: And really, it is normal. I look back at some of the behaviors that I had when I was new to the work world and I just cringe. I think we all do. And so often people don’t have a manager who’s willing to sit down and explain all of this to them. I think you’re doing her a real service by being willing to talk to her about it.

Guest: I hope so.

Alison: I think you are. So does that feel like it gives you some steps to take from here? Are there other pieces that you’re concerned about that we haven’t quite gotten at?

Guest: My only other hesitation with her is that we were recently discussing her major and we’re in marketing and she had said she wasn’t really sure what her major would be, but now she’s enjoyed her work with us so much she’s going to major in marketing. And this was at, you know, four weeks into the internship. And I was kind of thinking, “Oh, that seems like a big decision to be making off not a lot of data,” but I also don’t feel like that’s really my place to say, “I don’t think you should do that.” I don’t feel like I can comment on what she should or should not major in.

Alison: Do you feel like it’s just a bad idea because she just doesn’t have enough data yet, or do you feel like from what you’ve seen of her skill set, it may not be the greatest fit for her?

Guest: No, I think it’s just not enough data really, because I don’t feel like I even have seen enough of her skillset to know if it would be a good fit or not.

Alison: You might say to her… I’m trying to think of a way to do this that won’t inadvertently sound insulting to her. I think you could say to her, “Don’t feel pressure to figure out a month into the internship if this is the field for you. I’m really happy to have you here and I’m really interested to see more work from you, and let’s sit down and talk at the end of the summer about questions that you might have about moving in the marketing direction after you’ve had some time to really take in what you’re learning here. But don’t feel pressure to declare right away.”

I don’t know, as I’m saying it, I’m thinking maybe it’s unnecessary because it’s summer. It’s not like she’s heading into her advisor’s office this very minute to declare a major. It might be unnecessary, I don’t know. And it might be making too big of a deal of it if you go back and bring it up now versus saying something like that in the moment. So it might just be something that you have in the back of your head in case there’s an organic opening for it.

Guest: Yeah, I think I’m going to just keep an eye out for it. It sounds like her school pressures them to declare a major earlier than I did when I was in college. And it could be a way of her trying to convey that she likes the work and she’s happy she has the job. I don’t know how seriously to take what she said.

Alison: Yeah, that’s a good point. It may be just a way of her expressing that she’s happy with what she’s doing, and you don’t want to give it too much weight and make it this big thing if she didn’t intend it that way.

Guest: Right. I was just thinking like, “Oh, you haven’t even done all of the things on our list of what we’re going to do this summer – don’t make a life decision based on it!”

Alison: Yeah. One role that I think you can play as her manager for the summer is to also just be kind of a reality check. If she is under pressure to declare a major kind of early, and she sounds like she’s bringing a certain amount of naïveté to the table about it, one role you can play is to say, “Hey, don’t feel like you have to lock yourself in. You can change majors. A lot of people, a lot of schools don’t pressure you to declare a major this early. It’s not necessarily a great thing to have to do. Don’t feel like you have to lock yourself in.” You can be just sort of like a mentor or a voice of wisdom on that stuff.

Guest: Yeah, I like that approach.

Alison: Well, thank you so much for coming on the show.

Guest: Thank you.

Alison: Thanks for listening to the Ask a Manager podcast. If you’d like to ask a question on the show, email it to podcast@askamanager.org. You can get more Ask a Manager at askamanager.org, or in my book Ask a Manager: How to Navigate Clueless Coworkers, Lunch-Stealing Bosses, and the Rest of Your Life at Work. The Ask a Manager show is a partnership with How Stuff Works and is produced by Paul Dechant. If you liked what you heard, please take a minute to subscribe, rate, and review the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Google Play. I’m Alison Green and I’ll be back next week with another one of your questions.

Transcript provided by MJ Brodie.

You can see past podcast transcripts here.