It's going to be a long summer
June 22, 2018 6:46 PM Subscribe
My summer intern is a nice guy, but his work performance is sorely lacking. I'm seeking advice on how to handle this situation.
“Bob” is 35 years old and recently went back to school to earn a two-year degree. Prior to starting his studies, he had been working in a factory since he graduated from high school. This internship is his final requirement before he earns his associate’s degree from the local community college.
Bob is polite, friendly, and enthusiastic. He’s punctual and doesn’t slack. He gives the appearance of trying hard. On a few occasions, he showed initiative and did some independent research to successfully address an unexpected issue that arose. So I know he has some problem-solving skills and some intelligence. But, overall, his performance has been poor.
Part of the problem is that Bob rarely asks questions. I’ve noticed that if I give him instructions that he doesn’t understand, he typically doesn’t ask for clarification. He either ignores the instructions altogether, or he mentally converts them into a task that he does understand.
He doesn’t take notes. The first time I met with him to discuss his initial assignment, I noticed that he didn’t write anything down – but I naïvely assumed that he has a good memory (he doesn’t).
Bob makes many sloppy mistakes, and he performs his responsibilities in a half-assed manner. He tends to abandon a task before he completes it. To help keep him on track, I wrote-up a detailed checklist for him to follow. At first, he ignored the checklist and continued business as usual. I then had a serious, sit-down conversation with him about his careless mistakes and incomplete tasks. Afterwards, his work did improve, but it still falls short.
I find myself having to clean up his messes, and his presence is adding stress to my already-demanding job. And yet… I don’t have the heart to fire him. He and his wife are expecting a child in a few months. Also, as I indicated above, he’s generally a cheerful guy with a good attitude. Finally, and most significantly, my boss has taken an inexplicable liking to him.
I’m not sure what to do about this. My previous summer interns have all been much better and didn’t require babysitting. I really want to deal with this on my own without contacting his school or consulting with our HR department.
“Bob” is 35 years old and recently went back to school to earn a two-year degree. Prior to starting his studies, he had been working in a factory since he graduated from high school. This internship is his final requirement before he earns his associate’s degree from the local community college.
Bob is polite, friendly, and enthusiastic. He’s punctual and doesn’t slack. He gives the appearance of trying hard. On a few occasions, he showed initiative and did some independent research to successfully address an unexpected issue that arose. So I know he has some problem-solving skills and some intelligence. But, overall, his performance has been poor.
Part of the problem is that Bob rarely asks questions. I’ve noticed that if I give him instructions that he doesn’t understand, he typically doesn’t ask for clarification. He either ignores the instructions altogether, or he mentally converts them into a task that he does understand.
He doesn’t take notes. The first time I met with him to discuss his initial assignment, I noticed that he didn’t write anything down – but I naïvely assumed that he has a good memory (he doesn’t).
Bob makes many sloppy mistakes, and he performs his responsibilities in a half-assed manner. He tends to abandon a task before he completes it. To help keep him on track, I wrote-up a detailed checklist for him to follow. At first, he ignored the checklist and continued business as usual. I then had a serious, sit-down conversation with him about his careless mistakes and incomplete tasks. Afterwards, his work did improve, but it still falls short.
I find myself having to clean up his messes, and his presence is adding stress to my already-demanding job. And yet… I don’t have the heart to fire him. He and his wife are expecting a child in a few months. Also, as I indicated above, he’s generally a cheerful guy with a good attitude. Finally, and most significantly, my boss has taken an inexplicable liking to him.
I’m not sure what to do about this. My previous summer interns have all been much better and didn’t require babysitting. I really want to deal with this on my own without contacting his school or consulting with our HR department.
Best answer: Well, a big part of being an intern is supposed to be learning on the job, right? Like, if they were already fully up to grade then they'd be regular employees, not interns. This is a mentoring relationship. It's great that previous interns had better performance (sounds like your company got a good deal) but that's not always going to be the case. It's your company's job to try to get Bob up to speed—if mentoring him is more work than you personally have resources for, can you ask your boss to bring in some additional help?
Worst case scenario, you'll be shut of him in a few months. Meanwhile, look at this as an opportunity to hone your mentoring skills and prove that you can do this sort of thing. To the extent that you can devote the time, try to really push the boat out in terms of training Bob how to be a good worker. If that means fairly remedial stuff like teaching him to take notes when someone is giving him instructions, so be it. Make sure people see what you're doing and that you get credit for it, mind—if you do well, people will see you as a leader, someone who lifts up others and helps them do better for the good of the company.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 6:59 PM on June 22, 2018 [37 favorites]
Worst case scenario, you'll be shut of him in a few months. Meanwhile, look at this as an opportunity to hone your mentoring skills and prove that you can do this sort of thing. To the extent that you can devote the time, try to really push the boat out in terms of training Bob how to be a good worker. If that means fairly remedial stuff like teaching him to take notes when someone is giving him instructions, so be it. Make sure people see what you're doing and that you get credit for it, mind—if you do well, people will see you as a leader, someone who lifts up others and helps them do better for the good of the company.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 6:59 PM on June 22, 2018 [37 favorites]
Best answer: It sounds like Bob is new to office culture, which is ok since it’s the type of thing an internship is meant to teach. I will say, having trained many many traditionally-aged college students, that the amount of information students don’t know is astounding. In many cases they have not held jobs before, and have to be told explicitly how to do things. The other thing they really need help with is talking through the meta-cognitive process of learning a new job, which is another skill they will need to know going forward.
I wonder if maybe you are attributing life/work skills to Bob, because of his age, that many other in-college students don’t have, either. I get that it might feel weird to tell a 35 yo, “ok, we’re going to talk about process X in this meeting. X process is important because of Y, and you will need to know/remember how to do this. I recommend you take notes during our conversation so you have something to refer back to later. Is there another method that helps you learn that we could add?” but it’s something I have to walk my 18 yo students through every single time. I think your checklist idea was a good one, I think you might just need to involve him earlier in the process so that he can see the steps you are taking to come up with something like a checklist. The task incompleteness and careless mistakes are a bit different, and could stem from anxiety. One of my team members had something similar and it took a lot of work but eventually she became one of our best employees.
This sounds frustrating and I can definitely empathize; only you know whether it’s a matter of adjusting your expectations for the amount of babysitting required, or whether it’s something that can’t be rectified no matter the amount of coaching or mentoring. Good luck.
posted by stellaluna at 7:03 PM on June 22, 2018 [18 favorites]
I wonder if maybe you are attributing life/work skills to Bob, because of his age, that many other in-college students don’t have, either. I get that it might feel weird to tell a 35 yo, “ok, we’re going to talk about process X in this meeting. X process is important because of Y, and you will need to know/remember how to do this. I recommend you take notes during our conversation so you have something to refer back to later. Is there another method that helps you learn that we could add?” but it’s something I have to walk my 18 yo students through every single time. I think your checklist idea was a good one, I think you might just need to involve him earlier in the process so that he can see the steps you are taking to come up with something like a checklist. The task incompleteness and careless mistakes are a bit different, and could stem from anxiety. One of my team members had something similar and it took a lot of work but eventually she became one of our best employees.
This sounds frustrating and I can definitely empathize; only you know whether it’s a matter of adjusting your expectations for the amount of babysitting required, or whether it’s something that can’t be rectified no matter the amount of coaching or mentoring. Good luck.
posted by stellaluna at 7:03 PM on June 22, 2018 [18 favorites]
I will also say, and I don’t know if this is the case here, but this can sometimes be a gender thing. It was the case in one of my experiences, memail me if you’d like!
posted by stellaluna at 7:06 PM on June 22, 2018 [3 favorites]
posted by stellaluna at 7:06 PM on June 22, 2018 [3 favorites]
I have tangential experience in this area, in that I am an adult beginner in (a thing I'm doing) where almost everyone else my age has been participating for decades. I'm six months in, and am continually surprised about the stuff I don't know -- because no one ever told me, because they just assume I, a grown-ass woman, know it already. So yeah, as much as you can possibly manage, treat this guy like he's a twenty-year-old graduate of a two-year program. Teach him what he needs to know, and reinforce your teachings like you'd do with a very young beginner.
posted by BlahLaLa at 7:11 PM on June 22, 2018 [10 favorites]
posted by BlahLaLa at 7:11 PM on June 22, 2018 [10 favorites]
Bob is here to improve your management skills. Agree with everyone about just telling Bob basic stuff like "you need to be writing this down." I have to tell the employees I manage this every single time. (You may want to give Bob a composition book so all this stuff stays in one place.) Give Bob responsibility for writing a protocol for the things he's fucking up. Every time Bob screws up, make sure he is involved in the fixing of it, as much as possible. Build in time to review his work and send it back to him. Find some tasks he can't mess up so badly. Find things to praise, too, so you appreciate what he's doing alright at. But absolutely keep telling him when he does something wrong, and you'll quickly figure out if he actually doesn't slack, tries hard, and has a good attitude.
posted by momus_window at 7:30 PM on June 22, 2018 [8 favorites]
posted by momus_window at 7:30 PM on June 22, 2018 [8 favorites]
Don’t give a pass to the guy just because he’s 35 and expecting a kid. There are tons of people who would be excellent employees and contributors and who deserve this opportunity more than someone who underperforms and won’t take instruction for whatever reason. Quite frankly, the entire working world and all of society would benefit from not rewarding yet another underperforming guy with unlimited chances while everyone else has to pull his weight for him.
Instruct him and document his performance like you would any intern. Contact his school and give an honest assessment. If he doesn’t pass or doesn’t get hired because of this, that is on HIM entirely. Don’t shield him from the consequences of his performance. He’s 35, not 18, and even if he doesn’t know the specific expectations of his role per se, he certainly should know by now that he needs to ask questions and follow instructions and perform the tasks expected of him. I mean for heaven’s sake, he’s been in college the last two years, he should be well used to the idea of fulfilling the rubric of an assignment even if he’s still fuzzy on what’s allowed in a specific workplace culture.
posted by Autumnheart at 7:49 PM on June 22, 2018 [16 favorites]
Instruct him and document his performance like you would any intern. Contact his school and give an honest assessment. If he doesn’t pass or doesn’t get hired because of this, that is on HIM entirely. Don’t shield him from the consequences of his performance. He’s 35, not 18, and even if he doesn’t know the specific expectations of his role per se, he certainly should know by now that he needs to ask questions and follow instructions and perform the tasks expected of him. I mean for heaven’s sake, he’s been in college the last two years, he should be well used to the idea of fulfilling the rubric of an assignment even if he’s still fuzzy on what’s allowed in a specific workplace culture.
posted by Autumnheart at 7:49 PM on June 22, 2018 [16 favorites]
Is this an internship that may lead to a full time job? If it is just a graduation requirement and it is a pass/fail, that may be the issue.
What I would do is when assigning him a task, I would tell him the task, the reason for it, what you expect at the end and then break it down into its components. Tell him, for the next two days do xyz and when that is finished come to me and I will give you the next step. Break it into much smaller tasks. One, it keeps him from going off on tangents and two, it may help him see both the big picture and how to get to the end by breaking it into parts.
posted by AugustWest at 10:58 PM on June 22, 2018
What I would do is when assigning him a task, I would tell him the task, the reason for it, what you expect at the end and then break it down into its components. Tell him, for the next two days do xyz and when that is finished come to me and I will give you the next step. Break it into much smaller tasks. One, it keeps him from going off on tangents and two, it may help him see both the big picture and how to get to the end by breaking it into parts.
posted by AugustWest at 10:58 PM on June 22, 2018
Best answer: I agree that this is a management goal for you + Bob is not familiar with office culture and requires tlc, which is a part of the interning bargain on your end.
Be amazing and help this individual. You may never directly see rewards (or maybe you will because your boss sees his potential!) but trust that going above and beyond what you are used to is EXACTLY why you are in the position as his mentor.
On a side note as a small biz owner with employees... man, enthusiasm is worth cultivating because when that key is missing or squashed, nothing else is possible. We are all here to help each other, full stop.
posted by jbenben at 11:35 PM on June 22, 2018 [11 favorites]
Be amazing and help this individual. You may never directly see rewards (or maybe you will because your boss sees his potential!) but trust that going above and beyond what you are used to is EXACTLY why you are in the position as his mentor.
On a side note as a small biz owner with employees... man, enthusiasm is worth cultivating because when that key is missing or squashed, nothing else is possible. We are all here to help each other, full stop.
posted by jbenben at 11:35 PM on June 22, 2018 [11 favorites]
I agree that you should spend some time thinking about how you can tell Bob everything you've told us. It will take some time to find the right approach, but you can do it! Both you and Bob will be better for it. Radical Candor is a good book for some guidance on this very thing.
posted by pazazygeek at 12:39 AM on June 23, 2018 [2 favorites]
posted by pazazygeek at 12:39 AM on June 23, 2018 [2 favorites]
Bob is making the transition from blue-collar factory jobs to white-collar office jobs. Even though he's had college in between, you are his first experience of white-collar work. I bet a lot of the problems you are seeing are the differences in blue-collar and white collar culture. For example, you'd like him to ask questions, but in other jobs, "questioning the boss" can be a sign of disrespect and is actively discouraged. He's not a 22-year-old with no job experience, he's a 35-year-old with a decade of experience which actively taught him things you don't want him to do. For this reason, the advice to be explicit about expectations, even his minute-to-minute actions, would be very helpful to him. Also be explicit with the things he's doing good on (enthusiasm, punctuality) so he knows to continue it.
That said, I agree with Autumnheart to not give this guy a pass because he's expecting a child - that essentially punishes all the top-notch interns you've had in the past (and in the future) if he gets the same assessment. Anytime someone's employment opportunities and benefits are determined by something other than their work performance, it's extremely unfair and inappropriate. Consider also that you have no doubt had employees and interns who are also going through significant events in their personal life - probably even more difficult than an established married couple expecting their first child - but those other employees/interns followed professional norms not to bring their personal drama to work, so you didn't hear about it. Is it fair to support someone else over them? Finally, if you become known as a manager who's management decisions can be swayed by hearing a personal-life-sob-story, well, you'll attract employees who are only too happy to have and share lots of personal-life-sob-stories, and the employees that quietly get the job done and expect to be judged on that will get disillusioned and look for jobs elsewhere.
posted by sdrawkcaSSAb at 8:03 AM on June 23, 2018 [6 favorites]
That said, I agree with Autumnheart to not give this guy a pass because he's expecting a child - that essentially punishes all the top-notch interns you've had in the past (and in the future) if he gets the same assessment. Anytime someone's employment opportunities and benefits are determined by something other than their work performance, it's extremely unfair and inappropriate. Consider also that you have no doubt had employees and interns who are also going through significant events in their personal life - probably even more difficult than an established married couple expecting their first child - but those other employees/interns followed professional norms not to bring their personal drama to work, so you didn't hear about it. Is it fair to support someone else over them? Finally, if you become known as a manager who's management decisions can be swayed by hearing a personal-life-sob-story, well, you'll attract employees who are only too happy to have and share lots of personal-life-sob-stories, and the employees that quietly get the job done and expect to be judged on that will get disillusioned and look for jobs elsewhere.
posted by sdrawkcaSSAb at 8:03 AM on June 23, 2018 [6 favorites]
I worked at a company with a lot of interns, and they didn't really do a one-to-one pairing of mentor and mentee, like it sounds like you have. Typically someone high on the org chart would assign the task to the intern, and everyone else in the office would be as available as possible for coaching and checking the work, so that the intern can present a quality result without using too much of the higher-up's time. Is there anyone with experience you could task with checking Bob's understanding at the beginning, and checking his work before he hands it back to you, if you don't have time to do that yourself?
posted by Former Congressional Representative Lenny Lemming at 8:28 AM on June 23, 2018
posted by Former Congressional Representative Lenny Lemming at 8:28 AM on June 23, 2018
I am not a doctor (nor do I play one on tv), but the description of Bob's difficulties sounds like challenges someone with a learning disability might have in the work place.
In the long run, it might save time to check in with Bob more frequently, before he can get too far off track.
Would it be possible for him to split an assignment with a junior staff member? The junior staff member could be responsible for checking in with Bob regularly, and might be a less intimating person to ask questions to.
If not, can you at least provide an opportunity for Bob to observe how someone else receives assigned work? It can be easier to show someone good communication/ managing up skills than to tell someone how to do it.
posted by oceano at 8:58 PM on June 23, 2018
In the long run, it might save time to check in with Bob more frequently, before he can get too far off track.
Would it be possible for him to split an assignment with a junior staff member? The junior staff member could be responsible for checking in with Bob regularly, and might be a less intimating person to ask questions to.
If not, can you at least provide an opportunity for Bob to observe how someone else receives assigned work? It can be easier to show someone good communication/ managing up skills than to tell someone how to do it.
posted by oceano at 8:58 PM on June 23, 2018
The not-asking-questions thing sounds like something I have struggled with in my professional life. In my case it's at least partly due to the fact that I don't extrapolate well (maybe because of my ADD, or maybe just because I'm me) - the "blanks" between steps that need to get done, that others might not even be aware they're filling in mentally, don't come naturally to me. As a result, I find myself needing to ask way, way more questions than I 'should', and those questions are the kind that make other people blink at me and then answer like they don't understand why this is something that should occur to me.
So as a simple example, say my manager tells me "Please file today's documents". Pretty straightforward, right? Except there are steps involved in that - I need to locate today's documents in the multiple places they accumulate, I need to get them back to a central location, I need to know if they each go in a file folder before filing, I need to know where the file folders are and go get them, I need to know what filing system we use (alphabetical? numerical?) and whether all of the files belong in the same location or if they're re-distributed to different rooms for filing, and so on. And it makes me feel like an incompetent to ask a series of questions like that to my manager ("What do you mean, 'Do I use file folders?' o_O"), so often I just...make the best assumptions I can and hope they're right. So sure, putting stuff in file folders seems reasonable; sometimes that will be right, and no one will even notice I paused, but sometimes it will be wrong and I'll look like an idiot for making such an elementary mistake.
I work in a very supportive environment where I was able to explain to my manager that I don't always draw these connections, and he now puts in a bit of extra time to enumerate these types of inter-step steps for me before he sets me off on a task, and to ask if there are any blanks I still can't fill. On my end, I write things down so I don't have to ask the same set of questions multiple times (assuming I don't lose the paper I wrote it on. Which, let's face it, happens).
If Bob's issues are like mine, it might be worth a try walking through one, or even a couple, of his tasks with him, either in practice or hypothetically - "Ok so we did X, what's your next step?" - and see if you find yourself having to fill those blanks for him, which would be a sign you may need to adapt your task assignment style a bit to where Bob is weak, at least while he gets his more-specific routines in place.
posted by Hold your seahorses at 8:21 AM on June 24, 2018 [3 favorites]
So as a simple example, say my manager tells me "Please file today's documents". Pretty straightforward, right? Except there are steps involved in that - I need to locate today's documents in the multiple places they accumulate, I need to get them back to a central location, I need to know if they each go in a file folder before filing, I need to know where the file folders are and go get them, I need to know what filing system we use (alphabetical? numerical?) and whether all of the files belong in the same location or if they're re-distributed to different rooms for filing, and so on. And it makes me feel like an incompetent to ask a series of questions like that to my manager ("What do you mean, 'Do I use file folders?' o_O"), so often I just...make the best assumptions I can and hope they're right. So sure, putting stuff in file folders seems reasonable; sometimes that will be right, and no one will even notice I paused, but sometimes it will be wrong and I'll look like an idiot for making such an elementary mistake.
I work in a very supportive environment where I was able to explain to my manager that I don't always draw these connections, and he now puts in a bit of extra time to enumerate these types of inter-step steps for me before he sets me off on a task, and to ask if there are any blanks I still can't fill. On my end, I write things down so I don't have to ask the same set of questions multiple times (assuming I don't lose the paper I wrote it on. Which, let's face it, happens).
If Bob's issues are like mine, it might be worth a try walking through one, or even a couple, of his tasks with him, either in practice or hypothetically - "Ok so we did X, what's your next step?" - and see if you find yourself having to fill those blanks for him, which would be a sign you may need to adapt your task assignment style a bit to where Bob is weak, at least while he gets his more-specific routines in place.
posted by Hold your seahorses at 8:21 AM on June 24, 2018 [3 favorites]
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I also think it wouldn't be unreasonable to give him a pen and notepad and just tell him that taking notes about his duties is just part of his job, telling him "hey you should probably be writing this down" as you're giving instructions, etc - it's a useful habit to get into, and internships are all about learning these tricks that might not occur to you if you've spent your life working in jobs where they aren't necessary.
posted by btfreek at 6:58 PM on June 22, 2018 [26 favorites]