YMMV, but how would you deal?

July 18, 2017 9:33 PM

I feel like my workplace people skills are suboptimal at best, and I would love some input about how to best deal with colleagues/seniors/people reporting to me. Caveat: workplace culture does not respond well to changes, and places an enormous premium on seniority, meaning : authority cannot be challenged. Details below the jump.

How would you handle-
(1) a very talkative, very disorganized superior you report to, who doesn't seem to grasp the concept that time spent talking (not about work) is time wasted?
(2) workload that has ramped up abruptly due to lack of human resources and looming deadlines? Esp coupled with (1)?
(3) general resentment percolating within a small section about being singled out for extra work by the SuperBoss (who is not reporting senior, and neither is the project, strictly speaking, my responsibility). Note: I asked for neither the extra work nor the extra attention, and am in fact worried that I do not have enough time/resources/knowledge for the former. They say they know I can manage it, with an encouraging smile. Very pleasant, but practically of no help at all.
(4) manage possibly unreasonable expectations about being able to complete personal checklists since a fair bit of work gets reorganized with no warning by superiors
(5) make people reporting to me work harder. I do not like ordering about and I'm so anxious to seem reasonable in my expectations and approachable that I end up doing half their work myself -_- of course they've sized me up as a total sucker.
I like my work proper but this is beginning to make me dread weekday mornings. And it's been less than a year! All help gratefully accepted, thank you!

posted by Nieshka to Work & Money (5 answers total)

As a Manager, my answers:

1)
Try and rethink how you look at this. It can be annoying, but it can also be a gift. If your boss feels like chatting, use it as a moment to air team issues which lead to resolution. Being an effective manager is often as much about using your network as it is plowing through the work.

If not, chat politely for a few minutes, then feign an important call or something similar. "Sorry, Joan-- I need to call Charlie back. Catch you later!!" But I would suck it up and spend at least some time on small talk-- that's a channel you want to keep open.

2)
Use your boss from question number one to get the support you need to make positive changes. She's accessible and she may have the power to influence the HR issues.

Are you talking about your private workload or the workload of your team? There are different strategies depending on which it is.

3)
General resentment from who? You? Your team? Again, many managers would welcome that kind of attention and access.

4)
What do you mean here by personal checklists? You mean your Balanced Score Card goals or something similar?

Generally speaking organisations do have formal or informal processes for changing BSC criteria if the scope of work has changed. I would speak to your supervisor or HR about the need to do so.

5)
Generally speaking, trying to manage how hard people work is useless. Manage on outcomes and review/reward accordingly-- if they get it done by working hard or being lazy doesn't matter at all. If you're doing half their work yourself, that's almost always your problem and not the team. How are you empowering and delegating? Look to how you divide the work.

***

Unsolicited advice/question:

Is this your first management role? I ask, because I end up with a lot of first-time managers in my team who come from specialist roles, and they often have similar issues. From reading this, I would suggest you need to reframe networking/contact a little bit because at least in most workplaces, the things you seem to be most trying to avoid are the things which as a manager you really want to encourage. As a manager, your job is not to power through the work-- your job is to empower your team to get the tasks done. You should be helping negotiate the amount and conditions of the work. You should be troubleshooting where necessary. All of those tasks require contacts like the ones you describe here-- with chatty boss and super boss. Do you have someone in your organisation you trust to mentor or coach you in this assignment?

Apologies if I am misreading you. I would find these quite worrying questions from a direct report if that report was also managing people.
posted by frumiousb at 10:52 PM on July 18, 2017 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: Apologies for threadsitting and perhaps unclear questions.
(1) I used to welcome one on one interactions, till they became a way to discuss office gossip, workplace politics and personal lives. Really, really not down for this for over an hour every day. So far, I've tried redirecting it to team issues etc in as neutral a manner as possible, but I'm afraid my impatience is beginning to show. So much of the chat feels toxic/negative, and I want to not feel that way about a still-newish job.
(2) I have asked. Repeatedly. They say right now things are as they are and I'd just have to deal. They do, however, acknowledge that I'm having to put in far more work than predecessor. But resource wise, no help.
(3) General resentment from the team regarding extra work allocated to me, through a source (I'm not sure if I'm explaining this right, this seems like a point of prestige, perhaps? I'm baffled). I like SuperBoss, and I hope to learn from them, but again, this adds to already rather unmanageable workload. In a previous ask, I've talked abt a crappy commute. I have no more work hours to give.
(4) no, just a general mental checklist of what I hope to finish that day. I fully recognize that reordering priorities happen, but since I'm an irritable perfectionist, I have a hard time when I wanted to do a-b-c, but wound up having to do m-n-o-p instead. Even when it's one extra letter/more work!
(5) Technically manager, but I have a dual role in having independent projects where I do all the work, and some other people pitch in/do a smaller part of some of the projects.
I am an introvert and tend to feel overwhelmed if there's a lot of talking, especially when some of it seems avoidable. Perhaps I should work on that?
posted by Nieshka at 11:20 PM on July 18, 2017

Okay, thanks:

1) Unpleasant. I would probably deal with that myself by figuring out how it could be useful to me. But that may be a bit cold. She sounds lonely and isolated and trying to connect. As above, I would try to limit it with other appointments around it.

2) Okay-- your personal workload then? I would probably start visualizing where I am spending my time and asking clearly what they want me to prioritize. So the answer is never "no" but a request always results in a choice. "I'm really excited about approaching taskY! As it stands right now, I'm pretty fully loaded. As I understand my priorities, then this would come into SlotG. Is that right? That means I might not be able to get to it until week 32. Hope that's okay? No? Can you help me talk to my boss about the priority list?" The more fact-based and the less emotional the better. I just had someone quit over workload, but it turned out to be they were focusing huge energy on a task I considered completely important. I had no idea they were spending 50% of their time on that and would have fixed it earlier if I had known.

3) I still don't fully get this, but indeed in most organizations special projects from the SuperBoss are objects of desire. Can you share out some of the work (and eventually the recognition and the glory) to someone in your team who might have more bandwidth?

4) Yeah, you just need to get over that-- particularly if you are overseeing projects/teams and not just tasks. I just keep a huge to-do list and every day pull out the 5 things each day which are highest priority and work towards those.

I am an introvert and tend to feel overwhelmed if there's a lot of talking, especially when some of it seems avoidable. Perhaps I should work on that? Well, that depends on how you want to manage your career. Yes, it seems to me a good thing to work on if you want to further develop as a manager.
posted by frumiousb at 12:37 AM on July 19, 2017

It is reading to me as if you think there should be no conflict and so you just continually suck it up with no pushback. That makes you a doormat, not a manager.

"I'm sorry, that won't be possible."

"You know I value your input but if you want me to finish X, I need to get back to my desk. Email me?"

"I only have 15 minutes; what's up?"

And in general, you need to put on your management hat and assign shit to people, with deadlines.
posted by DarlingBri at 1:30 AM on July 19, 2017 [2 favorites]

I'm not a manager, though I've worked for a lot of managers - so take my comment with a grain of salt.

I knew a manager who would get her team in a room with a list of everything that needed to get done and just walk through it. "X needs to be wrapped up this week - Bob, any issues? Y has to be finished tomorrow - Karen, you've been working on it, how's that going? Sara, can you pick up these two extra tasks.... " She did this when there was a lot of work missing deadlines or about to miss deadlines, and getting them all in the room and talking about how, as a team, they would handle all the crap that needed to get done, had the effect of team-building and also putting everyone somewhat on the spot in a way that was not aggressive or mean. E-mails can be ignored or responses can be put off. Being asked in front of your whole team to do things in support of the team is really hard to say no to - at least in my experience. And it was also an opportunity for her to figure out where she was needed - as a manager - to help. (Not by doing her staff's work, but by intervening on technical issues, interdepartmental politics, resources, etc).

I'm not a manager but I've spent a fair amount of time trying - often successfully - to get my peers and seniors to do things. When the task first comes up I explain what's needed, set a date and ask them if that seems like a reasonable date and negotiate if necessary. I follow up with them regularly before the deadline to see what progress is being made and if any issues are coming up that will impact meeting the deadline.

Given that you've set an expectation that you'll do a lot of the work your team should be doing, I'd be clear about how you're not going to do that anymore, or will only do so in emergencies.
posted by bunderful at 6:38 PM on July 19, 2017