Help me help you help me.
July 26, 2018 9:07 AM Subscribe
I have a mid-year performance review coming up. Please help me voice my performance needs and concerns to my boss.
About me: I love my job. It is the best thing going on in my life right now. I'm in my dream industry. I want to learn and grow and be around for as long as possible. I've been in my job now for 1.5 years roughly. I have a performance reflection/review due soon.
About the job: We provide services to a number of customers in a creative field. My department is very small and I am the only person who reports to my boss/she is my primary supervisor. A lot of our work is cyclical, like annual reports or quarterly mailings.
About my boss: Boss is a few years younger than me but graduated early from university with an advanced degree I don't have. I consider myself introverted, but she is even more so. To my knowledge she has only managed one other person besides me (my predecessor who only lasted 3 months in the position). I feel like my maturity, my enthusiasm for my position, and my similar intervertsion make me suited to be her report.
About my performance: I think I'm doing ok, but communicating with my boss is causing problems. I have been trying really hard to take initiative on client questions and be self-directed, but a fair portion of the time there seems to be some situation or detail that I don't know about (the client liaison or organization having internal issues, for example, or having worked out a deal regarding a project) that requires my boss to come in after me and "clarify" my statement. Even after a year I feel like I ask too many questions, but I need to do it to avoid making errors. If I avoid responding immediately to a client question because I suspect there is more going on than I know about, I guess I must appear distracted, because my boss sends me a follow up to the email with a terse "Can you please [fix/respond]? Thanks!"
Additionally, despite being next door, my boss avoids talking to me. We can very easily go hours without speaking directly and she tends to only come by my office when she needs to physically give me something. I respect and understand needing time and space to focus and work through things and not clutter the day with small talk (making me feel all the more guilty for asking lots of questions). I have worked with very introverted people successfully in my previous position. Email is more efficient when it comes to providing additional material and/or links to information. All the same, I wish my boss would at least say "good morning" sometimes, or check in to see how I am doing.
Previously: I have raised some of these issues in a previous review/reflection, specifically about wanting to take more initiative but being hindered by the things I don't know that I don't know. My boss has admitted that she could be communicating better, but nothing has really changed. I also volunteered the idea of our department having very small, reasonable celebrations to avoid our cyclical work becoming an endless slog (as Boss had actually used this phrase to describe a project immediately prior to my last review). I included links to articles from Inc. and Harvard Business Review to back up the utility of pausing to acknowledge and celebrate successes and the completion of projects and explained that these celebrations need did not need to be expensive, drawn out, complex, or cribbed from the activities of other more extroverted departments in our office. This idea has essentially disappeared. I mention this NOT because departmental celebrations is the hill I want to die on, but because there is a history of me making (what I thought were) thoughtful suggestions that don't go anywhere.
Additional complicating idea: I worry that my view of the communication situation with Boss is merely a personal failure. Where my boss declines to check in, I ought to be the one coming into her office daily to request a snapshot of project progress, client-specific situations, or the like. This situation could be just my failure to be creative and take initiative.
The freaking question, finally: How should I communicate about my boss' communication with her? Alternately, what plan should I be coming up with to make up for this dearth of communication?
Thank you.
About me: I love my job. It is the best thing going on in my life right now. I'm in my dream industry. I want to learn and grow and be around for as long as possible. I've been in my job now for 1.5 years roughly. I have a performance reflection/review due soon.
About the job: We provide services to a number of customers in a creative field. My department is very small and I am the only person who reports to my boss/she is my primary supervisor. A lot of our work is cyclical, like annual reports or quarterly mailings.
About my boss: Boss is a few years younger than me but graduated early from university with an advanced degree I don't have. I consider myself introverted, but she is even more so. To my knowledge she has only managed one other person besides me (my predecessor who only lasted 3 months in the position). I feel like my maturity, my enthusiasm for my position, and my similar intervertsion make me suited to be her report.
About my performance: I think I'm doing ok, but communicating with my boss is causing problems. I have been trying really hard to take initiative on client questions and be self-directed, but a fair portion of the time there seems to be some situation or detail that I don't know about (the client liaison or organization having internal issues, for example, or having worked out a deal regarding a project) that requires my boss to come in after me and "clarify" my statement. Even after a year I feel like I ask too many questions, but I need to do it to avoid making errors. If I avoid responding immediately to a client question because I suspect there is more going on than I know about, I guess I must appear distracted, because my boss sends me a follow up to the email with a terse "Can you please [fix/respond]? Thanks!"
Additionally, despite being next door, my boss avoids talking to me. We can very easily go hours without speaking directly and she tends to only come by my office when she needs to physically give me something. I respect and understand needing time and space to focus and work through things and not clutter the day with small talk (making me feel all the more guilty for asking lots of questions). I have worked with very introverted people successfully in my previous position. Email is more efficient when it comes to providing additional material and/or links to information. All the same, I wish my boss would at least say "good morning" sometimes, or check in to see how I am doing.
Previously: I have raised some of these issues in a previous review/reflection, specifically about wanting to take more initiative but being hindered by the things I don't know that I don't know. My boss has admitted that she could be communicating better, but nothing has really changed. I also volunteered the idea of our department having very small, reasonable celebrations to avoid our cyclical work becoming an endless slog (as Boss had actually used this phrase to describe a project immediately prior to my last review). I included links to articles from Inc. and Harvard Business Review to back up the utility of pausing to acknowledge and celebrate successes and the completion of projects and explained that these celebrations need did not need to be expensive, drawn out, complex, or cribbed from the activities of other more extroverted departments in our office. This idea has essentially disappeared. I mention this NOT because departmental celebrations is the hill I want to die on, but because there is a history of me making (what I thought were) thoughtful suggestions that don't go anywhere.
Additional complicating idea: I worry that my view of the communication situation with Boss is merely a personal failure. Where my boss declines to check in, I ought to be the one coming into her office daily to request a snapshot of project progress, client-specific situations, or the like. This situation could be just my failure to be creative and take initiative.
The freaking question, finally: How should I communicate about my boss' communication with her? Alternately, what plan should I be coming up with to make up for this dearth of communication?
Thank you.
I meant to add: Scheduled, structured meetings might also be more comfortable for an introverted boss than random pop-ins.
posted by lazuli at 9:16 AM on July 26, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by lazuli at 9:16 AM on July 26, 2018 [1 favorite]
Seconding "schedule check-ins/1-on-1's weekly or every other week." A possible format for those, derived from some software development approaches, could go:
- what do we plan to work on next? is there anything we're concerned about or blocked on?
- what's working? what's been awesome lately?
- what isn't working? what can we do better?
Just talking about the bits she and you consider excellent and in need of improvement on a more frequent basis might help a lot, especially if, as you say, each year involves similar-ish work on similar-ish projects and reports.
posted by bagel at 9:36 AM on July 26, 2018 [4 favorites]
- what do we plan to work on next? is there anything we're concerned about or blocked on?
- what's working? what's been awesome lately?
- what isn't working? what can we do better?
Just talking about the bits she and you consider excellent and in need of improvement on a more frequent basis might help a lot, especially if, as you say, each year involves similar-ish work on similar-ish projects and reports.
posted by bagel at 9:36 AM on July 26, 2018 [4 favorites]
It seems like you're spending a lot of energy guessing at your boss' mental state. Just outline the factors you are weighing, and ask which approach she would prefer.
In terms of communication, it sounds like what you're missing are details of the client interaction that the boss didn't tell you about, and that you need a shared document outlining information about the clients. This might mean a big white board with a bunch of check marks as standard steps are completed, or an online document or shared email account that relevant email threads go into for easy referral when you get a request--it will depend on exactly what the sore spots are. It may also make more sense for you to take more ownership of a subset of the clients and pass the relevant info up to her; since you're concerned about adding to her workload, maybe you'd be better positions as the person doing the communicating.
If you think some departmental camaraderie would help, take the initiative in organizing an all-staff breakfast or something. I'm not sure how it was phrased, but if it came up in an annual review and wasn't nixed, I'd assume it was your responsibility to implement.
posted by tchemgrrl at 9:59 AM on July 26, 2018
In terms of communication, it sounds like what you're missing are details of the client interaction that the boss didn't tell you about, and that you need a shared document outlining information about the clients. This might mean a big white board with a bunch of check marks as standard steps are completed, or an online document or shared email account that relevant email threads go into for easy referral when you get a request--it will depend on exactly what the sore spots are. It may also make more sense for you to take more ownership of a subset of the clients and pass the relevant info up to her; since you're concerned about adding to her workload, maybe you'd be better positions as the person doing the communicating.
If you think some departmental camaraderie would help, take the initiative in organizing an all-staff breakfast or something. I'm not sure how it was phrased, but if it came up in an annual review and wasn't nixed, I'd assume it was your responsibility to implement.
posted by tchemgrrl at 9:59 AM on July 26, 2018
If I avoid responding immediately to a client question because I suspect there is more going on than I know about, I guess I must appear distracted, because my boss sends me a follow up to the email with a terse "Can you please [fix/respond]? Thanks!"
Bring this up specifically. Don't tell your boss she's being terse, but the rest. Explain this situation, tell your boss how often it happens (a few times a week? A few times a month?) and ask her how you should respond in these cases. If you don't get a good answer from her, assume this is not going to change.
All the same, I wish my boss would at least say "good morning" sometimes, or check in to see how I am doing.
You can't ask for this. To be quite honest, most people would be uncomfortable with a boss saying good morning or checking in on you: bosses who do it are perceived as micromanagers who want to make sure you're showing up on time and punching the clock, which is odd in an office setting. I do agree with the other comments that recommend setting up a weekly in-person check-in. Everyone should have weekly check-ins, not just introverts! And yes, weekly, not daily.
If you think some departmental camaraderie would help, take the initiative in organizing an all-staff breakfast or something.
Yep, this is right. Go ahead and take this on as your own project.
posted by capricorn at 10:56 AM on July 26, 2018 [1 favorite]
Bring this up specifically. Don't tell your boss she's being terse, but the rest. Explain this situation, tell your boss how often it happens (a few times a week? A few times a month?) and ask her how you should respond in these cases. If you don't get a good answer from her, assume this is not going to change.
All the same, I wish my boss would at least say "good morning" sometimes, or check in to see how I am doing.
You can't ask for this. To be quite honest, most people would be uncomfortable with a boss saying good morning or checking in on you: bosses who do it are perceived as micromanagers who want to make sure you're showing up on time and punching the clock, which is odd in an office setting. I do agree with the other comments that recommend setting up a weekly in-person check-in. Everyone should have weekly check-ins, not just introverts! And yes, weekly, not daily.
If you think some departmental camaraderie would help, take the initiative in organizing an all-staff breakfast or something.
Yep, this is right. Go ahead and take this on as your own project.
posted by capricorn at 10:56 AM on July 26, 2018 [1 favorite]
As a mild introvert with a more-introverted boss I would like to nth the suggestion of scheduling a regular meeting. It has been very helpful for me, and I think even for my boss and just getting things done in general.
posted by breakin' the law at 10:56 AM on July 26, 2018 [2 favorites]
posted by breakin' the law at 10:56 AM on July 26, 2018 [2 favorites]
I wasn't 30 seconds into reading your question when I was thinking 'scheduled 1:1 meetings.' The frequency of these is agenda-driven (my own team went from weekly to biweekly when projects were completed), but the more I work in a corporate setting the more I realize how much my day-to-day is improved with regular communication.
posted by Everydayville at 4:19 PM on July 26, 2018
posted by Everydayville at 4:19 PM on July 26, 2018
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Weekly check-ins may not solve all the barriers you're facing, but they'd at least set up a foundation for building the relationship and your comfort with your work.
posted by lazuli at 9:16 AM on July 26, 2018 [9 favorites]