my junior colleague won't seek my input
May 27, 2022 3:50 PM Subscribe
I am the most senior person on a small team that is currently without a direct manager. My junior teammate puts their hand up for every task, but does not seek peer review unless he is forced to (which is standard practice in our work). This sometimes leads to more time on corrections or lower quality than if he just ran more of his decisions by me. How do I get this person to want more peer feedback, or should I let it go?
I spent more than two hours yesterday putting in a correction for something junior colleague did, and this morning I had to point out that a report he had already sent direct to the CEO without asking anyone included data he didn't intend to include. Neither of these were end of the world mistakes, or mistakes I wouldn't make myself on an off day, but he's more junior and it shows in his work. I'm not his boss but I do have better judgement born of 6+ more years experience and a higher degree and title than he has, but I'm pretty sure he doesn't ask for peer review in part to prove I'm his peer not his superior (I'm not under consideration to be nor do I want it) or so he can take credit by doing things alone thinking it will help him get promoted to my level. He is the type to give his opinion at every turn, whether or not he has all the background knowledge. Increasing independence and scope is a marker of seniority in our work, but he has the mixed judgement normal for someone only a few years out of undergrad and has blinders about it. I think I contributed to this dynamic somehow in our interactions by pointing out necessary corrections he needed to make (also a very standard formal technical process in our work) and he does take correction when it's clear that 2+ 2 != 5, but he won't stop being a cowboy when he has a chance unless I get out in front of him. We have informal venues and formal processes for peer review, he's just choosing not to use them even though it could be as simple as asking "I'm thinking a round handle on this teapot I'm making, agree?" in Slack. Our acting boss is too high level and busy and too far away from the day to day of our work to see this and I would look petty for pointing it out because it hasn't resulted in disaster. Is there anything I can say to junior colleague to get across the point he would produce higher quality output and get on my level faster by asking my opinion on how to execute or checking his output with me or our other teammate before it is final more often? Is it better to let it go, let most of his mistakes slide unless they're big enough to cause a very visible or costly problem, since I'm not his manager and not at all interested in becoming one, and he's clearly not interested in learning from my greater experience?
I spent more than two hours yesterday putting in a correction for something junior colleague did, and this morning I had to point out that a report he had already sent direct to the CEO without asking anyone included data he didn't intend to include. Neither of these were end of the world mistakes, or mistakes I wouldn't make myself on an off day, but he's more junior and it shows in his work. I'm not his boss but I do have better judgement born of 6+ more years experience and a higher degree and title than he has, but I'm pretty sure he doesn't ask for peer review in part to prove I'm his peer not his superior (I'm not under consideration to be nor do I want it) or so he can take credit by doing things alone thinking it will help him get promoted to my level. He is the type to give his opinion at every turn, whether or not he has all the background knowledge. Increasing independence and scope is a marker of seniority in our work, but he has the mixed judgement normal for someone only a few years out of undergrad and has blinders about it. I think I contributed to this dynamic somehow in our interactions by pointing out necessary corrections he needed to make (also a very standard formal technical process in our work) and he does take correction when it's clear that 2+ 2 != 5, but he won't stop being a cowboy when he has a chance unless I get out in front of him. We have informal venues and formal processes for peer review, he's just choosing not to use them even though it could be as simple as asking "I'm thinking a round handle on this teapot I'm making, agree?" in Slack. Our acting boss is too high level and busy and too far away from the day to day of our work to see this and I would look petty for pointing it out because it hasn't resulted in disaster. Is there anything I can say to junior colleague to get across the point he would produce higher quality output and get on my level faster by asking my opinion on how to execute or checking his output with me or our other teammate before it is final more often? Is it better to let it go, let most of his mistakes slide unless they're big enough to cause a very visible or costly problem, since I'm not his manager and not at all interested in becoming one, and he's clearly not interested in learning from my greater experience?
I spent more than two hours yesterday putting in a correction for something junior colleague did
Was this after soliciting peer feedback, or a revision sent back by stakeholders, or just something you voluntarily did before it went to stakeholders? I assume not (a). If (b), can you make him do the revision? If (c), can you just.. not?
IOW I’d say let it go wherever possible. It doesn’t reflect on you; if it doesn’t even rise to the level of you boss noticing it doesn’t reflect on your team, etc. Don’t be a MacLeod Clueless by letting it get to you, to the point of doing extra work for no benefit. Your boss has no reason to intervene if you’re doing all the hard parts of managing with zero authority or additional compensation.
posted by supercres at 4:40 PM on May 27, 2022 [4 favorites]
Was this after soliciting peer feedback, or a revision sent back by stakeholders, or just something you voluntarily did before it went to stakeholders? I assume not (a). If (b), can you make him do the revision? If (c), can you just.. not?
IOW I’d say let it go wherever possible. It doesn’t reflect on you; if it doesn’t even rise to the level of you boss noticing it doesn’t reflect on your team, etc. Don’t be a MacLeod Clueless by letting it get to you, to the point of doing extra work for no benefit. Your boss has no reason to intervene if you’re doing all the hard parts of managing with zero authority or additional compensation.
posted by supercres at 4:40 PM on May 27, 2022 [4 favorites]
I’ve worked at places like this, and to be honest, I found it pretty off-putting. Some of that is due to the peer reviewers - they had a tendency to impose their preferences even if they didn’t actually matter. To use your example, one person in particular would always suggest square teapot handles, even if a round handle made sense and worked in the context of the project, just because she preferred square handles. Between formal processes like that and the fact that I’m pretty introverted, I just didn’t feel super comfortable asking for informal peer review. It felt like inviting condescension.
But really, what I learned from those jobs is that the reason they implemented peer review processes is because they didn’t put much effort into training. They’d throw us onto projects with only a couple days of “classroom” training and no shadowing or anything like that. Then we’d make mistakes, or miss deadlines, and the higher-ups would get upset and suggest solutions. The solution was never more training. The solution was peer review. That in turn led to the senior co-workers being able to take on fewer projects, because they were busy peer reviewing, so we had to hire more junior positions, but that meant more mistakes. The problems never got solved, because the root issue (junior people not being trained) was never addressed. So yeah, I’m skeptical of peer review.
On the other hand, I’ve had quite a few quality mentor relationships with more senior colleagues. Rather than only interacting during peer reviews, they would reach out to me early, often during my first week, and establish a social relationship first. Then, since we were friends, I’d feel comfortable asking them questions later on. These are some of my fondest work memories. So that’s my advice: don’t be a senior colleague offering to “review” their work. Be a friend whom they choose to talk to.
posted by kevinbelt at 4:45 PM on May 27, 2022 [1 favorite]
But really, what I learned from those jobs is that the reason they implemented peer review processes is because they didn’t put much effort into training. They’d throw us onto projects with only a couple days of “classroom” training and no shadowing or anything like that. Then we’d make mistakes, or miss deadlines, and the higher-ups would get upset and suggest solutions. The solution was never more training. The solution was peer review. That in turn led to the senior co-workers being able to take on fewer projects, because they were busy peer reviewing, so we had to hire more junior positions, but that meant more mistakes. The problems never got solved, because the root issue (junior people not being trained) was never addressed. So yeah, I’m skeptical of peer review.
On the other hand, I’ve had quite a few quality mentor relationships with more senior colleagues. Rather than only interacting during peer reviews, they would reach out to me early, often during my first week, and establish a social relationship first. Then, since we were friends, I’d feel comfortable asking them questions later on. These are some of my fondest work memories. So that’s my advice: don’t be a senior colleague offering to “review” their work. Be a friend whom they choose to talk to.
posted by kevinbelt at 4:45 PM on May 27, 2022 [1 favorite]
I was 99% sure you were female before checking your profile. Hang him out to dry. You have my sympathies.
posted by cyndigo at 5:25 PM on May 27, 2022 [25 favorites]
posted by cyndigo at 5:25 PM on May 27, 2022 [25 favorites]
he won't stop being a cowboy when he has a chance unless I get out in front of him
Don’t bother. Let him make public, obvious mistakes. Don’t give him feedback unless he asks. Put him out of your mind. And, most importantly, he can clean up his own mistakes by fielding a call from the CEO about the wrong data or carrying out that 2-hour correction.
If he doesn’t want to learn lessons the easy way (i.e., through you) then he can learn the hard way (i.e., through getting exposed). He will either learn, or he won’t. If you’re not his manager, it’s none of your concern nor responsibility.
posted by cranberrymonger at 9:10 PM on May 27, 2022 [8 favorites]
Don’t bother. Let him make public, obvious mistakes. Don’t give him feedback unless he asks. Put him out of your mind. And, most importantly, he can clean up his own mistakes by fielding a call from the CEO about the wrong data or carrying out that 2-hour correction.
If he doesn’t want to learn lessons the easy way (i.e., through you) then he can learn the hard way (i.e., through getting exposed). He will either learn, or he won’t. If you’re not his manager, it’s none of your concern nor responsibility.
posted by cranberrymonger at 9:10 PM on May 27, 2022 [8 favorites]
I agree with the great advice above: if you don’t have a supervisory relationship with this colleague, his mistakes are his own to explain and correct. If he makes enough of them, your distant boss will have to get involved.
It is entirely possible that when the boss realizes what is going on, they will appoint an official leader for your team. Don’t let that be you without formal authority given to you in front of the team, if you even want to go there.
posted by rpfields at 9:38 PM on May 27, 2022 [3 favorites]
It is entirely possible that when the boss realizes what is going on, they will appoint an official leader for your team. Don’t let that be you without formal authority given to you in front of the team, if you even want to go there.
posted by rpfields at 9:38 PM on May 27, 2022 [3 favorites]
There's nothing wrong with wanting to guide a junior colleague but it's voluntary, not obligatory. In this case it also seems like a waste of time because you're coming up against 3 problems which are generic to young men.
These problems are the Dunning Kruger effect - where a person overestimates their ability until they've got enough experience to realise that things are more complicated than they initially thought - the natural confidence of the young man, and your age gap.
When you're a young man there is a sense of power and potential running through you that sometimes makes you feel like you could do anything. It's a combination of testosterone and ignorance. The world is vast + you have all the ability in the world, so why wouldn't you be confident?
Then you experience failure in the real world, and the concordant disappointment and embarrassment, and eventually you learn the lessons, grow up, and become - hopefully - less over-confident, more realistic, and better at understanding how your behaviour impacts others.
But whilst you're in that glory phase you feel unstoppable, and combined with the Dunning-Kruger effect of being new (both in your job and at adult life), you are generally not amenable to help or advice. This is not specific to your colleague, many, many young men have gone through this, and more will go through it in the generations to come.
(I am assuming here that your colleague is fairly young, but I've seen people still in this phase in their 30s when they change career, hit the Dunning-Kruger effect, and haven't got the emotional maturity that you'd hope for by then. Also, Dunning-Kruger isn't specific to men but it certainly seems to be more obvious in men, especially younger men.)
Finally there is the problem that you are only 6 years older than him. That is just not old enough to be a mentor figure at this stage in his career. If your preferences match you might actually be someone he'd try to pull at a bar, because you're close enough in age. As he appears to still be in a stage of his life where he wants to prove how good he is, coming to you for guidance is the last thing he'll want to do. Besides, this stuff is pretty easy, and he can do anything, so why would he need guidance anyway, right?
(there's a huge amount of things to say around privilege, power, patriarchy, etc, in all that so caveats, nuances, and so on, but that would be a different question to answer)
Whether that's a useful analysis or not, nthing all the others who say that he is not your mess to clean up, or your job to oversee. The major way people learn is by making mistakes, feeling the consequences, and wanting to avoid those consequences in the future, so don't take those valuable experiences away from him. He needs to learn these things himself.
posted by underclocked at 1:18 AM on May 28, 2022 [2 favorites]
These problems are the Dunning Kruger effect - where a person overestimates their ability until they've got enough experience to realise that things are more complicated than they initially thought - the natural confidence of the young man, and your age gap.
When you're a young man there is a sense of power and potential running through you that sometimes makes you feel like you could do anything. It's a combination of testosterone and ignorance. The world is vast + you have all the ability in the world, so why wouldn't you be confident?
Then you experience failure in the real world, and the concordant disappointment and embarrassment, and eventually you learn the lessons, grow up, and become - hopefully - less over-confident, more realistic, and better at understanding how your behaviour impacts others.
But whilst you're in that glory phase you feel unstoppable, and combined with the Dunning-Kruger effect of being new (both in your job and at adult life), you are generally not amenable to help or advice. This is not specific to your colleague, many, many young men have gone through this, and more will go through it in the generations to come.
(I am assuming here that your colleague is fairly young, but I've seen people still in this phase in their 30s when they change career, hit the Dunning-Kruger effect, and haven't got the emotional maturity that you'd hope for by then. Also, Dunning-Kruger isn't specific to men but it certainly seems to be more obvious in men, especially younger men.)
Finally there is the problem that you are only 6 years older than him. That is just not old enough to be a mentor figure at this stage in his career. If your preferences match you might actually be someone he'd try to pull at a bar, because you're close enough in age. As he appears to still be in a stage of his life where he wants to prove how good he is, coming to you for guidance is the last thing he'll want to do. Besides, this stuff is pretty easy, and he can do anything, so why would he need guidance anyway, right?
(there's a huge amount of things to say around privilege, power, patriarchy, etc, in all that so caveats, nuances, and so on, but that would be a different question to answer)
Whether that's a useful analysis or not, nthing all the others who say that he is not your mess to clean up, or your job to oversee. The major way people learn is by making mistakes, feeling the consequences, and wanting to avoid those consequences in the future, so don't take those valuable experiences away from him. He needs to learn these things himself.
posted by underclocked at 1:18 AM on May 28, 2022 [2 favorites]
I’ve seen this behavior in many different work environments, especially office/white-collar environments, super-especially in tech/dev environments. Many younger workers simply don’t see older teammates as equals, let alone superiors. You have the double-whammy of not being their official superior/manager.
I think you need to let your younger teammate publicly fail on their own, rather than proactively clean-up their mistakes. They learn nothing from you doing their work.
posted by Thorzdad at 4:05 AM on May 28, 2022 [1 favorite]
I think you need to let your younger teammate publicly fail on their own, rather than proactively clean-up their mistakes. They learn nothing from you doing their work.
posted by Thorzdad at 4:05 AM on May 28, 2022 [1 favorite]
I spent more than two hours yesterday putting in a correction for something junior colleague did
Why? Has someone told you that fixing his mistakes is a part of your job? What would happen if you stopped holding his hand and stopped stepping in to assist him? He's made clear he doesn't want that, and it's clearly annoying you, so I say just stop doing it. He'll either figure out on his own that he needs more help, or he'll make a serious enough mistake that someone with authority over him will notice. Either way, this is not your circus, not your monkeys. He clearly doesn't respect you (and yes, I too suspect sexism is at play), so why help him?
posted by decathecting at 6:40 PM on May 28, 2022 [4 favorites]
Why? Has someone told you that fixing his mistakes is a part of your job? What would happen if you stopped holding his hand and stopped stepping in to assist him? He's made clear he doesn't want that, and it's clearly annoying you, so I say just stop doing it. He'll either figure out on his own that he needs more help, or he'll make a serious enough mistake that someone with authority over him will notice. Either way, this is not your circus, not your monkeys. He clearly doesn't respect you (and yes, I too suspect sexism is at play), so why help him?
posted by decathecting at 6:40 PM on May 28, 2022 [4 favorites]
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by theotherdurassister at 4:25 PM on May 27, 2022 [3 favorites]