I offered to train my colleague on a new system but he refuses. Why?

June 24, 2022 3:07 PM

I am responsible for implementing our fleet's new mobile device management system. Since my colleague has no experience in this system and will have to use it, I have offered him training, but he refuses. Why?

My colleague is the same age as me, officially has the same role as me, and started working at the company two months before I did.

Recently I suggested to our bosses that we implement a new mobile device management system, and I was asked to investigate this further. Two weeks ago, I implemented a free demo version from IBM on one of our devices. I asked my colleague if he wanted to see it and try it out. He told me: "Yeahhhhhhh, no, I don't want to be trained by you."

Today I got the go-ahead to start rolling it out to our fleet. Again, I asked him if he would like to see the demo now that we will be rolling it out. He responded: "No, I don't want you to train me; I will wing it on my own."

Our bosses have all lined up to see and try the demos and learn as much as they can about the new system. Yet my colleague who will be significantly affected by this new system has refused to even see it.

I am only trying to be helpful in introducing him to the new system.

Why is he so against me showing him how to use this new system?

I am autistic, and office politics and nuances don't make much sense to me. It seems counterproductive to refuse training from someone at work.

As a side note, this colleague has always acted like he is superior to me. When I first started working at the company, he would constantly eavesdrop on my conversations, and he would audit my work, then send out a mass email to management that he found discrepancies in what I did. I reported him to our manager about this. She apparently told him to back off.

Any advice or tips to make sense of this would be appreciated.

posted by 8LeggedFriend to Work & Money (19 answers total)

He believes he can figure it out on his own, without your assistance. Also, given your comment that he's always acted superior to you he probably believes he doesn't need your assistance.

You've offered to train him. He said no. Now it's his problem to figure out. The end.
posted by ralan at 3:14 PM on June 24, 2022 [35 favorites]

If what you write is accurate, then reason is pretty simple: Your colleague feels they are (or should be) superior to you in status and thinks that accepting training from you would show they are NOT actually superior. You can't train someone that doesn't want to learn, and the fact that they said it was about you and not the material means you should not try to push this. For these situations you want to say things like "Here's what the new system looks like so far, do you want to look at it" instead of "Do you want me to train you on how the new system works", but from what you write you already tried to frame it that way.

At a Psychology level the reason this is not "counterproductive" is that this person cares more about feeling superior to you then they do about doing a good job at work. They might think they are "management material" and that acting superior will get them promoted. Or, they may just be an asshole and this will backfire on them. It sounds like you've done what you can here and your boss is already aware that this person doesn't like you.
posted by JZig at 3:23 PM on June 24, 2022 [10 favorites]

Argh, that's sounding like a painful situation. Some questions:

What happens if this person doesn't get involved?

Are they in good with some people above you?

Has their seniority come up in discussions with you before? It's not much in some ways, but it also is what it is...

Some ideas:

You might be more focused on competence than you are on communication style or relationship factors, and this could have impacted your colleague's decisionmaking process (they might not even be happy about that--feelings are weird).

Some people metabolize those things in reverse order. So you could be putting the cart before the horse with this person, metaphorically, by trying to put your competency ("I'll train you, I'm good at this, no worries") before the relationship ("I'll do my best to build a healthy working relationship with you if I can, and then over time we'll somehow work things out together.")

Also, some people are extremely proud of their ability to figure things out without any training, and they come to resent training. They've probably had experience after experience where "training" was useless to them.

Suggestions:

In any case it would probably help you to come up with a bunch of options for this person's involvement, and give them opportunities to decide on those options. This will also help you build up a case that shows you being easier to work with than they might be representing.

I would avoid the word "training" at all costs. Call it something else. Or ask them for help with something you don't yet understand. Drop your competency wall a bit to let this person get involved and interested. Let them start to train themselves, see how it goes.

It can also help to try just a little bit of reverse psychology, and see how it goes. Here's an example that would probably be more easily broken down into several conversations: "Look, I know you don't want to be trained by me, you expressed that very directly. But our bosses are interested in this, and I want to know how you're going to be involved here so that I can help us both look good. So, are you just looking to not get involved and watch this fail? I could really use your help, and I didn't mean to offend by offering the training. I know you are competent." That's a lot for one convo though...

Just some ideas. Good luck.
posted by circular at 3:25 PM on June 24, 2022

Yes he thinks he's smarter than you. If I had a dollar for every coworker who told me they didn't need my help with something that they so very clearly did need help with, well. I couldn't retire but I could probably commission a model of my middle finger cast in lucite to put on my desk.

Keep your receipts. Just a little folder or something with screenshots of all the times you offered and he shot you down. That way if he ever goes to your boss after he gets something on fire railing about how he wasn't adequately trained you can put him in his place nice and quick.
posted by phunniemee at 3:25 PM on June 24, 2022 [25 favorites]

Before reading your side note I would have assumed this is simply a case of someone who learns better poking at the software on their own than being trained. Some of us simply work better that way. I don’t think I’ve ever had a software training that wasn’t a waste of time compared to just giving me half that amount of time on my own with the system documentation. It’s just a thing about how my own neurodivergent brain works, and I know myself well enough to know that it’s a better use of everyone’s time for me to get myself up to speed and then just ask for specific help if there’s a particular feature I can’t sort out.

If that were the case I’d say either leave it alone and let him learn his own way, or figure out from your manager if training is an actual *requirement*. If the latter, let them deliver that news formally to everyone it applies to.

Based on your side note, though, it sounds like this guy’s got some weird interpersonal issue. Maybe it’s about you as a person or maybe it’s just about anyone in your role. Who knows? If you’d like, you could approach your manager about it. I think in your shoes I might choose to approach it just as I would without the interpersonal thing, though. If the training’s mandated then he needs to take it, but if not, you’ve offered, he’s declined, and that’s his problem to manage now. If his lack of training eventually causes problems then address those problems as they come up.
posted by Stacey at 3:35 PM on June 24, 2022 [12 favorites]

and started working at the company two months before I did.

this colleague has always acted like he is superior to me. When I first started working at the company, he would constantly eavesdrop on my conversations, and he would audit my work, then send out a mass email to management that he found discrepancies in what I did. I reported him to our manager about this. She apparently told him to back off.

$100 says that in his brain that biiiiiiig 60 day difference (heavy sarcasm) plus maybe the part where you're neuro-divergent means that he's your "superior", and he's mad that he tried to act like that and got busted for it, and more mad that you came up with this new idea and got the go ahead from the bosses. (You went "over his head".) He's assuming authority he doesn't really have.

He's being a childish dick. You offered, he refused, now you let him sink or swim on his own. Leave him be. And hey, maybe it'll work out and he'll figure it out. Or maybe he's in the "fuck around" phase, and pretty soon he'll find out that refusing training was not a good idea.
posted by soundguy99 at 4:04 PM on June 24, 2022 [4 favorites]

Like Bartleby, he prefers not to.
posted by jenfullmoon at 4:23 PM on June 24, 2022

Sounds like ego and insecurity to me, and definitely counterproductive.
posted by Gravel at 4:36 PM on June 24, 2022 [1 favorite]

Could you just let him not be trained and suffer the consequences? Or would this make your job harder?
If he specifically doesn’t want training from you, is it expected he’d be trained by a manager? (Who’s been trained by you?)
posted by Jon_Evil at 5:09 PM on June 24, 2022 [2 favorites]

It sounds like he doesn't like you. That's enough for him to want to avoid you at work.
posted by medusa at 5:16 PM on June 24, 2022 [4 favorites]

I think a lot of the comments are right about this guy specifically, but in light of your last Ask, I think it's worth looking into why there's so much pushback against this system from different areas of the company. I wonder if the reason he doesn't want you to train him is related to the reason the end users are having trouble learning it.
posted by kevinbelt at 6:16 PM on June 24, 2022

I agree with the others: the guy is a jerk who feels superior to you, and he does not want to be in what he sees as a one-down position by having you train him. He's also an immature jerk who is prepared to let his work performance suffer for his ego.

In any case, none of this is your problem. You've offered the information and your boss knows it. If this guy's cluelessness cause problems for the company, they will need to make their expectations clear to him. In the meantime, the best thing you can do is get on with your own stuff.
posted by rpfields at 6:27 PM on June 24, 2022 [2 favorites]

I don't have much more to add to the above responses except that I suggest that you document this refusal, either by asking him one more time in front of your boss (if you have not already) or by emailing him and cc'ing your boss so that (ideally) he replies all to refuse training again (or if he doesn't cc your boss, absolutely forward his response to your boss). Also make sure that your boss's attention is drawn to his documented refusal so it's not forgotten. You just want to ensure you're protected if he then turns around and blames you for any issues he has with the new system that are really just caused by his self-important ineptitude.
posted by urbanlenny at 7:14 PM on June 24, 2022 [5 favorites]

I don't think it matters whether he thinks he doesn't need to be trained by you, because it doesn't sound like it's actually required that he be trained by you. Lots of people will opt out of being trained if it's not mandatory.

For whatever it's worth, I have refused to be trained by someone at work; I was motivated by both my personal learning preference and a dislike of this person and their training style. I was more polite about it than your colleague, but my colleague expressed the same puzzlement as you have (and I think was also somewhat offended), and brought it up to my manager. This did not go well for her, so I would recommend making sure that if you bring this up to your management that you are thoughtful about it.
posted by sm1tten at 7:34 PM on June 24, 2022 [4 favorites]

Whether this guy is a jerk or not, people learn in different ways. There's a very good chance he just wants to learn the system on his own. And if he currently doesn't like you, for whatever reason, following a lot of the advice here isn't going to make him like you any more. You offered, he declined. Unless it's in your job description to train people, then move on.
posted by jonathanhughes at 7:44 PM on June 24, 2022 [4 favorites]

No need to worry about it. You offered twice, he refused twice. One can only "hit head upon brick wall" so many times. If he fails, that's not your fault.
posted by kschang at 9:03 PM on June 24, 2022 [4 favorites]

As a side note, this colleague has always acted like he is superior to me.

Seems like you have your own fairly plausible working hypothesis aready - he wants to feel superior to you, and he can't do that, if you teach him something. That's quite possible!

He might also quite legitmately feel that winging it would be more effective for him. Not everyone learns best through teacher-led instruction. In such a situation I might say "Thank you so much for that offer! I usually learn best by trial and error, but it's great to know that I can ask you, if I get stuck."

The way your colleague phrased that does sound to me like he's being rude on purpose. He clearly thinks you two are not compatible and wants to minimize interactions with you as much as possible. I would feel offended too, because that's obviously the point of the exercise. But there's a bright side: at least, he's in no way being ambiguous. You know where you stand with him and can act accordingly - that's one relationship you don't have to waste any time and energy on improving.
posted by sohalt at 12:07 AM on June 25, 2022 [1 favorite]

A lot of people don’t care if they’re good at their job or if they do it in the most efficient way possible and don’t have a desire to learn more information that would improve their understanding of their domain, and most of the time, that’s fine. They have other priorities and that’s ok. It’s ok to just let people be bad/inefficient at their jobs.
posted by ohneat at 12:26 AM on June 25, 2022 [1 favorite]

I'm on team "maybe software/app things are things he can figure out in 5 minutes of looking around or reading the documentation" and "doesn't want to spend 30 minutes or an hour sitting around listening to somebody try to explain to him things he already knows". Your training is for the people who don't understand the new software. You both work at the approximate same level, he already knows what you're going to be teaching the people who don't understand.

On the second part. It's actually a duty of even slightly senior team members to look over the work and point out mistakes of junior team members (at least for a while). Ideally that's intra-team knowledge transfer and catching things before they get up to management. If you see something wrong, do something about it, point it out, or fix it. Put out the fire at the first signs of smoke.

It would be terrible if he noticed and said nothing and just waited for some shit to hit the fan all while sitting around smirking.

Hopefully, eventually, team members figure each other out. Even start trading off tasks based on preferences and competencies. Everybody is a bit better or happier when doing certain things, and most can actually do any task reasonably well enough to cover or help.

Training sessions are usually boring and at best there's free food or a good chance to get out of work for a while. It might even be in the job description or was even asked to keep an eye on the new person. You two just might not be easily compatible friends right from the start easy. And yes, just let him shoot himself in the foot.
posted by zengargoyle at 5:43 AM on June 25, 2022