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Hello everyone;

I have a direct (she is not officially a direct but my boss unofficially tasks me with managing her workload and tasks) who recently got left off of a recognition email from a Director-level manager after her team delivered a very successful project and she is now very angry. She emailed this Director-level manager and everyone in-between to state her "disagreement", and when I tried to engage her to try and address the behavior she gave the "the company doesn't care about me" speech.

As such I am very concerned. I want to give her feedback and help her with this but I feel that anything I say will be automatically biased due to her experiences. We have a pretty good relationship (at least I think we do) but I feel that she is so emotional that my message may not be taken correctly.

How should I address this? Any recommendations?

slpenney's picture

How is your relationship with the director? Could you mention it to him? A short note from the director could be the very thing to make it up to her and show that it was unintentional.

jhack's picture

[quote="CalKen"]I have a direct (she is not officially a direct but my boss unofficially tasks me with managing her workload and tasks) [/quote]
To whom does she report? Your boss? A peer? Where is her real boss in all this? Does your boss report to the Director? It's unclear why you're in the middle and who the players are...

John

CalKen's picture

Thanks for your reply.

She works for my boss (who reports to someone who works for the Director). My boss gave me "unofficial" authority since he does not have the time to manage her directly but I usually only manage her from a technical aspect (and I have been mentoring her in addition, which is probably why he gave me the "unofficial" authority over her). Bottom line, though, I have no official authority over her. So, in essence, she jumped three levels of management.

I want to discuss this with her using the feedback model. I confess that my delivery is not perfect and I feel that with her in this charge environment she may take this wrong (or worse yet, she may take it wrong and I may inadvertently make the problem worse).

HMac's picture

CalKen - to sidestep the immediate circumstances for a moment -

Do you do regular O3's with this person?

Is there any chance she feels that she's been shunted aside by her "real" manager?

Other than this incident, how's her performance?

As part of the very successful team project, did she contribute meaningfully? Are there outcomes, results that can be attributed to her?

-Hugh

CalKen's picture

Hugh;

Thanks very much for the timely feedback.

I do regular O3's with her (once a week, sometimes twice a week when she needs extra help with her tasks).

In regards to her being shunted by her "real" manager, this may be a possibility. My boss does not provide much feedback to his subordinates as a rule of thumb.

In regards to the project, she managed the entire thing bringing the team members in and managing time and resources as well as being there for the final peer review and submittal to the customer. As far as deliverables are concerned, I am not sure.

In my opinion, I feel that upper management overlooked her accidentally. I got a call from one of the team members apologizing for what happened, and he told me that he left her name off as the customer mentioned that "she was being taken care of". I honestly feel that upper management just did not get her name. I also fear that this outburst has damaged her politically and career-wise. I would like to understand how I can help her modify her behavior as I feel it is self-destructive, and she had done something similar in the past.

HMac's picture

CalKen - you sound like a terrific manager, and she's fortunate to have you!

Two more thoughts:

The Feedback Model feels custom-made for talking to her about her outburst. Here's why: The model's [i][b][u]focus on the effects of behavior[/u][/b][/i], rather than the behavior itself - so you can spend time describing how she might be damaging her career.

Given how you're coming at this, as somebody who genuinely cares about her and her advancement, you're almost "bullet proof" no matter how awkward you might feel doing the Feedback Model. Your genuine concern for her will come though...

And the second observation is this - doing regular O3's has the additional benefit of building [i][b]resiliency[/b][/i] in employees' relationship with you and with the company. So when mistakes are made (like this oversight), the employee tends to be a little bit more understanding.

-Hugh

bflynn's picture

[quote="HMac"]The Feedback Model feels custom-made for talking to her about her outburst. Here's why: The model's [i][b][u]focus on the effects of behavior[/u][/b][/i], rather than the behavior itself - so you can spend time describing how she might be damaging her career.[/quote]

Hugh, one refinement - the feedback model is focused on FUTURE behavior, not the effects of the past. The past is set and can't be changed, so there's no sense in anybody beating themselves up over it. The concern is how having better behavior might give a better result in the future (or avoid more damage in the future.)

Brian