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Hi,

I write here hoping I can get some valuable & “much needed” advice on an issue that has caused me immense stress over the last 1 year. I run a start-up started just over 2 years ago in Asia (me being from a foreign country & not able to speak the local language). The company was started by me and I hired a young talented girl to work with me from day one. The girl was a very good friend of mine before starting to work for me & only a little younger than me, me being in my mid to late 20’s.

I realised at that time, that the girl had lots of raw potential but limited exposure due to limited resources and a very difficult upbringing. During the first year, she worked extremely hard & showed an amazing passion to learn and made a significant contribution in helping the company grow. I (not being the most experienced leader/manager) gave her some very blunt feedback sessions at that time, but she grew from each of them and got better & better. I also shared all my technology, productivity & other skills which I thought were essential for her to do the job well and she picked up everything very fast. We also remained great friends, but had a lot of heated arguments from time to time about work. However each time, we got through them.

(N.B: At that time, I had no idea a great resource like Manager Tools exist).

The biggest problem was and still is, most of the feedback sessions end up in her “crying”, as she is extremely sensitive and even the smallest bit of critical feedback can make her cry and due to this it ends up giving me a lot of “negative energy”. One of the reasons for this could also be that she does put her best into the job and maybe negative feedback makes her feel unappreciated. She is also completely unreactive to any positive feedback and would not even say “thank you”. In fact, her reaction to positive feedback can sometimes be very aggressive. I must confess, I was probably a poor leader due to lack of experience and was not good at handling these arguments and also sometimes may have been insensitive. I have improved quote a bit, but still have a long way to go. 

On the one hand, the girl has great potential & learns very fast but on the other hand in my personal opinion her general attitude towards life is fairly negative probably because she has had a very difficult upbringing (Extremely) and it is very hard for her to be naturally happy & appreciate the little things in life. This is quite the opposite of my life philosophy, where I place great focus on staying positive & put a lot of work into personal development, to ensure I stay positive (despite my own challenges growing up). She herself realises this & has tried to come out of the shadow of her past by reading books, etc. but it seems she has not been very successful in doing so, although she has become marginally more positive than before.

She has been with me for over 2 years now and at the end of the 2nd year, she had a very hard negotiation with me, in terms of renewal of her contract and demanded quite a few things, all of which I agreed to eventually after the heated arguments (and all of which I fee she deserves due to her dedication & hard work to the company in the 2 years). We are still a small company with about 4-5 employees and she now has a couple of employees under her (one of the terms of her contract renewal). Over the past 1 year, we have had several heated exchanges.

The Problem: She has now mastered a lot of key skills that I taught her, required for her to do the job well & on top of that has the language advantage, so she feels she knows “everything” and has developed a “know it all” attitude & become very defensive & aggressive to any form of constructive feedback. Any reference to performance on a particular aspect of her job, is taken as a personal attack on the “overall” performance. It is also true that she is extremely important for the company & despite the negative attributes described above, I really “trust” her loyalty and the fact that she has a strong character & actually I absolutely love her as a friend. I also realise that I have a lot of shortcomings as a leader (compared to the high standards I set myself) & am constantly improving, by reading up on the subject, watching videos and doing all I can, to be an inspirational leader, however, it would take me a while to get there & in that time, I simply do not want to lose her because she is a key employee for the business & because I have always been genuinely committed to raising her standard of living & giving her a great life as I really value her.

In fact I haven’t cared so much for even a family member in a long time, but she simply does not seem to appreciate the little or the big things I do. Appreciation is not something that comes naturally to her (although in the past she has made up for lack of verbal appreciation by working hard). She would pick on the smallest of negative actions and magnify it to make it seem much bigger than all the positive things I may do for her well- being.

While she still works hard, she is just not as dedicated as before. She strongly feels she is physically weak & her body cannot handle high workloads and hence she is always coming up with names for new physical & mental illnesses that she feels she has. I feel this is one of the offshoots to her generally negative attitude towards life probably because of her past. She has a strong “victim mentality” which I just do not know how to deal with.

I would really appreciate on how to best deal with this situation as the fact that I would really like to retain her and see her play a big role in the company in the future as she develops her skills & becomes more mature and at the same time, I develop further as a leader. I would love to speak to someone who has been a leader of a small organisation or has been in HR & knows the subject well. I feel I am at a stage in my life & business where I really need an experienced mentor to get to the next stage. Any volunteers?

Thanks for reading the time to read this & would really appreciate any solutions.

 

delete_account_per_reacher_145083_dtiller's picture
Training Badge

You haven't mentioned what MT tools you use.  If you are not using them then start with the basics.  Roll out the trinity and follow it to the letter.  It works and will help develop professionalism and your management skills.

Dawne

JustHere's picture

 I have to compliment you on one thing: that you are trying to be self aware.  I know of a very poor manager who swears it's the staff that have a problem if they aren't working out. Being a boss is about being respected, not necessarily liked - it's a tough line to draw.  

naraa's picture
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 Leaderintraining, it sounds like the girl has a lot of insecurity issues she needs to work on.  But there is really nothing you can do about hers.  You can work on yours though.  Sorry if things I say here next may be a bit harsh for you, but based on your thorough description you sincerely want this to work, and so I will try.  It is your call if what I say strikes a bell or not.

There are too many I's in your description: "The things I taught her...she doesn't seem to appreciate the little or the small things that I do..." It is not about you, it is about her.  Do you want her to feel better or do you need her appreciation for things you do?  Accept that maybe you want, and then forget about it, you will not get it.

I have worked with insecure and perfeccionist before and you give them one piece of negative feedback and they will magnify it by 10.  So you really need to go to a ratio 1 negative to every 10 positive feedback you give.  The way she reacts to the feedback is not really important.  Don't assume she doesn't care about them.  I have met people before that are uncapable of saying thank you, but it doesn't mean they are not.  If she is getting aggressive from positive feedback rather than focusing on her reaction, analyse how you are giving it.  If she is a high c, perfectionist (my guess is she might be), a general, non specific feedback, means very little to them.  My guess is you are a high I, high I's tend to be too general on their feedbacks.  A feedback such as: "when you do x, I really appreciate it." Means nothing to a high c or a high d. In fact it is annoying, because it is about you.  You need to be specific on what good thing was accomplished by what they did.

She may indeed have a strong victim mentality but from what you describe I think she might be indeed stressed out, or close to burn out.  You say she is very valuable yet you were reluctant to let her manage two people.  I can understand your position because the company is small.  The point I am trying to make is that she probably feels she is capable of doing more than what you are allowing her to do.  My guess is she probably feels over controlled by you.  If that is true or not, I don't know.  But you mention that you taught her, you share knowledge with her,...maybe she is ready for more, and maybe it is ok if she does things different from you too?  If she is as good as you say, perhaps don't try to hard yo improve her.  Let her improve a bit on her own, and even make her own mistakes!  It seems that is what she may need now.

now other things that you describe raise the bell to me that perhaps there are other issues in her life that have changed within the last year? My personal experience, and from what I have observe with others and also read about it, is that insatisfaction and/or burn out at work is usually a combination of some frustration at work but also on ones private life. Something is off, and it may not be at work, but everything else is magnified.

I went through a difficult period in my personal life which affected my disposition at work. I was having lots of heated discussions with my boss too. I was frustrated, but the core issue was that work was interfering too much, basically taking too much time, from my family life. Work had not changed that much, but it felt like it had. I was also frustrated I could not do the same amount of work I was capable of doing before! I had a open conversation with my boss where I told him I knew I was not performing as well as I had in the past. His answer was: "Don't worry, you have a lot of accumulated points, you may loose some!" At the same time that I was and still am very greatful for him to not pressure me when I couldn't handle it, I was also devastated by the confirmation that I was loosing points. See I was still performing better than most, but not as good as I had before.

I don't know her. But if she is anything like me: let her loose some points, reassure her that she is going through a phase and you have confidence on her and are looking long term, try to find out if something outside of work is bothering her, absolutely demand performance from her (nothing worse than no challenge), but to comments you make to her work ask yourself the following: "will this comment increase substantially the outcome, if it doesn't, don't say anything: "a comment that increases the outcome by 5% may decrease the motivation by 50%".

Finally, find out your disc profile if you have not and figure hers. And do not second guess her feelings, intentions or judgements by what would take you to behave the way she does, because you are probably very different communication styles, and you are probably guessing it wrong.

Good luck! And if you think we can help here at the forum write the specific situations, feedbacks that went wrong, and we could probably give you more straightforward recommendations, rather than guessing what might be happening.

consultant2b's picture

Dawne: Hi, I have recently discovered MT & its a fab resource, however, I have just started going through the content and have formally implemented the process yet. However, I have always done One-on-One's, feedback sessions & coaching, albeit without the structure of the trinity.

 

consultant2b's picture

Update: I finished by DISC profile a couple of days ago and as I expected, I am a high D - (7 5 1 3 - to be precise). 

Nevermind: Thanks. Appreciate your comment. 

Naraa: I posted this here & on another forum and got very different replies, but it just seems that you have filled in the blanks amazingly accurately and seem to have a pretty near perfect understanding of the dynamics of the situation. There is so much in there that I fully agree with subconsciously knew but had to hear it from someone else. for e.g.:

1.  I did feel she genuinely needed that break as she had worked very hard the last couple of months & I have already giver her that break.

2. I also agree that she needs a lot more freedom and therefore, recently I have been a strong effort not to micro-manage and give her more liberty.

"Don't worry, you have a lot of accumulated points, you may loose some!" At the same time that I was and still am very greatful for him to not pressure me when I couldn't handle it, I was also devastated by the confirmation that I was loosing points. See I was still performing better than most, but not as good as I had before."

That really made me thing. On first read, I thought wow "That's a very powerful line". Without saying much, it acknowledges the great work you have done but at the same time, in a very subtle manner it confirms that performance is down. I would really like to know, if you were the manager," why would you not use that line? What sort of long term damage do you think you do by saying so"?

Thanks again for the very helpful contributions.

 

naraa's picture
Training Badge

Consultant28,  I think the line was what i needed to hear.  Sometimes what we need to hear is not what we like hearing.  I was just so stressed out i was very insecure on what to do to started accumulating points again. With time, i figured how.  Perhaps it would have helped to also hear specific comments, get more clear directions on what i should be prioritizing at that moment.  But perhaps at the time i would not have listened.  I am just thinking about the resent "you did not demonstrate" podcasts, maybe positive reassuring comments in the line "you have demonstrated great courage and capacity to deal with dificult problems before, showing you can come up with Creative solutions that have brought positive outcomes such as ....(recall a specific situation and the results obtained)" you just need to rest a bit now and soon you will be doing the same again, would have helped directing me faster.  

But i don't really know.  Sometimes people just need time and need to figure things out on their own, and no matter how much we want to help we can't: "when the students is ready, the teacher appears."

If you can afford it give her some time.

nara