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Am I being overly critical and unfair to my coworker or is she being entitled?
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Preface: This is a story of my coworker and me not seeing eye-to-eye. No matter how objective I try to be in looking at this story, I obviously can only see it from my end. Also, sorry, it's kind of long.
About a year ago, my boss got fired, and I was put in his place to lead our department. This was my first management position. Our department was already severely understaffed, and the company did not hire anyone to replace me when I was promoted. I was basically doing several jobs at the time, including leading the team, leading a huge project, project managing, and doing all the admin work for the department. I begged and pleaded to hire a project manager for our team that would help me with the admin and PM tasks.
Finally, "Jane" was hired to do that job. Jane was not reporting to me directly, but she was assigned full-time to help me. I will also say that Jane interviewed extremely well and got 2 thumbs up from everyone during the interview process. She appeared very smart and capable, very confident in her skills, and with lots of relevant experience.
We were in the middle of a massive deadline delivery, and the team had to go into crunch mode (there was some dysfunctions in other areas of the company, which were affecting our team and others). There was a lot going on, lots of tasks and new requests flying around, and the big project was extremely complex and technical. Jane is not very technical, and she was also new. I started introducing her to the project, and I also wanted her to mostly focus on the admin tasks, which would be relatively easy to accomplish, and would free me up to work on everything else.
I started noticing that Jane was not very good with follow-through. I would give her a task, and she would not proactively update me on the status. I would check in on the status a few days later, and would find out that she came to a certain step, and didn't know what to do next. But she didn't proactively ask me what to do next to get the task accomplished. It's not like she was afraid to approach me, or anything like that. We shared an office and communicated daily.
There was a number of other small mistakes: not following up on internal and external emails in a timely manner (one vendor that we were supposed to pay didn't get a response for nearly a month, while he was sending multiple follow-ups), missing emails completely, forgetting information that I clearly provided (and Jane took notes of). Jane also had hard times solving even the simplest issues on her own (like searching her inbox for an email, etc). I constantly had to follow up and remind her of things, just to make sure that they get done.
I have given her feedback that I really wanted her to own those tasks, and see them through the end. That I wanted her to over-communicate status to me. I pointed out mistakes and asked her to pay more attention. She would either brush my comments off or get offended that I'm nit-picking: "everyone makes mistakes, even you".
At the same time, like I said, our team was in crunch mode. I was putting the most extra hours on the team (I worked 60-hour weeks for 3 months straight). Other people on the team were also putting in OT, but not Jane. Some weeks she didn't even put in the full 40 hours.
I was staying overtime, doing PM work, that she could have been doing. But I didn't want to ask her to do that work, because I just wanted her to focus her full attention on the admin work. Which still wasn't getting done right, and was riddled with small mistakes.
Jane also was helping out with the PM stuff, and according to her it was all this great work. To be honest, it was a mixed back - some of it was helpful, and some wasn't. She is convinced that she did all these great complicated things, but it hasn't felt like a huge help. Because she wasn't technical, her help often involved being in the middle of 2 technical people, passing information back and forth over IM (as you can imagine that didn't always turn out well). The communication was often doubled, because she didn't have enough technical understanding of what needed to be done at any given moment. And the overall project was extremely technical and chaotic, like I mentioned. I was so overworked and exhausted at the time, that I didn't have the energy to deal with that, and figured any help is welcome at this point.
Over this entire time, I have been communicating with my boss, who also happens to be Jane's boss. I was always very careful about providing feedback to him. Since I was a new manager, I accepted the possibility that I was doing the wrong things. I would show him examples of issues and ask him how I should handle them.
After we finally shipped the project, and the crunch was over, the small mistakes continued. I still had to follow-up and double-check on everything that I give Jane to do, because otherwise there was a chance that things would fall through the cracks. I would just ping her "hey, what's the status of X" every few days - so nothing too over-the-top.
I again gave my manager the feedback, that there are still small mistakes. And I just really want to have someone who I can give a task to, and be completely confident that it will get done. I just need this person to take the task, figure out how to solve problems on their own, communicate the status to me, and just get it done.
My boss said that we've been having issues long enough, and he said that it's also a management gap on his part. He decided to transfer Jane to report to his subordinate, and transition her to work on other projects. At the same time, we would look for the right person to help me.
The transition happened a few months ago while I was traveling, so I don't know what Jane's initial reaction was. But I haven't heard from her much after that, except for being in the same meeting occasionally.
But a couple of days ago, she contacted me over IM, and started asking why am I so critical of her and how it was unfair of me to give all this negative feedback to her boss, and how I didn't think how that would affect her career and emotional state. She also insisted that I am personally biased against her.
I started explaining to her that it's not personal, and that my feedback was directly based on my experience working with her. She demanded examples. I gave her a couple of examples, which she "refuted" according to her (basically she had excuses, or insisted that I just have incorrect information and I'm wrong). Then she said that even if I was right, those are just minor mistakes and they're no big deal, and demanded better examples. I said I didn't remember concrete examples, because that was months ago. She said that I need to either find better examples or reassess my bias and why I'm being so critical of her. After having a think about it yesterday, I went back through our IM history, and pulled several more examples of different issues (me reminding her several times to do something, and her failing to do it, etc). I explained that while each individual mistake can be small and petty, the collection of those mistakes created a pattern, and caused me to spend more time and mental energy on things that she should have been taking care of.
She responded to that with the same thing again: Mistakes are no big deal, and everyone makes them: "Do you want me to go through the messages and find all the mistakes you made?" And also that she was new and was still learning the job. (I'm talking mistakes like not being able to order food for a meeting and have it arrive on-time, which derailed the agenda for the day - not really something that one needs to "learn"). And also that those mistakes happened during crunch, and she was busy (she had the nerve to bring up crunch).
She also said that her mistakes didn't affect the team or the company, which I disagree with. First of all they affected ME, which she refuses to acknowledge. I was the one working 60-hour weeks doing PM work (her work), and have her leave at 5pm every day to go to a dance class. And on top of it, the mistakes did affect the team and the company (when you owe money to a vendor, and they have to ping you 4 months over the course of a month, before hearing back).
She also told me how I'm the most critical person she has ever worked with, and how she "expected praise for all the hard, big, complicated work that she's done" (her words), but all she got was criticism... In my mind I'm thinking: girl, nobody owes you praise for just doing your job. There's salary for that.
The thing is, after all this, she made me feel quite guilty, and made me doubt how I handled the situation. But I also have no idea what could I have possibly done differently. I was in an impossible situation, and needed help, with a person who was not giving me the help I desperately needed. It's not really about her personally, or how hard she worked, she just wasn't the right person for this job. But it's also not like she lost her job either. My boss assured me that she was not in danger of that - she would just get transferred to work on other projects (which is what happened).
So my question is: Am I being overly critical and unfair to Jane or is she being overly sensitive and entitled? I'm really having a hard time seeing her side of the story, but if you do, maybe you can help me understand?
management manager performance mistakes
asked 7 mins ago
Cannot2468
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Cannot2468 is a new contributor to this site. Take care in asking for clarification, commenting, and answering.
Check out our Code of Conduct.
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up vote
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Preface: This is a story of my coworker and me not seeing eye-to-eye. No matter how objective I try to be in looking at this story, I obviously can only see it from my end. Also, sorry, it's kind of long.
About a year ago, my boss got fired, and I was put in his place to lead our department. This was my first management position. Our department was already severely understaffed, and the company did not hire anyone to replace me when I was promoted. I was basically doing several jobs at the time, including leading the team, leading a huge project, project managing, and doing all the admin work for the department. I begged and pleaded to hire a project manager for our team that would help me with the admin and PM tasks.
Finally, "Jane" was hired to do that job. Jane was not reporting to me directly, but she was assigned full-time to help me. I will also say that Jane interviewed extremely well and got 2 thumbs up from everyone during the interview process. She appeared very smart and capable, very confident in her skills, and with lots of relevant experience.
We were in the middle of a massive deadline delivery, and the team had to go into crunch mode (there was some dysfunctions in other areas of the company, which were affecting our team and others). There was a lot going on, lots of tasks and new requests flying around, and the big project was extremely complex and technical. Jane is not very technical, and she was also new. I started introducing her to the project, and I also wanted her to mostly focus on the admin tasks, which would be relatively easy to accomplish, and would free me up to work on everything else.
I started noticing that Jane was not very good with follow-through. I would give her a task, and she would not proactively update me on the status. I would check in on the status a few days later, and would find out that she came to a certain step, and didn't know what to do next. But she didn't proactively ask me what to do next to get the task accomplished. It's not like she was afraid to approach me, or anything like that. We shared an office and communicated daily.
There was a number of other small mistakes: not following up on internal and external emails in a timely manner (one vendor that we were supposed to pay didn't get a response for nearly a month, while he was sending multiple follow-ups), missing emails completely, forgetting information that I clearly provided (and Jane took notes of). Jane also had hard times solving even the simplest issues on her own (like searching her inbox for an email, etc). I constantly had to follow up and remind her of things, just to make sure that they get done.
I have given her feedback that I really wanted her to own those tasks, and see them through the end. That I wanted her to over-communicate status to me. I pointed out mistakes and asked her to pay more attention. She would either brush my comments off or get offended that I'm nit-picking: "everyone makes mistakes, even you".
At the same time, like I said, our team was in crunch mode. I was putting the most extra hours on the team (I worked 60-hour weeks for 3 months straight). Other people on the team were also putting in OT, but not Jane. Some weeks she didn't even put in the full 40 hours.
I was staying overtime, doing PM work, that she could have been doing. But I didn't want to ask her to do that work, because I just wanted her to focus her full attention on the admin work. Which still wasn't getting done right, and was riddled with small mistakes.
Jane also was helping out with the PM stuff, and according to her it was all this great work. To be honest, it was a mixed back - some of it was helpful, and some wasn't. She is convinced that she did all these great complicated things, but it hasn't felt like a huge help. Because she wasn't technical, her help often involved being in the middle of 2 technical people, passing information back and forth over IM (as you can imagine that didn't always turn out well). The communication was often doubled, because she didn't have enough technical understanding of what needed to be done at any given moment. And the overall project was extremely technical and chaotic, like I mentioned. I was so overworked and exhausted at the time, that I didn't have the energy to deal with that, and figured any help is welcome at this point.
Over this entire time, I have been communicating with my boss, who also happens to be Jane's boss. I was always very careful about providing feedback to him. Since I was a new manager, I accepted the possibility that I was doing the wrong things. I would show him examples of issues and ask him how I should handle them.
After we finally shipped the project, and the crunch was over, the small mistakes continued. I still had to follow-up and double-check on everything that I give Jane to do, because otherwise there was a chance that things would fall through the cracks. I would just ping her "hey, what's the status of X" every few days - so nothing too over-the-top.
I again gave my manager the feedback, that there are still small mistakes. And I just really want to have someone who I can give a task to, and be completely confident that it will get done. I just need this person to take the task, figure out how to solve problems on their own, communicate the status to me, and just get it done.
My boss said that we've been having issues long enough, and he said that it's also a management gap on his part. He decided to transfer Jane to report to his subordinate, and transition her to work on other projects. At the same time, we would look for the right person to help me.
The transition happened a few months ago while I was traveling, so I don't know what Jane's initial reaction was. But I haven't heard from her much after that, except for being in the same meeting occasionally.
But a couple of days ago, she contacted me over IM, and started asking why am I so critical of her and how it was unfair of me to give all this negative feedback to her boss, and how I didn't think how that would affect her career and emotional state. She also insisted that I am personally biased against her.
I started explaining to her that it's not personal, and that my feedback was directly based on my experience working with her. She demanded examples. I gave her a couple of examples, which she "refuted" according to her (basically she had excuses, or insisted that I just have incorrect information and I'm wrong). Then she said that even if I was right, those are just minor mistakes and they're no big deal, and demanded better examples. I said I didn't remember concrete examples, because that was months ago. She said that I need to either find better examples or reassess my bias and why I'm being so critical of her. After having a think about it yesterday, I went back through our IM history, and pulled several more examples of different issues (me reminding her several times to do something, and her failing to do it, etc). I explained that while each individual mistake can be small and petty, the collection of those mistakes created a pattern, and caused me to spend more time and mental energy on things that she should have been taking care of.
She responded to that with the same thing again: Mistakes are no big deal, and everyone makes them: "Do you want me to go through the messages and find all the mistakes you made?" And also that she was new and was still learning the job. (I'm talking mistakes like not being able to order food for a meeting and have it arrive on-time, which derailed the agenda for the day - not really something that one needs to "learn"). And also that those mistakes happened during crunch, and she was busy (she had the nerve to bring up crunch).
She also said that her mistakes didn't affect the team or the company, which I disagree with. First of all they affected ME, which she refuses to acknowledge. I was the one working 60-hour weeks doing PM work (her work), and have her leave at 5pm every day to go to a dance class. And on top of it, the mistakes did affect the team and the company (when you owe money to a vendor, and they have to ping you 4 months over the course of a month, before hearing back).
She also told me how I'm the most critical person she has ever worked with, and how she "expected praise for all the hard, big, complicated work that she's done" (her words), but all she got was criticism... In my mind I'm thinking: girl, nobody owes you praise for just doing your job. There's salary for that.
The thing is, after all this, she made me feel quite guilty, and made me doubt how I handled the situation. But I also have no idea what could I have possibly done differently. I was in an impossible situation, and needed help, with a person who was not giving me the help I desperately needed. It's not really about her personally, or how hard she worked, she just wasn't the right person for this job. But it's also not like she lost her job either. My boss assured me that she was not in danger of that - she would just get transferred to work on other projects (which is what happened).
So my question is: Am I being overly critical and unfair to Jane or is she being overly sensitive and entitled? I'm really having a hard time seeing her side of the story, but if you do, maybe you can help me understand?
management manager performance mistakes
asked 7 mins ago
Cannot2468
11
New contributor
Cannot2468 is a new contributor to this site. Take care in asking for clarification, commenting, and answering.
Check out our Code of Conduct.
Please reduce the length of this, as it is quite extensive. No need to give much details, try to keep only the ones relevant for your question. Try to summarize your incident(s) could help reduce the length also.
– DarkCygnus
2 mins ago
add a comment |Â
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up vote
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down vote
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Preface: This is a story of my coworker and me not seeing eye-to-eye. No matter how objective I try to be in looking at this story, I obviously can only see it from my end. Also, sorry, it's kind of long.
About a year ago, my boss got fired, and I was put in his place to lead our department. This was my first management position. Our department was already severely understaffed, and the company did not hire anyone to replace me when I was promoted. I was basically doing several jobs at the time, including leading the team, leading a huge project, project managing, and doing all the admin work for the department. I begged and pleaded to hire a project manager for our team that would help me with the admin and PM tasks.
Finally, "Jane" was hired to do that job. Jane was not reporting to me directly, but she was assigned full-time to help me. I will also say that Jane interviewed extremely well and got 2 thumbs up from everyone during the interview process. She appeared very smart and capable, very confident in her skills, and with lots of relevant experience.
We were in the middle of a massive deadline delivery, and the team had to go into crunch mode (there was some dysfunctions in other areas of the company, which were affecting our team and others). There was a lot going on, lots of tasks and new requests flying around, and the big project was extremely complex and technical. Jane is not very technical, and she was also new. I started introducing her to the project, and I also wanted her to mostly focus on the admin tasks, which would be relatively easy to accomplish, and would free me up to work on everything else.
I started noticing that Jane was not very good with follow-through. I would give her a task, and she would not proactively update me on the status. I would check in on the status a few days later, and would find out that she came to a certain step, and didn't know what to do next. But she didn't proactively ask me what to do next to get the task accomplished. It's not like she was afraid to approach me, or anything like that. We shared an office and communicated daily.
There was a number of other small mistakes: not following up on internal and external emails in a timely manner (one vendor that we were supposed to pay didn't get a response for nearly a month, while he was sending multiple follow-ups), missing emails completely, forgetting information that I clearly provided (and Jane took notes of). Jane also had hard times solving even the simplest issues on her own (like searching her inbox for an email, etc). I constantly had to follow up and remind her of things, just to make sure that they get done.
I have given her feedback that I really wanted her to own those tasks, and see them through the end. That I wanted her to over-communicate status to me. I pointed out mistakes and asked her to pay more attention. She would either brush my comments off or get offended that I'm nit-picking: "everyone makes mistakes, even you".
At the same time, like I said, our team was in crunch mode. I was putting the most extra hours on the team (I worked 60-hour weeks for 3 months straight). Other people on the team were also putting in OT, but not Jane. Some weeks she didn't even put in the full 40 hours.
I was staying overtime, doing PM work, that she could have been doing. But I didn't want to ask her to do that work, because I just wanted her to focus her full attention on the admin work. Which still wasn't getting done right, and was riddled with small mistakes.
Jane also was helping out with the PM stuff, and according to her it was all this great work. To be honest, it was a mixed back - some of it was helpful, and some wasn't. She is convinced that she did all these great complicated things, but it hasn't felt like a huge help. Because she wasn't technical, her help often involved being in the middle of 2 technical people, passing information back and forth over IM (as you can imagine that didn't always turn out well). The communication was often doubled, because she didn't have enough technical understanding of what needed to be done at any given moment. And the overall project was extremely technical and chaotic, like I mentioned. I was so overworked and exhausted at the time, that I didn't have the energy to deal with that, and figured any help is welcome at this point.
Over this entire time, I have been communicating with my boss, who also happens to be Jane's boss. I was always very careful about providing feedback to him. Since I was a new manager, I accepted the possibility that I was doing the wrong things. I would show him examples of issues and ask him how I should handle them.
After we finally shipped the project, and the crunch was over, the small mistakes continued. I still had to follow-up and double-check on everything that I give Jane to do, because otherwise there was a chance that things would fall through the cracks. I would just ping her "hey, what's the status of X" every few days - so nothing too over-the-top.
I again gave my manager the feedback, that there are still small mistakes. And I just really want to have someone who I can give a task to, and be completely confident that it will get done. I just need this person to take the task, figure out how to solve problems on their own, communicate the status to me, and just get it done.
My boss said that we've been having issues long enough, and he said that it's also a management gap on his part. He decided to transfer Jane to report to his subordinate, and transition her to work on other projects. At the same time, we would look for the right person to help me.
The transition happened a few months ago while I was traveling, so I don't know what Jane's initial reaction was. But I haven't heard from her much after that, except for being in the same meeting occasionally.
But a couple of days ago, she contacted me over IM, and started asking why am I so critical of her and how it was unfair of me to give all this negative feedback to her boss, and how I didn't think how that would affect her career and emotional state. She also insisted that I am personally biased against her.
I started explaining to her that it's not personal, and that my feedback was directly based on my experience working with her. She demanded examples. I gave her a couple of examples, which she "refuted" according to her (basically she had excuses, or insisted that I just have incorrect information and I'm wrong). Then she said that even if I was right, those are just minor mistakes and they're no big deal, and demanded better examples. I said I didn't remember concrete examples, because that was months ago. She said that I need to either find better examples or reassess my bias and why I'm being so critical of her. After having a think about it yesterday, I went back through our IM history, and pulled several more examples of different issues (me reminding her several times to do something, and her failing to do it, etc). I explained that while each individual mistake can be small and petty, the collection of those mistakes created a pattern, and caused me to spend more time and mental energy on things that she should have been taking care of.
She responded to that with the same thing again: Mistakes are no big deal, and everyone makes them: "Do you want me to go through the messages and find all the mistakes you made?" And also that she was new and was still learning the job. (I'm talking mistakes like not being able to order food for a meeting and have it arrive on-time, which derailed the agenda for the day - not really something that one needs to "learn"). And also that those mistakes happened during crunch, and she was busy (she had the nerve to bring up crunch).
She also said that her mistakes didn't affect the team or the company, which I disagree with. First of all they affected ME, which she refuses to acknowledge. I was the one working 60-hour weeks doing PM work (her work), and have her leave at 5pm every day to go to a dance class. And on top of it, the mistakes did affect the team and the company (when you owe money to a vendor, and they have to ping you 4 months over the course of a month, before hearing back).
She also told me how I'm the most critical person she has ever worked with, and how she "expected praise for all the hard, big, complicated work that she's done" (her words), but all she got was criticism... In my mind I'm thinking: girl, nobody owes you praise for just doing your job. There's salary for that.
The thing is, after all this, she made me feel quite guilty, and made me doubt how I handled the situation. But I also have no idea what could I have possibly done differently. I was in an impossible situation, and needed help, with a person who was not giving me the help I desperately needed. It's not really about her personally, or how hard she worked, she just wasn't the right person for this job. But it's also not like she lost her job either. My boss assured me that she was not in danger of that - she would just get transferred to work on other projects (which is what happened).
So my question is: Am I being overly critical and unfair to Jane or is she being overly sensitive and entitled? I'm really having a hard time seeing her side of the story, but if you do, maybe you can help me understand?
management manager performance mistakes
asked 7 mins ago
Cannot2468
11
New contributor
Cannot2468 is a new contributor to this site. Take care in asking for clarification, commenting, and answering.
Check out our Code of Conduct.
Preface: This is a story of my coworker and me not seeing eye-to-eye. No matter how objective I try to be in looking at this story, I obviously can only see it from my end. Also, sorry, it's kind of long.
About a year ago, my boss got fired, and I was put in his place to lead our department. This was my first management position. Our department was already severely understaffed, and the company did not hire anyone to replace me when I was promoted. I was basically doing several jobs at the time, including leading the team, leading a huge project, project managing, and doing all the admin work for the department. I begged and pleaded to hire a project manager for our team that would help me with the admin and PM tasks.
Finally, "Jane" was hired to do that job. Jane was not reporting to me directly, but she was assigned full-time to help me. I will also say that Jane interviewed extremely well and got 2 thumbs up from everyone during the interview process. She appeared very smart and capable, very confident in her skills, and with lots of relevant experience.
We were in the middle of a massive deadline delivery, and the team had to go into crunch mode (there was some dysfunctions in other areas of the company, which were affecting our team and others). There was a lot going on, lots of tasks and new requests flying around, and the big project was extremely complex and technical. Jane is not very technical, and she was also new. I started introducing her to the project, and I also wanted her to mostly focus on the admin tasks, which would be relatively easy to accomplish, and would free me up to work on everything else.
I started noticing that Jane was not very good with follow-through. I would give her a task, and she would not proactively update me on the status. I would check in on the status a few days later, and would find out that she came to a certain step, and didn't know what to do next. But she didn't proactively ask me what to do next to get the task accomplished. It's not like she was afraid to approach me, or anything like that. We shared an office and communicated daily.
There was a number of other small mistakes: not following up on internal and external emails in a timely manner (one vendor that we were supposed to pay didn't get a response for nearly a month, while he was sending multiple follow-ups), missing emails completely, forgetting information that I clearly provided (and Jane took notes of). Jane also had hard times solving even the simplest issues on her own (like searching her inbox for an email, etc). I constantly had to follow up and remind her of things, just to make sure that they get done.
I have given her feedback that I really wanted her to own those tasks, and see them through the end. That I wanted her to over-communicate status to me. I pointed out mistakes and asked her to pay more attention. She would either brush my comments off or get offended that I'm nit-picking: "everyone makes mistakes, even you".
At the same time, like I said, our team was in crunch mode. I was putting the most extra hours on the team (I worked 60-hour weeks for 3 months straight). Other people on the team were also putting in OT, but not Jane. Some weeks she didn't even put in the full 40 hours.
I was staying overtime, doing PM work, that she could have been doing. But I didn't want to ask her to do that work, because I just wanted her to focus her full attention on the admin work. Which still wasn't getting done right, and was riddled with small mistakes.
Jane also was helping out with the PM stuff, and according to her it was all this great work. To be honest, it was a mixed back - some of it was helpful, and some wasn't. She is convinced that she did all these great complicated things, but it hasn't felt like a huge help. Because she wasn't technical, her help often involved being in the middle of 2 technical people, passing information back and forth over IM (as you can imagine that didn't always turn out well). The communication was often doubled, because she didn't have enough technical understanding of what needed to be done at any given moment. And the overall project was extremely technical and chaotic, like I mentioned. I was so overworked and exhausted at the time, that I didn't have the energy to deal with that, and figured any help is welcome at this point.
Over this entire time, I have been communicating with my boss, who also happens to be Jane's boss. I was always very careful about providing feedback to him. Since I was a new manager, I accepted the possibility that I was doing the wrong things. I would show him examples of issues and ask him how I should handle them.
After we finally shipped the project, and the crunch was over, the small mistakes continued. I still had to follow-up and double-check on everything that I give Jane to do, because otherwise there was a chance that things would fall through the cracks. I would just ping her "hey, what's the status of X" every few days - so nothing too over-the-top.
I again gave my manager the feedback, that there are still small mistakes. And I just really want to have someone who I can give a task to, and be completely confident that it will get done. I just need this person to take the task, figure out how to solve problems on their own, communicate the status to me, and just get it done.
My boss said that we've been having issues long enough, and he said that it's also a management gap on his part. He decided to transfer Jane to report to his subordinate, and transition her to work on other projects. At the same time, we would look for the right person to help me.
The transition happened a few months ago while I was traveling, so I don't know what Jane's initial reaction was. But I haven't heard from her much after that, except for being in the same meeting occasionally.
But a couple of days ago, she contacted me over IM, and started asking why am I so critical of her and how it was unfair of me to give all this negative feedback to her boss, and how I didn't think how that would affect her career and emotional state. She also insisted that I am personally biased against her.
I started explaining to her that it's not personal, and that my feedback was directly based on my experience working with her. She demanded examples. I gave her a couple of examples, which she "refuted" according to her (basically she had excuses, or insisted that I just have incorrect information and I'm wrong). Then she said that even if I was right, those are just minor mistakes and they're no big deal, and demanded better examples. I said I didn't remember concrete examples, because that was months ago. She said that I need to either find better examples or reassess my bias and why I'm being so critical of her. After having a think about it yesterday, I went back through our IM history, and pulled several more examples of different issues (me reminding her several times to do something, and her failing to do it, etc). I explained that while each individual mistake can be small and petty, the collection of those mistakes created a pattern, and caused me to spend more time and mental energy on things that she should have been taking care of.
She responded to that with the same thing again: Mistakes are no big deal, and everyone makes them: "Do you want me to go through the messages and find all the mistakes you made?" And also that she was new and was still learning the job. (I'm talking mistakes like not being able to order food for a meeting and have it arrive on-time, which derailed the agenda for the day - not really something that one needs to "learn"). And also that those mistakes happened during crunch, and she was busy (she had the nerve to bring up crunch).
She also said that her mistakes didn't affect the team or the company, which I disagree with. First of all they affected ME, which she refuses to acknowledge. I was the one working 60-hour weeks doing PM work (her work), and have her leave at 5pm every day to go to a dance class. And on top of it, the mistakes did affect the team and the company (when you owe money to a vendor, and they have to ping you 4 months over the course of a month, before hearing back).
She also told me how I'm the most critical person she has ever worked with, and how she "expected praise for all the hard, big, complicated work that she's done" (her words), but all she got was criticism... In my mind I'm thinking: girl, nobody owes you praise for just doing your job. There's salary for that.
The thing is, after all this, she made me feel quite guilty, and made me doubt how I handled the situation. But I also have no idea what could I have possibly done differently. I was in an impossible situation, and needed help, with a person who was not giving me the help I desperately needed. It's not really about her personally, or how hard she worked, she just wasn't the right person for this job. But it's also not like she lost her job either. My boss assured me that she was not in danger of that - she would just get transferred to work on other projects (which is what happened).
So my question is: Am I being overly critical and unfair to Jane or is she being overly sensitive and entitled? I'm really having a hard time seeing her side of the story, but if you do, maybe you can help me understand?
management manager performance mistakes
management manager performance mistakes
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Cannot2468
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asked 7 mins ago
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asked 7 mins ago
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asked 7 mins ago
Cannot2468
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Please reduce the length of this, as it is quite extensive. No need to give much details, try to keep only the ones relevant for your question. Try to summarize your incident(s) could help reduce the length also.
– DarkCygnus
2 mins ago
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Please reduce the length of this, as it is quite extensive. No need to give much details, try to keep only the ones relevant for your question. Try to summarize your incident(s) could help reduce the length also.
– DarkCygnus
2 mins ago
Please reduce the length of this, as it is quite extensive. No need to give much details, try to keep only the ones relevant for your question. Try to summarize your incident(s) could help reduce the length also.
– DarkCygnus
2 mins ago
Please reduce the length of this, as it is quite extensive. No need to give much details, try to keep only the ones relevant for your question. Try to summarize your incident(s) could help reduce the length also.
– DarkCygnus
2 mins ago
add a comment |Â
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Cannot2468 is a new contributor. Be nice, and check out our Code of Conduct.
Cannot2468 is a new contributor. Be nice, and check out our Code of Conduct.
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Please reduce the length of this, as it is quite extensive. No need to give much details, try to keep only the ones relevant for your question. Try to summarize your incident(s) could help reduce the length also.
– DarkCygnus
2 mins ago