Performance Tracking and Feedback

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager. Here’s part 2 of questions from federal workers who are currently under attack by the administration, as well as others affected by the fall-out. Part 1 (and an explanation of what’s going on) was here. 1. For those of us staying, how do we deal with this? For those of us choosing to stay and continue defending the constitution, any advice? What are ways to deal with uncertainties, short notice changes, conflicting information, being short handed, and low morale? I hope many of us still feel that service and putting others before ourselves is good and the right thing to do. I wish there was a good a…

Here are the posts that interested people the most in 2025, via two lists: the most viewed posts and the most commented on posts. Most viewed posts of 2025: 10. my employee keeps insisting he looks much younger than he is (but he doesn’t) 9. I rejected a student’s advances, but his parents are mad at me 8. my coworkers have way more money than me … and they constantly expect me to shell out cash for meals and gifts 7. I don’t want to babysit my brother in my office 6. updates: martial arts at work, coworker hates me, and more 5. our Gen Z employees want to be coddled and are struggling with the realities of work 4. I manage a terrible slob — how can I convince her…

It’s four answers to four questions. Here we go… 1. Moving people to a new team just so they can be fired This got relayed to me from a coworker who is in a supervisory role, Dorothy. She has a direct report who she is working on terminating, as this individual has not been meeting the basic requirements of the job, including the essential functions. They were already given an extended probation and continue to not meet the requirements of the role. There’s a whole backstory to it, but a new development has occurred that seems really suspect. Dorothy was told by her supervisor, Sophia, that once this person is out, they will transfer another employee to Dorothy’s team …

A reader writes: I have an older male coworker who frequently asks me about my office hours and makes comments about my presence in the office. To provide some context, my department has a flexible attendance policy, while his department requires that he be in the office five days a week. I suspect his comments are passive-aggressive, especially since he has previously complained resentfully to me about other team members’ attendance and about his own in-office requirements. Some examples of comments he’s made to me: “What is your in-office schedule? Because I never know when you’re here.” “Are you in the office today, because I came to your desk earlier, but you were…

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager. A reader writes: For the past 18 months, the person in my office who holds the same job title as me has had serious attendance and communication problems. I’m not talking a few times a month. I’m talking it’s a miracle if he makes it in most of five days in a week. He’ll be in four times over two weeks. I’ve created a spreadsheet to keep track, this is not exaggerating. Our job description is very specific that in office attendance is absolutely required of us at least three days a week. Our job title has the word “on-site” in it. I prefer to work in the office five days a week because home is a dist…

It’s four answers to four questions. Here we go… 1. My abusive former boss is my new editor A beloved editor at my job left in July. This week, their replacement started — and it is Jane, my abusive former boss from five years ago. Needless to say, I was extremely taken aback (and grateful I was working from home). I have decided to just wait it out and document anything bad that happens should it happen (as you pointed out in another post that I read yesterday, five years is a long time and maybe they changed). Jane won’t be my boss but can assign work to me. But I don’t know how to talk to my coworkers about it when they ask about us working together before. I don’t…

A reader writes: My manager, Athena, has pretty poor soft skills and often comes across as aggressive, interrogating, micromanaging, and dismissive. This happens both in person and over email and instant message. In writing, her spelling and grammar are also inconsistent and her phrasing is often curt or abrupt. Lately, my coworkers and I have noticed a huge improvement in some of her emails and chat messages. Emails and messages that previously would have been curt and aggressive are now warmer and softer, with perfect spelling and grammar. It’s theoretically the exact change her direct reports have all been desperately wishing for, except that her in-person communicat…

A reader writes: I inherited an entry-level administrative assistant, Mary, who has been failing to make deadlines and repeating preventable mistakes, and who has major issues with focusing at work. She tangled with her last manager because she felt attacked when asked to explain missed deadlines and now has been passed off to me. My team typically works 9-5, eats breakfast before we start work, and typically takes an hour or less for lunch breaks. We don’t have a break room, so most of us eat lunch at our desks. One large source of distraction for Mary is that she will spend up to four hours a day eating, and when she is eating her work trickles to a halt. It is not u…

A reader writes: I have a new employee, Joe, who has been with me about six months. The headline is that he’s pretty terrible. He lacks knowledge, his work is slow and often wrong, he lacks attention to detail, shows no sense of urgency, ownership or understanding of priority, and requires constant hand-holding to even get close to completing tasks. There’s a lot to unpack about him but the short story is: I made a big hiring mistake and I know separately that I need to address it. This letter isn’t quite about that though. Recently, a distant relative of Joe’s wife’s passed away. That’s sad. He was sending me constant (and unnecessary) updates about it. We have a super…

A reader writes: I have a weird, complicated relationship with my boss, Amelia, who is part of the C-suite. We have very different working styles. We are both from the same Latin American country but both of us live and work in the U.S. Last week, she asked me to join a call with her and the CEO of our company in another country. The CEO suggested Friday but Amelia said she was taking that day off and suggested Monday instead. Monday was a holiday for both her and me, but she was traveling to a different country so she was going to be working anyway. When I pointed out that it was a holiday, she said, “Oh come on, it’s only 30 minutes.” This made me feel like my day of…

A reader writes: About three years ago, we had a new manager start at my job, Fergus. Fergus is a very nice guy, but has never been a manager before. He delegates some of his core tasks to us, and seems to struggle with things like project management, clear and proactive communication, and HR-type stuff. It doesn’t happen all the time, but when he has a tricky situation, he will come to me and ask my opinion on how to handle it, and I coach him on what to say and what actions should come next. (Before I started here eight years ago, I’d been a department head at my previous company. That place was toxic as hell, and I happily took a step down out of management to get out…

I’m off for the holiday, so here’s an older post from the archives. This was originally published in 2020. A reader writes: I’ve worked for four years in a research laboratory and my supervisor is an associate professor. Her husband is a professor and a director of the research group (and that’s how she easily got her position). As part of standard procedure, the university requires all employees to complete what is called a performance development review. In our meeting, she highlighted two development goals. One was to improve individual conflict management skills by reflecting on all instances of conflicts and how those can be handled better. The second was to impro…

A reader writes: My father is terminally ill with cancer. I was clear when I disclosed his diagnosis to my boss that I did not want to tell anyone else at work and didn’t want to talk about it. I try to maintain a surface-level friendly relationship with my boss, but I have observed him being really bothered by other people’s boundaries if they are not the boundaries he would choose for himself. He seems to feel entitled to know his employees’ personal business, and he’s not someone I want to share my most personal business with. In our weekly calls (I work remote), he continues to ask me about my dad, including detailed questions about his diagnosis and treatment. It …

I’m on vacation. Here are some past letters that I’m making new again, rather than leaving them to wilt in the archives. 1. My boss commented on my work with a puke emoji I work in a PR agency and we are planning a webinar for our most important client. These recent weeks have been kind of a nightmare, because everyone is working remotely for the first time (due to COVID-19) and my boss wants to deliver the best webinar as expected. We keep communicating via Skype. Today I received some bad feedback from my boss about something I made for the webinar, but she finished her comments with three emojis: a “doh,” a “puke,” and an “angry face.” I can handle bad feedback, but…

It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go… 1. My boss did a racist impression of a coworker I’m on a small, mostly autonomous support team in a medium-sized company. We had company-wide training yesterday. My coworker Amy couldn’t attend in person because of a winter storm/flight situation. Amy is black, and the other three of us are white. My team, and many others, went to a hotel bar after the training. After several beers, my boss Fergus quoted Amy — in poor English, with a thick, fake African (think: Nigerian) accent. Amy has a bit of a (South African) accent and is self conscious about it, which Fergus knows, and has no issues with English. It went over like…

A reader writes: For many years, my boss has given flowers to all his assistants for Valentine’s Day. But he has the same two assistants for several years. Both are retired professionals who decided to go back to work, and both originally were married. Now one of them is a widow and he was told by other members of the management team that he couldn’t give her flowers because she was single, but it was okay if he still sent the other assistant flowers. This seems out of place and it made the widowed assistant feel awful. Is this okay? No, it is not okay in any way. Your boss is being a bit of ass, but the people who gave him this guidance are the bigger problem. First…

A reader writes: We recently hired a new employee, “Jane,” to replace someone who is away for a year. Two weeks after Jane started, she told us that she was pregnant and due about six months later. Our company owner, Ron, was very unhappy. He felt tricked, and annoyed that we then had to find a replacement for our replacement. For my part, it was a bit frustrating, but that’s life. I like her personally, and she’s a fast learner and a good employee. But ever since then, Ron has been very cold to Jane. He’s asked me to keep a record of every time she says she’s tired or takes time off for doctor appointments, and has asked me if she’s making up the hours. We had also tal…

A reader writes: My reason for writing stems from a recent situation where I was meeting with my direct report, Lucas, to discuss an idea he came up with. It was a great idea, so I commended him for it and told my boss about it too to give Lucas more visibility across our department. I did this because historically, Lucas has been difficult to manage because he is stubborn and argumentative. So I am hoping that with some positive feedback when it is due, and gentle coaching now and then, I can turn him around. Anyway, when I brought his idea to my boss’ attention, my boss (Allen) directly reached out to him and decided to include him in a client call to allow Allen to …

It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go… 1. My boss is getting rid of everyone’s favorite part of my program for no good reason I manage an educational program that is part of a larger organization. My boss is medium crappy. He’s not abusive, but not a good manager or leader. Thankfully he doesn’t interact with my program more than occasionally. Right now, he is making me get rid of the most popular part of my program. For the sake of anonymity, let’s say it’s a small bouncy house (it’s not). Adults and kids love the bouncy house. People comment on it walking by. It takes minimal money to run. Admittedly it requires some daily labor, but I’m on site anyway and …

A reader writes: I work for a woman who is very highly respected. She is very smart and has accomplished a lot in her life. She also has had a few missteps in her past like anyone has and, although I do not know the extent of some of her previous failures, I feel I can partly link them to her business partner. She runs the day-to-day operations of the company I work at, and her business partner is mainly the financial backing to her current and her previous companies. My boss does speaking engagements and is very women-empowering, especially to women of a certain age and women of color. Her business partner, however, is very crude; he speaks down to me and all of my pe…

It’s four answers to four questions. Here we go… 1. I’m drowning at work because of a family situation — how do I talk about it? My father passed away this past summer from pancreatic cancer. The complications of his illness had slowly escalated throughout the year prior, and I needed to take increasing amounts of time off work to fly to my parents’ home across the country. I work for an extremely small nonprofit and am in a director role. My work is project-based and I report to the board. No one keeps track of how much I’m working and when; they only care if the projects are done on time and well. The summer is our “off” season, and it’s when I usually get the bulk …

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager. It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go… 1. My boss is my boyfriend and won’t give me a day off The owner of the restaurant where I work is my boyfriend and the general manager. I asked for a day off a month ahead of when I needed it off. It’s on Mother’s Day and, yes, it is one of the busiest days of the year. But I have worked there for three years and never took a day off, unless he wanted us to go on a vacation. He recently hired someone two weeks ago and promised her Mother’s Day off because it’s her birthday. I have missed out on so so many things in the past three years because he need…

It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go… 1. My boss isn’t doing her job and things are falling apart I work for an accounting firm where I am the only full-time employee to my boss, Katie. She inherited the business from her father and is within a few years of retiring. I am looking to leave this job this year but until I am able to, I am having trouble dealing with a lot of issues she is having. We are in the middle of tax season and she is falling so far behind on processing tax returns. Many clients have called to ask the status of their return, and I have had to stretch the truth of their status so they do not get upset at me. I always inform my boss when t…

I’m on vacation. Here are some past letters that I’m making new again, rather than leaving them to wilt in the archives. 1. My boss keeps rotting food in our shared office I just started a new job, which I was thrilled to get and have really been enjoying so far. I share an office with one person, who is my immediate supervisor and is training me. He’s been training me well and he’s a really nice guy, but there’s one big problem: when he brings lunch to work, he doesn’t take his leftovers home. As a result, there are at least five or six large Tupperware containers under his desk, containing food in various stages of decay. The smell is, as you might imagine, pretty int…

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager. A reader writes: My boss clearly loves compliments on her appearance, and our team is responding with more and more of them. It feels embarrassing and a bit ridiculous to me, especially since no one ever makes these kind of compliments to anyone else (e.g., “I love your shoes” to another team member but stuff like “you’re so beautiful, your face is radiant” to the boss). I’m her deputy. I can’t bring myself to say anything about her looks, it feels too weird. But the compliments come so often from other team members that I worry it starts to look pointed that I say nothing. And I also wonder if I nee…