Performance Tracking and Feedback

It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go… 1. I inherited a team from a terrible manager Thanks to your help, I have a shiny new job. I’ve inherited a team where the last manager, Jane, was a true chaos agent. I’m getting stories of her ignoring staff, not communicating on projects or workload at all, putting the blame on staff to senior manager when projects didn’t happen, drinking too much at work events, inappropriate behavior. All her behavior went unchecked for some years until she was suddenly let go. The team are generally exhausted. There is some anger that they escalated complaints about Jane and nothing was done (until it was). At least one openly says …

It’s four answers to four questions. Here we go… 1. I left work because no one would let me in I (19-year-old female) recently ghosted my job at McDonalds because my coworkers would lock me out at 5 in the morning. Why? I’m not completely sure, I’m guessing it was to keep the customers out but again, I’m not completely sure. All I know is that Every. Single. Time. they scheduled me to work at 5am, I would always be locked out the building and it would always take me roughly 10-25 minutes to get in the building without breaking the door down, blowing up the phone, or climbing through the drive-through window. Going to the drive-through didn’t help either because nobody i…

If you’re the boss, finding the right gifts for your employees can be fraught with questions: How much do you spend? Should you spend the same amount of money on each person? And if you don’t know someone well, how do you make sure they like the gift while still keeping it professional? For the record: managers don’t have to give their staff members gifts, but it’s a nice gesture if you want to do it, and in some offices it’s expected. (Although here is your obligatory reminder that because of the power dynamics involved, gifts at work should flow down, not up. Managers should never expect or encourage gifts from employees.) A while back, New York Magazine asked me to p…

It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go… 1. I manage a married couple, and it’s causing problems I manage a married couple. I hired one of them first, and a few years later the spouse finished a degree that gave them the right expertise to also join my team. They don’t supervise each other or make any promotion or budget decisions about each other. At first things were good, but I’ve been noticing small things that are now bigger things in their communication patterns that need to be addressed. They are becoming really insular, not asking anyone for help except the other one, and not communicating issues or concerns outside the two of them, and recently they sh…

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager. A reader writes: I supervise a team of seven, split between two offices. Sally is an employee in her early 20s working in the opposite office as myself. Sally is a slob. This is not typical workplace clutter. She leaves work and personal items all over the office — moldy food containers, piles of work items, boxes, etc. Her messes have taken up to an hour to clean up. Her own office is such a mess that she spreads her work out to all of the common areas in the office, and then leaves the common areas a mess. She has not responded to typical feedback or formal warnings, and the issue has been escalate…

A reader writes: I’m managing a difficult employee, “Felix.” Felix has been at my company for five years now. He also happens to be the CEO’s nephew. His performance was never good, but it’s gotten steadily worse. His work frequently has mistakes, he is unreachable for large stretches of the day, and he pushes back on any feedback I give him. At one point, he yelled in my face when I pointed out a repeated problem with his work, saying that he “didn’t respect” my feedback. I’ve documented these issues extensively. I’ve talked to HR repeatedly about putting him on a PIP or even terminating him outright. They say that Felix is unhappy and actively job-searching and that …

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager. A reader writes: I took over as the director of my former team about a year ago. I inherited an ongoing HR issue between one of my direct reports (Tammy) and her direct report (Beth). Beth hates Tammy. Beth had applied for the promotion to Tammy’s position when it was last open but my predecessor hired Tammy from the outside, and Beth had strong feelings about being passed over. Tammy was not the best hire; she is not a strong manager. But we are a government agency, and while Tammy isn’t my best employee, she is not so bad that there would be any chance I could fire her. I have worked on coaching her…

A reader writes: I need to partner with a team whose manager rejected me for a job, and I’m struggling to have a positive attitude. A year ago, I applied to an internal role for which I met 90% of the criteria on the nose. It was a team doing the same work as I did but in another part of the company, and the gap in qualifications was akin to having experience grooming llamas but not alpacas – it’s highly transferrable. I have great performance reviews, scoring the elusive 5/5, and I had completed an internal leadership program that is supposed to highlight me as a candidate for internal roles. I didn’t expect to be handed the role but I did think I was a strong internal…

A reader writes: I started my job in 2023 and became good friends with Ellie. We have similar roles, but different divisions, so rarely overlapped. We bonded over being unhappy in our roles and having a shared male “mentor,” who turned out to be quite the creep (he ended up leaving before we did). We both ultimately made plans to leave that job, she a little before me. During our friendship, I did sometimes notice she could be a bit immature (framing everything in terms of “high-school cliques”) which I just sort of laughed off/ignored. I also got the sense she was pushing me to leave my job, less so because it was good for me, but because she wanted our office to “take…

A reader writes: I was on a Zoom call today with my direct report and an intern. I momentarily took off my headphones to blow my nose and put myself on mute. However, through the headphones I heard my direct report say to the intern, “He’s so clueless!” I am struggling with the best way to respond. Not only is this unprofessional behavior, but I have spent a lot of time training the direct report and have praised her to the higher-ups, as well as recently encouraged the leadership team to give her greater responsibility. So it feels a bit as a betrayal as well. She’s a millennial and I’m the youngest of the boomers if that matters, which it shouldn’t. What would be the…

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager. A reader shares this story: I recently received what I believe to be a scam job offer. It seemed too good to be true, and I should have realized it was a scam, especially since I don’t remember applying for the position at the company that supposedly offered it to me. The most obvious red flag was that it seemed too good to be true, and the text in the email was clearly copied and pasted from a template. Still, in the excitement of the moment, I almost fell for it. Here’s how it went down: First email: A seemingly legitimate email from someone within the organization asked me to reply “yes” if I was…

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager. A reader writes: I’m a volunteer for an after-school program for high schoolers interested in my profession (similar to, say, a robotics team). I’m a woman in my mid-20s, and one of the kids is a 16-year-old boy we’ll call Marvin. Marvin is a very bright and hardworking kid who excels academically (AP classes, honor society) and works at a fast food place. He is also what some would call a “nerdy outcast” and only has a few acquaintances his own age. He gets along much better with teachers than other students, and I’m no exception. I was exactly like him when I was his age and remembered the deep rela…

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. I saw my coworker buying a beer during work hours I saw a coworker at the pharmacy near our office this morning (9:45 a.m.) buying a 40-ounce can of beer. I was confused at first and I couldn’t figure out what to make out of it, but then I also remembered that this coworker always falls asleep in meetings. I wasn’t sure if I should have approached her (I didn’t want her to think I’m being nosy). I do not want to jump to conclusions because I also thought she might have bought the beer for someone else (i.e., a homeless person in NYC or whatever). …

It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go… 1. I saw my coworker’s pregnancy announcement on TikTok I was just scrolling TikTok, and a video from “someone you may know” popped up. It is a coworker of mine, whose number is in my phone because we sit near each other and sometimes need to coordinate watering plants and such. It turns out she’s a somewhat well-known content creator in a pretty wholesome and innocuous genre. The video I landed on was especially well liked, because she used it to announce her pregnancy. I’m very happy for her and would like to congratulate her! However, I don’t know if she would think it’s weird that I watched her video. I’m a man who s…

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager. A reader writes: Today, during a screensharing session with my new employee, Barb, I saw something inappropriate on her screen and did not speak up. I was so dumbfounded that I just quickly wrapped up our call. I’m almost sure I saw her chat session with a coworker with explicit reference to private body parts. Both the screenshare software and chat software are part of the same company-provided system; it’s typically used for training and collaboration. Should I say anything to Barb? Or try to forget I ever saw anything? Since my view of the chat window happened very quickly, and I have no “proof,” …

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager. It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go… 1. If I opt out of team-building activities, I still have to work on those days I work for a small nonprofit with about 25 employees. Recently, we have begun “employee engagement” activities, like visiting local attractions. These activities take place during work hours. We are not forced to participate, but if we choose not to, then we are expected to work while those who do want to participate are basically paid to hang out at a local attraction, restaurant, etc. I don’t enjoy these kinds of group activities, but I’m not trying to keep anyone from g…

A reader writes: I recently realized that one of the managers who reports to me, Blake, uses abusive language with his employees. Blake’s employee fear that if he knows they have reported this to me, it will create a further problem for them. I need help on how to give feedback to Blake without giving him the feeling that I came to know this from his team members. I answer this question — and three others — over at Inc. today, where I’m revisiting letters that have been buried in the archives here from years ago (and sometimes updating/expanding my answers to them). You can read it here. Other questions I’m answering there today include: Interviewing with the team I’…

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager. I talked to Vulture about what the TV show Severance reveals about workplace life — including the inauthenticity of corporate life, how the Overtime Contingency exists in real life, the weirdness of workplace perks, and how work can degrade your spirit. View the full article

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager. I talked to Vulture about what the TV show Severance reveals about workplace life — including the inauthenticity of corporate life, how the Overtime Contingency exists in real life, the weirdness of workplace perks, and how work can degrade your spirit. View the full article

A reader writes: I recently made a hire for a mid-level job in my organization, and hired someone I was extremely excited about. We clicked in his interview and I had some warm personal recommendations. His experience in our field was light, and there were a few red flags in the application process, but I felt that he was teachable and worth taking a chance on. Four months later, I can conclude I was disastrously wrong. He has struggled to grasp the material of the job, to arrive at work on time (with a few near no-shows thrown in for good measure), to demonstrate professional courtesy to colleagues, and to pick up on company culture. We are nearing the point of termina…

A reader writes: For the bulk of my working life, I’ve been a very low-level lawyer in Washington, D.C. who managed to scratch my way into a few government contracts with the Department of Justice over the years. This definitely wasn’t my dream (poetry is … sigh), but things worked out this way and mostly it’s been okay. After using your book (which was great), I was eventually hired full-time by another agency last December, but DOGE killed my position very shortly afterwards before I even finished onboarding, and since then I’ve been scrambling, since the whole legal ecosystem in D.C. is a mess and jobs have vanished. Recently, a couple positions at DOJ were advertis…

I’m off today, so here’s an older post from the archives. This was originally published in 2014. A reader writes: I was in the awesome position of interviewing for two roles through recruitment agencies and receiving offers for both. Both roles were aware that I had another strong offer on the table, and negotiations started between myself and the two agencies. As I was available immediately, both roles wanted me to start ASAP and had suggested start dates that were within a working week of the initial offer. Within a few days, I made my decision and I outlined my choice in an email to the recruiter of the role I was turning down. The recruiter wanted to discuss the m…

A reader writes: I recently made it through to the final interview round for a job I was very excited about. I’ve been in my current position without a clear path to promotion long enough to have been eyeing the exits for a while, and finally I found myself in a hiring process that felt like it was going really well. I was meshing with all the people who I would be working with at this company. The conversations we had about the vision I would bring to their team also energized me in a way that my current work hasn’t in quite some time. The final interview ended up being scheduled on the same day as a company party at my current job. I thought that was great, because it…

A reader writes: I’ve been working at a university for eight years in the donor relations department. This past year has been really tough for the university budget-wise, for various political funding reasons. There was a round of layoffs in late April, where 10 out of the 60 people let go were in our unit (which has about 200 people). Another layer to consider is that our fundraising unit has gone through a massive reorg with a lot of roles being compressed with bigger portfolios. We used to have stewardship person in each faculty, now we have stewardship officers responsible for 3+ faculties. Our team is really flat, with the associate director having seven direct re…

A reader writes: I found your site a few months ago after receiving an angry, almost violent letter from a former employee of mine. I used to own and operate a small bed and breakfast in a resort community. She was a maid, cook, and sometimes bookkeeper. I have always known that I’m a difficult person and would warn new employees that they were on probation for them to get to know me as much as for me to get to know them. I have always found those who can’t handle me to be weak or too sensitive. When I got her letter, I was shocked, angry, hurt, defensive, and ready for war. However, after taking some time to read through your past letters, I now don’t know how to feel…