Performance Tracking and Feedback

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager. It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go… 1. Employee can’t figure out what accommodations would help her do her job I work at a small organization where I wear many hats, including HR-related items. We have an employee, Nicole, who shared with us about a year ago that she was diagnosed with some conditions that make executive functioning difficult. We immediately approved her requests for an ADHD coach, project management software, and additional weekly meetings with her manager. In this last year, Nicole continues to not meet expectations in areas such as meeting deadlines, communicating eff…

If you’re getting ready to quit your job, you’re probably thinking a lot about how to tell your boss and your team that you’re leaving. But before you give anyone a heads-up, there are some things you need to do first. At New York Magazine today, I’ve got a checklist of 10 items to take care of before you quit. You can read it here. The post what to do before you quit your job: a checklist appeared first on Ask a Manager. View the full article

A reader writes: I am so uncomfortable getting praised or receiving good feedback that it makes me want to crawl out of my skin. For context, I started my job less than half a year ago, and the issue (which I have had all my life) became more prominent about two months ago. I was reviewing an important project for a coworker, noticed a lot of issues, fixed said issues, and sent it to the team lead. I didn’t think anything of it — my task was to make sure the project did not have issues, I spotted issues, and I fixed them. I then got an email from the team lead thanking me profusely for spotting the issues and correcting them, even though they were not all in the portion…

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager. A reader writes: I recently interviewed for a new job that I was really excited: it’s exactly what I want to be doing next in my career, at a company I’ve heard good things about, and with a salary range that would be a significant boost from what I earn currently. After the second interview, the hiring manager asked me for my references. I sent her contact info for my manager from the two previous jobs before my current one, as well as a senior colleague who I’ve worked closely with. I didn’t offer my current manager since she does not know that I’m looking, and I would rather she not know until I’m…

This comment section is open for any non-work-related discussion you’d like to have with other readers, by popular demand. Here are the rules for the weekend posts. Book recommendation of the week: Three Junes, by Julia Glass. The story of three generations of a Scottish family, across three summers. It’s about the expectations and obligations of family, as well as marriage, love, and loss. One of my favorite books of all time. (Amazon, Bookshop) * I earn a commission if you use those links. The post weekend open thread – May 10-11, 2025 appeared first on Ask a Manager. View the full article

A reader writes: I’m enjoying my current job, which is a pleasant surprise to me, considering how many awful workplaces are out there. Of course it’s not perfect, but by and large the management seems to be healthy, which is one of the biggest things I was looking for. It might seem so good in comparison to my most significant prior experience with authority and leadership, which was in my family of origin and was controlling, fear-based, and abusive in various ways. I had only recently moved out of my parents’ home when I started this job, so in addition to learning the ropes of the “official” workplace for the first time, I was also (and am still) learning the ropes o…

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager. A reader asks: My small business has had a recurring discussion regarding taking meetings with job seekers when we don’t have an open position. Someone will reach out, either by stopping by our office without an appointment or just sending an inquiry by email, and ask if they can meet with someone. In the past, we have taken these meetings as sort of informal interviews. From what I recall, we’ve never made a hire from these meetings when there’s no existing connection to our company or staff. Over the last few years, I’ve discouraged these meetings. They just take up time for our team when we don’t …

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager. It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go… 1. How to get someone to say what they want on Teams chat, not just say “hi” I’m looking for a polite script to nip a problem in the bud. I started a new job today, and a colleague with whom I’ll be working closely just messaged me saying, “Hi.” To find out this was all she said, I had to put in a long password to open the app, just to find nothing actionable. She still hasn’t sent me the information I need about where to meet tomorrow, so I guess she’s holding off until I reply “hi.” I really don’t want to encourage this kind of empty message leading…

Remember the letter-writer whose breastfeeding coworker wouldn’t stop talking about her boobs? Here’s the update. It has been about a year since I wrote in. While the talk about breastfeeding specifically decreased about eight months in, my coworker’s seemingly endless need for attention and validation was unceasing. It got to the point where only about three people in the office were engaging with her at all unless they absolutely had to. She then shifted tactics, approaching people with questions that were superficially work related, then immediately re-centering the conversation to either boast about her chosen path to martyrdom, garner excessive praise for her child’…

Two questions, same topic. The first one: I’m on the job hunt, and I have some DEI-focused experience on my resume. I’ve received five rejections from the ~15 jobs I’ve applied for (at least they responded instead of ghosting me!) and I’m wondering if the DEI work is getting flagged. I revamped my team’s interview process to be more equitable and reduce bias, I joined the company’s DEI group when it started in 2020, and I have volunteer experience with a DEI group outside of work. It’s not my entire resume, but it’s enough bullet points and buzzwords to show that I have opinions. In today’s anti-DEI world, should I remove this from my resume? Probably worth noting, I’m…

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager. Remember the letter-writer whose boss was pressuring them to work more hours when they had just back from stress leave? Here’s the update. Good news all around, thank you for the advice — I desperately needed to hear it. It ended up working out — eventually. Brian’s outbursts, yelling, and general unreasonableness got worse after I wrote in, to the point where he would shout at me and everyone else in front of the team. I’m proud of keeping my cool in those moments, but I was in tears afterwards. It sucked. “Nobody is bigger than the project” became a sort of meme on our site, which was a funny upsid…

It’s mid-year updates season! If you’ve had your question answered here in the past, please email me an update and let us know how your situation turned out. Did you take the advice? Did you not take the advice? What happened? How’s your situation now? (Don’t post your updates here though; email them to me.) Your update doesn’t have to be positive or big to be worth submitting. We want to hear them all, even if you don’t think yours is that interesting. And if there’s anyone you especially want to hear an update from, mention it here and I’ll reach out to those people directly. The post where are you now? (a call for updates) appeared first on Ask a Manager. View th…

A reader writes: I’m absolutely prepared for you to tell me there is nothing I can do about this at all besides ignore it, but I REALLY need to change my thinking around my boss’s parenting choices, which I find bizarre and am frankly tired of hearing about. My boss’s adult daughter and 13-year-old grandchild live with her. The daughter doesn’t work but often needs my boss to babysit. Fine, this is her business. But when she leaves work to do it, she gives us a convoluted and overly detailed explanation of why, every time. This has the effect of making it seem much more annoying than it would be otherwise, especially if we’re in the middle of a deliverable or project. …

A reader writes: I am a senior manager on a team that does a back office function (think HR, finance, marketing). A seasoned manager, Rachael, reports to me and has a handful of staff members reporting to her. Our team is hybrid, requiring two in-office days, although we grant flexibility for temporary medical/childcare/life issues that come up. The operations we support are all in-office. Rachael recently told us that she is trying to move out of state and asked to work fully remote. She was candid about this potential move when she was hired several years ago and in subsequent conversations. Rachael is very experienced and previously held my position earlier in her ca…

A reader writes: I’m managing a department of eight people and two of them won’t speak to each other. I’m new to my position and it took me a couple of months to figure out that they weren’t talking. They literally won’t speak to each other. If we have a meeting, they won’t participate if the other person is in the room, unless I address a question directly to one of them. I’ve been managing them for three months, but from what I can gather it’s been like this for at least two years. There seem to be a couple of other people in the department who are on one person’s side or the other, and it is affecting the department’s work. Everyone who has been with the company fo…

A reader writes: I’m a new-ish manager in a small company. I have two direct reports. One is professional and a joy to work with. The other is a recent hire (he’s been here two months) who is right out of college, Jake. In our most recent weekly one-on-one, Jake told me that he is “disappointed in the role” and the work is “not as interesting as he hoped.” I can understand how someone could find much of the work tedious. There’s a significant amount of data entry in the position. But I never hid this. I was clear with every candidate I interviewed that there would be tedious tasks and screened for people who seemed able to figure out strategies for handling that tedium.…

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 was upset I wanted to leave when our A/C failed Last year, my coworker spent the majority of an eight-hour Saturday shift in a public building with no operable bathroom. She reported a sewage backup to our boss and the answering service of the facilities department responsible for maintaining the toilets, but her calls for help went unanswered. This was on my mind last Saturday, when our building’s A/C failed. I put in the same calls, but the only response I got was my boss asking me to let her know if it gets any hotter. A little before no…

A reader writes: I am looking for some advice on how to deal with my manager. I have worked in this organization for about three years, and my manager, Mark, started a few months before me. Out of all of the managers I’ve ever had, he is by far the kindest and most flexible (he’s very hands-off). After a few months, I realized he is not great at his job. Over the past three years, more and more of his job responsibilities have been put onto my plate. I am supposed to be in a more technical role, but I end up dedicating a lot of my time to managing, due to him … not managing. Some examples: * Interns: We have a small team of interns — 6-10 in any given year. When I firs…

Last week we talked about memorable impressions made by new hires. Here are 20 of my favorite stories you shared. 1. The celebration At my husband’s old company, a new hire took a three-hour lunch on his first day. When a coworker asked where he’d been, new hire said he’d been at the strip club with his friends celebrating his new job. He reasoned that this was fine because “it’s just syllabus week right now.” He did not last long. 2. The carving Years ago we held an orientation for some new hires in the boardroom and one of them chose to carve his name into the table-top. It was his first and last day. 3. The Keurig annexation On a new guy’s first day, he took the…

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…

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 leads the worst staff meetings ever Every month my boss leads an all-staff meeting, and it is awful. Normally he is a pretty good boss, and I enjoy working with him. But this meeting is regularly 1.5-2 hours long and largely irrelevant to half the staff because it is mostly geared towards one team (out of 4). My boss also tries to make these meetings “fun” by asking people for personal pictures — at one meeting he showed pictures for 45 minutes before even getting to the business/informational part, during the height of our busy season. I ma…

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager. A reader writes: The letter you posted from the volunteer who didn’t disclose something to a student’s teacher and parents reminded me about something that happened to me a while ago with an outside mentor for an after-school program, especially since I was a lot like Marvin in that letter (without the expensive romantic overtures). I was the only girl in a STEM club at my high school, and the mentor was, let’s say, a teapot designer who also trained teapot drivers. Bob wasn’t actually a teacher at my school. He was a volunteer who worked at a well-known organization that the club was associated with…

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager. A reader writes: Through a bit of misfortune, I had to fall back on working at the company my parents own, in order to pay my bills. It is a challenging job market, to say the least, so I am grateful that I have this safety net I can fall back on. However, it isn’t without its own league of challenges: my coworkers have taken to making complaints about me to my parents, who are the bosses, about issues that quite frankly seem petulant. In one case, one coworker was noting what times I was clocking in and made a complaint when I clocked in three hours earlier than everybody else to finish paperwork in…