Posted 6 hours ago6 hr comment_11492 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 around some specific behaviors that I know bother her staff and she is doing a little better there, and her relationship with her other direct reports has started to improve. But not Beth. Beth came in hot at me from day one in this role that I needed to “fix” Tammy. She went around the chain of command to me constantly for every small nitpicky complaint she had about everything Tammy does. And ultimately, Beth just doesn’t like Tammy on a personal level, which she’s told me very plainly. We had a come-to-Jesus type conversation with all three of us a few months ago to get to some basic agreement on how they would work together (who would cc who on emails, how leave request would be handled, all really basic stuff that shouldn’t need to even be said for two management level staff, but we laid it all out). The nitpicky complaints to me stopped. But it seems like Beth has now just given up. She looks absolutely miserable in every meeting. If she’s not talking, which she virtually never does unprompted now, she stares into space with a look on her face like we’re torturing her. She was always a bit of a negative person, but that has just exploded — while she rarely talks at all, virtually everything she does say has a complaint attached to it or a deep sigh involved. Beth also supervises other staff and I’m really worried that she’s not only becoming incredibly negative herself, but that at least one of her direct reports is following her lead in complaining a lot about other staff. I feel like I have some idea of how to deal with the negative comments. I’m less sure what, if anything, I can do about her showing up at every meeting looking like it’s sheer torture. I’m thinking of pulling her aside and she saying, “I’m concerned about you, our last three team meetings you looked really miserable to me.” At the end of the day, though, she’s made it really clear that nothing will resolve her issue except not reporting to Tammy, which is not an option I have available. And while Beth’s behavior also isn’t great now and her performance has slipped down to pretty mediocre, in the space we work in it doesn’t begin to approach fireable. Are we all just stuck? I’m feeling stuck. And I know Beth feels stuck. And I know Tammy feels stuck that much of Beth’s hostility is rooted in personal dislike and a history of hiring decisions that Tammy didn’t have anything to do with. I’m going to keep coaching Tammy to improve. Can I do anything else here? We can’t talk about this without saying that not being able to do anything about someone whose behavior “isn’t great” and whose performance “has slipped down to pretty mediocre” is … well, Not Good. So first and foremost, I strongly recommend that you question that as much as you can! Can you really not do anything about those things, or is it more that it’s a massive pain with a ridiculous number of bureaucratic hoops to jump through? Sometimes people say “we can’t fire in our organization” when what it really means is “it’s a huge pain to fire here, but it can be done.” (And yes, I know government is its own thing, but even there, there are things you can do if you’re willing to put in the time.) Plus, even if you can’t fire a problem performer, that doesn’t mean you can’t lay out stronger performance standards and keep pushing her toward them. Of course, it’s possible that you’ve thought through how much time and effort it would take and determined that your energy would pay off more if spent on other things. But if there’s any chance that you haven’t fully thought through all the options available, please do — not just for Beth, but for all the other people Tammy manages, too. Just because they’re not as vocal about it as Beth is doesn’t mean that they’re not deeply frustrated by reporting to her, too. Okay, with that behind us… The next step is to separate your concerns about Beth into two buckets: the concern about her being so obviously miserable and the concern about what effect that might be having on the people she manages, since those require two different approaches. If it were just that she looked miserable, I’d say you should have a very up-front conversation with her where you say, “You’ve looked really unhappy lately, and I want to talk about what’s going on. I know you’re unhappy reporting to Tammy, and you have serious concerns about her as a manager. Realistically, XYZ is not going to change because of ____ (reasons). You should assume XYZ will still be that way a year from now, or even a few years from now. I want to be up-front with you about that because I want you to be able to make good decisions for yourself, and my strong advice is to be honest with yourself about whether you can find a way to be reasonably happy within that reality, or whether this is just not a good match for you long-term. I’d hate to lose you, but I’d hate more for you to spend years being this unhappy in your job.” In many ways, this is similar to last week’s letter about the young employees struggling with the realities of work; the situations are different but part of the solution to both is to say, “Let me give you really transparent info about what will and won’t change so you can decide for yourself if this will work for you.” But while ultimately Beth’s feelings about work are her own to manage, there’s also a point where it can become a work issue for others — like if she’s shutting down to the point that she won’t engage in meetings or if she manages people who are getting that doom and gloom splattered all over them. Both sound like the case here, and those are things you have standing to take on not just as a fellow human concerned about her happiness but also as a manager concerned about the way it’s impacting her actual work What to do about that depends on the specifics of how it’s affecting Beth’s staff — but it sounds like you’ve seen enough to have real concern that it is. So the conversation needs to include something like, “Ultimately, your feelings toward Tammy are your private business as long as they’re not disruptive at work, but I’m seeing it affect your team in XYZ ways.” Then offer clear statements of what, specifically, you need her to change in that regard. Crucially, though, you don’t want to get into a situation where Beth is being held to a higher standard than Tammy … because that’s just going to make the problems with Beth worse. If you’re going to take a stronger hand in managing the Beth situation (and you should), you’ve got to take a stronger hand in managing the Tammy situation too. But if you can say honestly to Beth that you’re working closely with Tammy on the issues that concern her, then you’re on much more solid ground in saying, “I’ve heard your complaints, I’m actively working on them, but this is the reality we’re in and your responsibility is to do XYZ on your own end of this.” View the full article
