update: my employee is demoralized after a promotion was dangled in front her and then yanked away

It’s “where are you now?” month at Ask a Manager, and all December I’m running updates from people who had their letters here answered in the past.

There will be more posts than usual this week, so keep checking back throughout the day.

Remember the letter-writer whose employee was demoralized after a promotion was dangled in front her and then yanked away (#3 at the link)? Here’s the update.

I met with Maple, the head of our office, and was able to uncover the truth about why they decided not to promote Joy (though it took some deeper questioning to get to it). It was your third possibility: Maple had concerns with Joy during the decision-making process. Maple felt that Joy wasn’t decisive enough and did not have enough passion for the transition.

Here is some context: Joy was given two weeks to make a decision due to vacation schedules so she took advantage of the time to talk to a lot of people and ask a lot of questions. She had several meetings with Apple, the manager of sales team A. On the day before the decision date, she told Apple that she was leaning toward staying with my team. Unknown to Joy, Apple passed on that sentiment to Maple. On decision day, Joy ended up switching and saying that she wanted to transition to the role. This flip-flop was a frustration for Maple and caused her to feel that Joy was indecisive. She said she would need someone who can make hard decisions with limited information in that role. Another factor was that Joy had asked if could remain on an ongoing project that she enjoyed (an analytical responsibility within a multidisciplinary team). This led Maple to believe that Joy wasn’t “all in” on the sales role and was still clinging to her current team. There is some personal bias here: earlier in her career, Maple made a big transition with limited hesitation (made the decision without discussing it with anyone, including her husband). She seemed to have expected Joy to want a change with the same passion.

While I disagree with Maple on these views, she is ultimately allowed to decide who she wants for the role. The problem was in the messaging. Instead of bringing up their concerns about Joy, they changed the requirement to needing experience in Team B or Team C first. Maple does generally believe that starting in those teams gives a stronger sales foundation, but my impression was that they wouldn’t have made that a requirement if Joy had done this differently. In Maple’s mind, if Joy really wanted to get into sales, she would be willing to do these other experiences first. As you can tell in my original letter, this was not conveyed well at all.

The biggest issue was the impact on Joy. As I mentioned in my original letter, I knew I would be able to get the full story, but I was really worried about salvaging the aftermath. Joy could tell that there was some other underlying reason than what they gave her. But she felt it was due to her own deficiency. She was concerned that senior leaders had a limiting view on her and it would affect her future career advancement. Fortunately, I shared what I learned with her and I think I did a good job framing the various perspectives and context. While it was still frustrating for her, it at least made more sense for her and she appreciated the efforts in investigating this situation.

I also  had conveyed Joy’s fear in my meeting with Maple. To her credit, Maple was horrified at what Joy was perceiving. She and Apple later met with Joy to apologize for how this all turned out. They reassured her that this wouldn’t prevent her from making a similar transition in the future. Joy also got a separate note from my grandboss (global C-level position) to emphasize how much they valued her and that there was no poor perception from his end. These went a long way to helping Joy feel better but she did need some time to have this all settle in.

Joy decided to stay with my team and not join the sales side (team B or C). While she already had hesitations about those teams, a factor for her decision was the support that we provided that she doesn’t think she’ll get there. The silver lining is that Joy has been more reflective about her career, more in those few weeks than in the last few years! After this had all settled, Joy and I had an informal review meeting to discuss her future. I was already working with her to put her on a path to managing people. Armed with what we learned about Maple’s values, we focused on decision-making skills. Joy is already strong in this area when it comes to technical and transactional work, but I emphasized taking it to a much broader and generalized level. We made an accelerated development plan that included putting her in new decision-making scenarios. We will try to force these situations rather than wait for them to come up naturally. Joy is very motivated here and is eager to prove that Maple made the wrong decision.

Very recently, I learned that the company has significant growth plans for the next year. That would include bringing in an external team and integrating it with ours. My hope is to use this opportunity to reorganize my team and put Joy in a managerial role earlier than expected (previously, opportunities were limited since my team is fully staffed and we don’t do a lot of new hiring).

I want to thank you for your advice and for the comments from your readers! I knew that the guidance was going to be helpful. What I was surprised by was how much it impacted me to receive encouragement and affirmation from you and your readers! It is one thing to read how this blog helps others, but it is quite another to experience it firsthand. It added a lot of momentum to how I approached things in the last few months. Thank you all!

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