my employee patronizes me when I correct his work

A reader writes:

I have a newish direct report. He’s generally pretty good and is always supportive and encouraging towards his team, which is great.

He’s also always encouraging and supportive towards people more senior to him, including me, which is getting less great. I hear a lot of, “Excellent spot!” when I point out a mistake. Or, “That’s a really good idea, [MyName]” or “‘that’s a great suggestion, thank you,” in an encouraging tone of voice, or “that’s a really good point” when actually it is not a particularly good point and all I said was X is unclear and he needs to rewrite it.

Yes, I did make a good suggestion! It is my job as manager to make good suggestions! I actually phrased it as an instruction!

It’s nothing that I would object to at all if it were occasional, but it’s so consistent and feels patronizing. Sometimes I just want an “OK, will do” and don’t need to be reassured every time that I have his full approval for my corrections. He also has a tendency to explain things I already know quite well.

He does it to pretty much everyone, but I’m not sure other senior people interact with him frequently enough to register it in the same way. I feel I should say something but I’m not sure how to start — “we’re all human, praise is nice, but maybe not quite so much”?

For what it’s worth, we’re similar ages though he’s been at the company longer, and I’m female but he does it to men too.

I answer this question 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.

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