changing a company as the owner’s son, are some people just not motivated by anything, and more

It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go…

1. How do I change a company’s culture as the owner’s son?

My father owns a production company with roughly 200 employees, multiple factories, and a strong international client base. We are based in a country with limited workers’ rights, but are trying to adopt American labor standards to attract higher-profile clients. I work here part-time with largely undefined responsibilities, but usually end up handling emails, editing product photos, interviewing potential interns, and arranging internal events. My position alone raises red flags, as I make more than my work would merit any other employee.

My father has asked for my perspective regarding the company’s growth and sustainability, and while I have a few ideas, I just don’t know where to start! We don’t have an HR division, our core staff’s responsibilities keep expanding, our prices are falling short of competitive, and boundaries are blurred relatively often. When I was a child, company truckers would pick me up from school on my father’s behalf, and no one seems to think it’s weird that employees are tasked with washing his car or photocopying his children’s medical documents. Even if it’s normalized in the local culture, something tells me a greater separation between work life and personal life would do wonders.

I would appreciate some pointers on what to focus on first. Do I tell my father to talk to a consultant? Do I convince him to hire trained HR personnel? Do I document all the cases of blurred boundaries and tell him companies in the U.S. would never let them happen? I don’t intend on working here for much longer, but I care about this company. I just don’t know what I can do when I majored in something other than business and am just working here until I get admitted to a postgraduate program.

I don’t think you’re well-positioned to change such fundamental things about the company’s culture, so you should take the pressure of yourself to somehow find a way to! You can certainly point out the things you’ve described here, but unless your father really has a quite deep respect for your opinion on this stuff, I’m skeptical it’s going to make much of a difference. There’s also a really wide range of issues here: boundaries, job descriptions, workloads, pricing … those are all each their own areas and there’s no one person equipped to fix all of them unless they’re very high-level in the company and your father places a huge amount of trust in them (and even then I’d expect an uphill battle). You could suggest he bring in outside consultants and/or hire someone to work on professionalizing their operations, but I wouldn’t expect to be able to fix this stuff from where you’re standing.

That said, you didn’t actually write that your dad is asking you to fix this stuff; he just asked for your perspective. Go ahead and share your perspective on as much of this as you’d like! If your sense is that he’ll be more responsive to some pieces than others, focus on those. But know that even an experienced consultant coming in wouldn’t be able to fix these things without significant buy-in and commitment from your dad.

2. Are some employees just not motivated by anything?

My company is a small design agency. For the last 10+ years, I’ve managed Jim. He’s quiet and does okay work most of the time — nothing stellar or particularly creative. I’ve coached him to get out of his comfort zone, showed examples of what I (and our clients) are looking for, and things improve for a hot minute before he reverts right back to uninspired work.

What stumps me is that nothing seems to excite him or motivate him to grow or progress in his career. I’ve talked to him many times about what I’d like to see in terms of progress in the quality of his work, offered him professional development opportunities, asked what kinds of assignments he most enjoys so I could steer them his way, and included him in client meetings so he could be involved in some projects right from the start. None of that has made any difference in his level of engagement or work quality.

He frequently overlooks tasks he’s solely responsible for (like scheduling our social media posts) and just apologizes when asked why something wasn’t done. Annual reviews seem like we’re having the exact same conversation every year. He hasn’t qualified for a raise in the last four year and has never asked why or what he could do better. Is it possible that some employees simply aren’t motivated by anything?

Yes. It’s also possible he just doesn’t have the skills or aptitude for what you need — or the interest in putting in the work on an ongoing basis (since he does occasionally improve for a short time but doesn’t sustain it). You say he does okay most of the time, but it doesn’t really sound like it if he’s not producing what clients want and regularly misses tasks he’s in charge of.

If I’m wrong about that and his work is truly fine and the issue is only that he’s not improving over time — but his current level of skill is perfectly acceptable for the job and will remain perfectly acceptable even if he never grows — then your best move is to accept that this is Jim and he’s probably not going to change, and he doesn’t need to be constantly improving if his base level is acceptable. But what you described sounds more like someone who isn’t well-suited for the job he’s in — a performance problem, not a motivation problem — and at this point I’d move to what you want to do about that. Personally, I’d want to replace him with someone who’s better at the work.

Related:
how do I motivate someone who doesn’t bother to do his work

3. Can I ask for a demotion out of management?

I’ve worked for the same large institution for about 16 years. A few years ago, I made a move from one closely-related department to another to take on a junior managerial role. I’m proud of a lot of the work I’ve done here, but it hasn’t been easy, and after several years of managing, training new staff, designing new procedures, being the point person for questions, and collaborating with my boss, I am so deeply burned out on management. I want out. The only parts of the work that I still find enjoyable are the bits where I’m basically doing the same tasks as all the other team members (I have the same daily and weekly rotational tasks that they have, plus my management responsibilities). The management parts just feel draining. It probably doesn’t help that I have chronic health conditions that have negatively impacted my work in the past and have the potential to do so again.

I found out recently that one of our team members is leaving, and I caught myself daydreaming about what it would be like if I could be gloriously demoted to that job (an independent contributor role) instead — no more exempt status that only ever benefits my employer and never me, no more giving negative feedback and coaching, no more being solely responsible for all training and logistics…

If it would even be possible, it would mean a pay cut, but I could make do with that. What I’m not sure is how I would explain the desire to take that step down. How do you say “Give me less responsibility and money, please”? And how would I explain that change on my resume when applying for other roles in the future? I don’t want to leave because I’m awful at my job, I want to leave because the job is eating my life and I’m miserable. I want to go back to a nice non-exempt role with clearly delineated boundaries.

Even if it’s not this role, I badly want to move to something that’s not management, and it will likely involve a step down the hierarchy and possibly a pay cut. How do I explain to prospective managers that my interest in these kinds of roles is serious and that I genuinely want to make that move out of management?

This is a thing people do! Anyone with any amount of thoughtfulness who has managed people knows it’s not easy and should be able to imagine just not wanting to do it anymore. As long as you make it clear you’re not expecting to stay at a management-level pay rate, this is a reasonable thing to raise.

Say this to your boss: “I’m interested in being considered for Jane’s role when she leaves. I’d really like to return to being an independent contributor; I understand it would mean a pay cut. Is that something we could talk about?”

For applying for non-management jobs outside your company, you can be open about targeting non-management roles specifically (as opposed to just being willing to take one if that’s all that’s available): “I’m looking for an independent contributor role where I can focus on XYZ” / “I’ve realized what what I most enjoy is XYZ and am deliberately seeking roles that don’t include management” / “I worked as a manager for the last two years, which helped me realize that what I really want to focus on is XYZ — management took me away from that, and I’m excited to get back to it.”

Related:
how to explain why I want a lower-level, lower-responsibility job

4. Rejecting applicants who don’t include a cover letter

I used to manage the recruiting process here at my small (12 people) social housing organization, but luckily we now have a staff member who is half finance and half HR (and she actually has gone to school for HR, unlike me). I’m very happy to be out of the HR tasks, since I’ve never had any HR education; it was just a gap that I helped fill.

We currently have two positions we are recruiting for, both at the level where we ask for a resume and cover letter. Many applicants don’t include a cover letter and they are usually sent right to the “no” file. What are your thoughts on an email as cover letter? Most of the applications come into our general email, which I manage – though I gave access to the HR staff member so, during the recruiting process, she can grab all the applications – so I see many of them. When an applicant types a short “intro” or note in their email, and only attaches a resume, should she count that email as the cover letter?

Any thoughts on her practice of not considering applicants who don’t follow the instructions in the posting to include a cover letter?

If it’s something like “I’m applying for the llama wrangler position; attached please find my resume,” that’s not a cover letter. If it’s at least a few paragraphs with actual substance in them, that a cover letter even though it’s just in the body of an email. Cover letters don’t need to be a separate attachment; it’s about length and substance, not where the words are.

And I’m in favor of your coworker’s practice of not considering applicants who don’t include a cover letter when they were specifically told that’s part of your application process, doubly so if the job involves any form of written communication skills. (That said, if you’re accepting applications through sites that make it difficult to include a personalized cover letter, you should factor that in. In those cases, you might respond to otherwise strong looking candidates and ask them to complete their application by submitting one.)

5. Dealing with tremors in an interview

I will have my first in-person job interview since 2019 soon. I have been remote since 2022. In the intervening years, I have developed a visible, left-dominant tremor down my arm, into my hand when I am walking or sitting. It also appears in my jaw at times. This either (1) leads my jaw to chatter or (2) leads me to clamp my jaw shut, which does not look too friendly. These can look like anxiety even when they are not and are constants regardless of emotion, but worsen during high stakes settings. I can hide them well on Zoom, but less so in-person. It takes a great deal of effort to keep them hidden, and when I get distracted they pop out.

My interview will be with a team very familiar with my work but less so with my tremors. My hand also likes to curl up, which can look like fidgeting or discomfort. Doctors don’t know why this happens, but so far it seems benign.

Any advice for dealing with these visible sumptoms it in an interview where they may be misinterpreted? As a younger woman, I have learned anxiety is always everyone’s first assumption even if it’s rarely the case.

At the start of the meeting, say this cheerfully and matter-of-factly: “Since we don’t normally see each other in person, I should mention I sometimes have tremors in my hand and jaw — it’s just a medical thing and nothing to worry about!”

That way they’ll know what’s going on and won’t draw the wrong conclusions and they won’t worry about what might be happening. By taking a matter-of-fact tone, you’ll demonstrate that it’s no big deal, and most people will follow your cues.

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