do I need to give my rude, difficult employee more positive feedback?

[ResidentialBusiness]

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager.

A reader writes:

I recently started a new job where I manage two employees. One of them, “Carol,” is challenging to work with. I’ve learned that some candidates even withdrew from the role I now hold because they couldn’t see themselves working with her.

While I generally get along with Carol, managing her is difficult. She can be loud, boastful (sometimes claiming credit for others’ work), and occasionally rude, making snarky comments to colleagues. She admits she’s not a morning person, but on some mornings, her mood is so sour I feel I need to walk on eggshells. She doesn’t hesitate to interrupt others with her own questions, which I appreciate in terms of initiative, but she often responds curtly to volunteers or colleagues who interrupt her.

A manager training session shed more light on her personality. Her Emotional Control score on a personality assessment was zero, which the facilitator described as indicative of deep self-esteem issues. I was advised to praise her as much as possible, though it may never feel like enough. I’ve been trying, but it’s exhausting — it doesn’t come naturally to me, and I worry about sounding insincere.

Carol has mentioned attending therapy for job-related stress and anxiety, which I’m glad she’s addressing. I agree that her struggles seem rooted in low self-esteem. Do you have any additional advice for managing someone like Carol? I want to support her growth, but being direct with her is tough due to how sensitive she is.

I’d caution you against putting too much weight on personality assessments (which are generally pseudoscience, although they might be helping in giving you the words to articulate patterns you had already noticed on your own) and instead urge you to focus on giving Carol clear and concrete info about what you need her to do differently.

Given the problems with Carol’s conduct, focusing on building up her self-esteem is not the right strategy, and it will steer you away from the type of feedback Carol urgently needs.

That’s not to say that you shouldn’t make sure you’re giving sincere praise to employees. Of course you should — with all of them, and it’s worth being extra intentional about it when you know someone thrives on that form of recognition in particular. So when you write that praising Carol’s work doesn’t come naturally to you and feels insincere, I want to know more about that. Does it feel insincere because she’s not actually doing a good job, or because you’re uncomfortable praising employees in general? If it’s the former, that’s a sign that you really, really need to be tackling the performance issues … whereas if it’s an across-the-board issue you have with other employees too, that’s something you’ve got to work on to be a better manager (more on that here).

But regardless of the answer to that, it definitely sounds like you’re not giving enough feedback in the other direction, because these issues with Carol are persisting and you said it’s tough to be direct with her because of how sensitive she is. As a manager, you cannot allow the fear of an employee’s reaction to get in the way of you delivering important feedback about their work (or conduct); that would be neglecting your own job in a pretty fundamental way, and it’s unfair to to the other people who have to work with Carol. Frankly, it’s also unfair to Carol herself, since it means that she won’t have the opportunity to hear what she’s doing that’s alienating people and harming her reputation and which could even get her fired someday. (You might not fire her over what you’ve seen, but that doesn’t mean her next manager won’t. It’s a kindness to be direct with her.)

Moreover, being able to take work-related feedback is a job competency like any other. You (hopefully) wouldn’t throw up your hands about someone who was, say, bad at meeting deadlines or produced work littered with serious errors. You’d address those problems head-on, because they’re clearly connected to the person’s ability to perform the role you’ve hired them for. You can — and should — have the same sorts of expectations around taking work-related feedback professionally. You can’t not give it just because Carol is sensitive.

So: it’s time to tell Carol very clearly that she cannot be rude or snarky, her mood cannot be so disruptive that people feel they need to walk on eggshells around her, and she cannot respond curly to people who interrupt her. If she responds poorly to hearing that, address it head-on, right then in the moment: “What’s happening right now is part of what concerns me. I need to be able to give you feedback without you becoming upset. Being able to take feedback professionally is part of everyone’s job here, and being able to do it is crucial to your success in your role.”

From there, you need to manage her much more closely. If she’s rude or making people feel they need to walk on eggshells around her, pull her in for a conversation right then and there (“This is what we were talking about — what’s going on?”) and hold her accountable to behaving appropriately. Don’t excuse it just because it’s apparently been excused in the past, or because you worry about how she’s react if you call her on it. You’re her manager, which means you’ve got to manage her.

If you’re not praising her for things she genuinely does well, that’s something you’ve got to change on your side too. But it sounds like there are much more pressing issues to deal with first.

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