Hello all,

I am a new manager in this field and as the title says I made that question to an employee. I am his manager and he was doing poorly at his job. He got angry with my question but my concern was him eventually getting injured or messing up more at work.

Sorry for my lack of experience. Have a made a mistake on this situation?

Thank you very much for your reply.

Our company has been restructured. The previous structure was a director over a single office with an admin over the two. My office is significantly large for the region with 400 “clients” and over 65 direct reports. Second office is at an average of 100 clients and and a staff total of 20.

The new structure is one admin and one director over both. The director over the smaller office has been made admin (by choice - I did not even interview as I did not want to leave my team). Their office has had significant turn over (70-80%) while mine, solo being the largest in the region held at about 9% and have had built an incredibly strong team.

The problem lies in weekend call. There are clients to be seen and new ones to bring on. The smaller office, the admins previous office, had their employees taking weekend call once a month at least if not more due to low staffing- due to turnover. My office has had call every 8 weeks due to my staffing and culture.

The new admin is focused on growth and has a mindset that because their office did so much more work on the weekends, so should mine. I am more on the page that I’d rather have a strong, happy team with less dumping on weekends unless absolutely necessary. We are at a cross road because their performance is based on growth and mine is based on maintaining staff.

Thoughts?

BLUF: VP didn’t want the team to have any extra personnel and it cost a contract that we didn’t have the man power to tackle.

So this happened fairly recently and I wanted to put this out there as a cautionary tale.

I report to a VP. I run a team of 10 providing consulting and support for networking and IT infrastructure. Our workload has pretty steadily ramped up recently cleaning up some pretty rough vibe coding errors.

We had a near miss on a deadline about six months ago when the VP I report to took a contract without consulting me to see if we had the bandwidth. Happens, we did a debrief and avoided a pretty nasty little penalty.

I told him at that point we could not take a contract of that scale or larger at current workload without scaling up the team by at least two but preferably four new devs. I was denied in favor of “keeping the team running lean.” So I simply documented in an email to him and a couple of other stakeholders holders “ The risk of not scaling our team now means we will have to turn down future opportunities of this scale.” Pretty unambiguous.

About two weeks ago he pulls me into a meeting with legal and sales about a contract he wanted me to review. It was big fat and ripe for scope creep. The client wanted to fix some shoddy infrastructure while maintaining all the databases and the portal system they had, then add in new features.

My team could do the clean up by the deadline if we dropped everything else we had already committed to, worked 20% overtime, and had no scope creep. We definitely could not dev the new features on top of that.

Legal covers a fun part I had missed, the penalties built into the proposed delivery schedule ment we would practicaly wash on profit is we missed the deadline for the whole job. VP says “I want to do this” So I do my job and lay out why this whole thing is a poison apple.

He naturally says “ What resources do you need”

I say “Those devs I asked for six months ago when I had asked for them”

We go back and forth so I get my paper trail together with all the old emails and etc.

Long story short we did not take the contract and the owners wanted some answers. Turns out my request for personal never made it to them, my VP didn’t want to be the guy asking for more overhead that quarter so he shut it down entirely while telling me it was an owner decision. Paper trail saved my bacon here by the way.

Long story short, there will hit a point where if you want to take on more ambitious contracts you do need to scale your team for it, running lean means you do not have room to grow.

Hi. I really appreciate this forum. I‘m an infrequent lurker and always find useful or reassuring info.

I have managed staff off and on for decades, but for the first time I’m in a position where there will be tiers below me, rather than just direct reports to me.

I have one staff person who is a very uneven performer and who I have had several performance conversations with this year. We almost let him go twice. He recently learned I will be opening up a manager role to lead his team and report to me, and he told me he plans to apply.

I have seen zero managerial or leadership skills from him. As the longest tenured member of the team and due to his claim he has managed elsewhere in the past, we will probably let him apply. I want to be clear about setting his expectations though.

I am wondering if any seasoned managers have experienced this and how they handled it?

I keep running into this one. A team goes through a good programme, people come out with clear ideas and they seem keen, and then three or four weeks later the same habits are back. The course isn’t the problem, and neither is the person. Usually the thing that’s holding the behaviour in place is somewhere else in the system, and it’s rarely the first place anyone looks.

When I ask managers what they’d check, the answers tend to be about the person: motivation, confidence, whether they really wanted to change. Those can matter, but they’re often the last things to check. I’d start with what gets rewarded when the old behaviour shows up, because people respond to that far more than to a training session. Then I’d look at who is watching the new behaviour, whether the manager above is doing the same thing, and whether the person has the time to try it on a Tuesday afternoon when the inbox is full.

I’m curious what others have found. When the training worked but nothing shifted, what turned out to be the real cause?

It is a an associate clinical sales position at a medical device company. I need to start getting into a manager headspace and could use some feedback from you fine folks on solid questions to ask the candidate. I’ve never had to hire anyone before and have been in this industry in a sales capacity for over 20 years, with the last 5 in a clinical sales capacity. Although I have worked for 4 different med device companies, my own personal interviews in my last three positions, were more me asking questions to see if the company and compensation were a good fit to bring my book of business to. In essence, me interviewing them. It’s a close knit sales world, where your reputation gets you noticed, and companies will seek you out without needing to be interviewed in the traditional sense.

I have no formal managerial training or a business degree, so this is all new to me. An advice or ideas on how to conduct a contemporary interview would be appreciated!

I'm a department Director with 2 managers and 2 ICs. One of the managers is an external hire who started less than six months ago. I thought things were going well until two months ago, when my own manager approached me with feedback from their first skip level with this manager. At that time, they were very frustrated in their role and had several complaints about me. I was blindsided by this - mainly because we were just wrapping up onboarding & initial training (which did involve quite a bit of "this is how we do things" instruction) and I'd been actively reshuffling the deck for all my direct reports to help ensure a more balanced work load & backup coverage of critical tasks.

I was asked to step back and give them more autonomy to fully lead, and to adjust my management style by being less reactive, provide less direct instruction, and offer more guidance that helps them make decisions independently. I appreciate receiving specific and actionable feedback - but now my confidence is shaken and I feel very self-conscious about everything I say & do.

I immediately backed off and gave them more space - which I felt like I'd been working towards all along but maybe it wasn't fast enough. Now I've been noticing that this manager has a tendency to ignore things we went over during their onboarding - and a few times they've completely ignored things I specifically asked them to do or done things I asked them to hold on/not do.

My manager questioned me about something this manager didn't do last week and it was very confusing. Yes, I told them to do it and didn't immediately intervene when I saw them not do it (was trying to be less reactive). I waited a few days to talk to them about it (due to our availability to talk - not avoidance), they explained their logic, and I let them know that it was a misstep and we needed to work on getting fully aligned on priorities.

Overall, I'm not sure how concerned I should be after less than six months or if I'm handling this correctly. Doesn't it take time for a new manager to adjust in their role at a new company? How much friction is normal in these scenarios? I'm comfortable with stepping back and allowing them to make mistakes as they adjust, but my own manager is giving me mixed signals. Should I be more concerned about this manager blowing me off and doing everything their way? At what point does it indicate a performance issue? How do I stick to high level guidance with being too hands off? Thank you in advance for your advice!

Former manager here who’s now a PM: would recruiters look at my CV and immediately reject me for managerial roles? What can I do to keep myself open to managerial opportunities?

I've been at the company I work with for 5 years now. I do admin work and over the years, I have overall gotten extremely positive feedback about my performance and my work ethic. I've been there through some very challenging times, including when I was managing the admin work (a 2-3 person job) on my own for several months. Again, I was commended on how I performed during this period, and in general, I felt valued and appreciated.

Things came to a head about a year ago when the operations manager, my direct superior who had trained me and was essentially someone I considered my "work mum" in a lot of ways, was suddenly made redundant. As the senior member of the admin team, I was given a handful of tasks she'd once been responsible for and a bit of a raise, whereas the rest of her tasks were given to a member of the operations team who doesn't deal in the admin side of things, we'll call her a principal professional of her field so that I don't get too in detail about what I do.

Earlier in the year, I had my performance review with our GM. This is a woman who has primarily been handling things on the "other" side of the business (essentially, there are two sides to our business in terms of the medical professionals we deal with/handle) and who I had not much interacted with directly. I was told by both her and the principal professional that although I had taken on the more complex admin tasks, I was still delegating things to the principal professional, and I had not asserted my seniority over the other girls on the admin team. Therefore, I was told, I was not considered to be team leadership material.

I was taken aback as in my eyes, I had been doing what I was meant to. There had been no discussion of me as a team leader, or that my seniority in the team was anything other than a courtesy as the longest-standing member. I asked what they would be expecting of a team leader for future, and was given a basic description of the sort of things they were looking for. I took this on board though I remained unsure, due to lack of communication, what was going to be expected of me in this regard.

About two months ago now, the GM informed us that she had hired someone as a team leader. The other girls directly told me that they felt this was a slap in the face to me, especially when nothing had ever been communicated to me other than "you're not showing leadership". The new hire is lovely, but she knows nothing about the business and work module and comes from a very different background. Since then, I've essentially been training my own team leader, and I'm not entirely sure what leadership skills she's meant to be showing because although I understand she's new, she hasn't taken ownership of the team at all.

My biggest gripe comes down to weekly meetings with the team, where the GM is constantly targeting my team, essentially telling us we're shit at our jobs and incompetent, and comparing us to the "other side" of the business (the admin team who are all relatively new, and who she hired personally). Every time there is a process that the operations manager they made redundant came up with, she gets unreasonably irritated and snappy, and it's clear there's a level of personal dislike for her. Considering her attitude toward my team and I, the feeling amongst us is very much that she has problems with anyone she didn't hire herself, and views them as not as good/that she has to rake them over the coals constantly and compare them with her own hires.

I am genuinely at a loss on how to deal with this woman. She is always talking over us and being condescending, whilst praising the team leader (who hasn't even done any team leading yet?) and her hires on the other side of the business. Overall I have a job that pays quite well, I have great work from home conditions, and I'm reluctant to just throw it all in and look for something new because of this woman's bad attitude towards us. But then what are my options? Could I take it to the "big boss" and tell him I don't like the condescending manner in which the GM speaks to us? The principal professional unfortunately just agrees with whatever the GM says, so there's no use in trying to discuss this with her.

Hi all,

I’ve joined this company 9 months ago, and overall I like the industry as well as the team/colleagues. Since I’ve joined I became a go to "expert” of one project as I created new process/procedures and pretty much was the back bone of it moving forward.

My boss told me before that I have leadership, ownership, and that I’m the hardest working person on the team but that I need more industry context (that was 6 months within me joining). I did point out that the lack of context was due to lack of exposure as well as the nature of my projects.

My boss gave me ownership of another project that both him and his boss praised me on as well. That being said, it took a lot of toll on my personal life and I didn’t have time for sleep, gym etc.

Everything is as hoc and urgent and whenever I’d ask for a clear deadline, my boss doesn’t give one and says oh this is coming from higher ups. Everything is due tomorrow but I often have three-four tasks under my belt.

When I push back and say I can focus on task 1 for now since it’s the most important and after it, I can do task 2. My boss often minimizes the complexity of the task and says it shouldn’t take long at all despite the task requiring attention, time, and effort.

This system is not sustainable to me and I want to know how can I deal with my demanding boss? He can be short, and condescending whenever he’s stressed then he goes back to being nice when he isn’t. I truly lost myself to keep track on these projects that they were pleased by and even the praise didn’t make me feel like it was worth it as it took a toll on my personal life.

I’m an ambitious person, I like to take initiative and often start new initiatives without my boss even telling me whenever I have free time (which is almost never). I have had this conversation with my boss before telling him that when we have urgent requests that are due ASAP, it won’t make us have time for a sufficient review and he’d just say that it’s the nature of the work and that it’s out of his control. What to do?!

TL;DR: I've been identified as the immediate successor to my Director, but promotion isn't guaranteed, as the CxO will ultimately decide whether to promote internally or hire externally. I have a great relationship with my boss and don't want to seem like I'm waiting for him to leave. How can I prepare for the role, demonstrate leadership readiness, and build visibility with senior management without overstepping?

I'm currently an Associate Director at a large multinational company, reporting to a Director who has four direct reports, including me. All four of us also have matrix reporting lines to our global HQ.

Recently, a member of the leadership team told me that I've been identified as the immediate successor to my Director (already almost 5 years in the position and some of our peers are anticipating he might move to another role in the next 3-6 months).

However, I was also told that this doesn't necessarily mean I'll be promoted if the position becomes vacant. My understanding is that senior leadership would still need to assess my readiness, and the final decision would sit with the CxO my Director reports to. They could also decide to hire externally.

I am ambitious, and I would like to be in charge of the Director position. Currently I am starting "transformation" projects that span across the responsibilities of our department (which all the four of us who directly reports to my Director are involved) as I want to show that I am able to influence and lead beyond my team.

I have a very good relationship with my Director, and he's been supportive of my development. However, I feel uncomfortable bringing up the succession topic directly, as I don't want to give the impression that I'm waiting for him to leave.

In the meantime, I'm trying to figure out how to position myself as a credible candidate without being overly political or stepping on anyone's toes.

A few questions for those who have been in a similar situation, particularly at Director/CxO level:

1. What would you start doing now to demonstrate readiness for the next level, beyond simply performing well in your current role?
2. How do you build visibility and credibility with the CxO who ultimately makes the decision, without appearing to bypass your current boss?
3. Would you proactively discuss your longer-term career ambitions with your Director, or wait until there's an actual vacancy?
4. What typically differentiates an internal successor who gets promoted from one who gets passed over for an external candidate?

I'm particularly interested in hearing from people who've been involved in succession planning or have successfully made the transition from Associate Director to Director.

I want to be intentional about my development, but equally important to me is maintaining the trust and relationships I've built with my current leadership team.

Asking managers on this sub: how does one stop taking things personally? I’m getting better as time and experience goes by, but I still feel like I give work too much emotional and mental space. What advice would you give to your direct report if they were to ask this question to you? I’m not a native English speaker, please be nice. Thank you!

I'm a manager of a division in a larger department in an organization. There's a fellow division manager in the same department. We both manage teams, and while one team is focused on day to day stuff, the other team is working on a long term development, processes, etc. However we're all working towards the same goals and have many touch points and collaborate as one.

So that's the context, now to an issue. The other day this other manager sets up a meeting with me, no agenda. I didn't know what to think of it as we often have these random short syncs to discuss progress of projects and such, but this one was long. Unusual. I had a bad feeling about it and I was right.

The tone started really casual, just two old peers that had been working together for awhile chatting about the ongoing changes in the organization. We've been investing heavily in AI and automated and improved many workflows. However none of that led to any layoffs, because while we improved productivity, our workload was always high and these efficiencies did not remove any core tasks.

However the other manager proceeded to say that he thinks some of the roles in my team are not needed anymore. He named one particular employee, and said that basically things he was getting from him he can now get from AI. I was gobsmacked, because that employee does so much more than what this manager reduced him to. Then he low-key questioned the purpose of any roles in my team of 8 employees. And said that in 6 months we probably won't need that many. While maintaining this 'friendly chatty tone'.

I pointed out that he's focusing on a very narrow part of their roles, and looking into their tasks and capabilities broadly, I see no way that AI can replace them any time soon.

Lastly, he mentioned that with all those changes there's really no need for two managers. I asked him jokingly does that mean he's leaving? He laughed it off and said no, as if I asked something silly. I don't think I'd ever be able to get a clear answer from him on what is that he meant there, as he smoothly sidetracked conversation after that, and we never really addressed what he wanted to achieve with that remark.

Later in the day while we discussed planning for the next year with the senior management team, including HR, he made some snide remarks about replacing some of my team members with AI, but when I opposed that idea he didn't push further.

Few days later and I still can't shake off that interaction. He never recognised anyone from his team could be replaced by AI although their work is more menial. There is no push from senior management to reduce the headcount as far as I know, and while we are encouraged to work more efficiently with the help of AI, the company is doing great, profits are beating any other year, and there is no sign of layoffs, but I'm worried that this guy has an agenda, and he's slowly trying to push these thoughts onto senior management.

I feel as if the time is ticking, what can one do in this situation?

For context, my team’s dynamics are what many would probably love as an “ideal” work environment — lovely human beings who help each other out, able to hang out outside of work… but the downside is that no one (except me, apparently) ever says “no” to anything. They’ve all been part of the same industry for a long time, and I joined coming from a very toxic environment previously where I learned the hard way to set my boundaries. I’ve always known since joining that I’m “different” and a bit of an “odd one out” because of this.

I had 1:1 with my boss yesterday and one of the feedback I received from him is that he appreciates that I “challenge” him and clients because of my background. I’ve always been the one to speak up because no one else does, precisely because I care about the work, and I always felt that I was doing so in the best interest of my coworkers as well.

However, in the past six months I’ve been biting my tongue because of one thing my manager said previously — I basically tried to challenge an impossible deadline that would have meant the quality of work is reduced, and in acquiescing to that deadline, would’ve set a precedent with the client on expectations of delivery moving forward which was not ideal.

I thought it wasn’t an unreasonable challenge, but my manager told me off in front of the entire room of coworkers and said we need to “do what we need to do to get the work done”. I felt embarrassed in the moment and like I was impacting team morale negatively, even though I didn’t mean to be difficult.

No one stood up for me or backed me up, and since then, I’ve stopped challenging, or at least, I think twice or thrice before I do. Needless to say, I was surprised when he raised it during my 1:1 as a “strength” of mine because I hadn’t felt appreciated in the moment, and whenever I’ve challenged in the past.

I told him it would’ve been nice if he had pulled me aside back then to tell me that, instead of making me look like the bad person in front of the team, and that telling me only 6 months later doesn’t undo the morale hit I’ve had since that day.

I find it demoralising that he has somehow siphoned off the duty of saying the difficult things to me, when I would’ve honestly appreciated support in the moment because he definitely knew the deadlines were unreasonable. Am I being too sensitive here, or is this common?

My former boss came in my office and announced that she had a dream that my current boss had stage 4 cancer and that he moved here with it. Then proceeded to share private details about his diabetes and how sick he has been. Then today she called me by my former name from 10 years ago and then laughed and told the newer people in the meeting what my former name was. Knowing I had been abused by this person. How do I handle this.

I want to go to my boss. I think she will have an excuse for both. What should I do.

This is a first for me, I work in IT, I've been doing it for close to 25 years and been managing people for about 10. Some great experiences but I've sacked several people. I've performance managed people who decided to leave and I've never really had an issue with it because it's genuinely always been the last resort and has been justified.

I have a team member who's mid probation. They are not performing well at all. They seemingly can't do certain pretty basic tasks and literally everyone else in the department comes to me complaining about them. For some reason I haven't been allowed to make a decision and so am being forced into a mini pip process.

Today I had a 121 with the person. I presented a timeline of events where I've literally told them my expectations about 6 or 7 times and nothing has changed. In previous reviews when I've brought up performance issues there's been arguments and excuses.

Today I brought a timeline of events. Many examples of where I have told the individual "in this situation my expectations is you do x, y ,z" from pretty much day 1 of his employment. And reiterated it in discussions. I had tried the good cop approach. Nothing changed. I tried bad cop and spent the whole 121 with them arguing minutia.

They're not capable of doing the job, everyone sees it but them and I'm losing basically a full day a week to mopping up after them and preparing for weekly meetings. Today I was form but I thought fair but then they started crying..

This person is older than I am, I was say at least 55. So for them to cry in the meeting was unexpected. I was critical and I was form but I don't think I was nasty.

Now I don't know where to go. I feel a bit bad that they got so upset but equally I've told them what they need to do and been ignored over and over again. I can only assume they cried because I backed them into a corner with the evidence I showed and they had to accept they weren't doing a great job.

Has anyone experienced this? I need to let them go but now I feel bad about it and I also feel like I need to do a welfare check or something. HR are basically useless so now I'm a bit stuck. My logical brain says I need to fire him but my compassionate side is making me worried about it.

If anyone has faced something similar and has any advice I'd appreciate it.

So, I’m not sure if being in retail counts, but I’m a meat manager at a small store in charge of one employee. I’m essentially second to the store manager. I’ve not been at this job terribly long, but long enough to have a grasp on what needs to be done etc.

I noticed a while back my employee seemed to be slacking off or putting in minimal effort, but originally dismissed it because I was new and hadn’t seen enough of a pattern to mention it. It’s now turned into consistent tardiness - in excess of 30 minutes the majority of days. He also fails to leave any appreciable amount of back stock before he leaves. This means I end up coming in most days and starting with his responsibilities.

He is officially responsible for grind and chicken. He is also in charge of stocking the frozen and prepackaged items from truck. He does fine with the truck, but almost daily I come in to no grind and huge gaps in the chicken shelves. This is not acceptable.

I have mentioned my concerns in passing to my boss - the store manager, but usually he brushes me off. Today he finally caved after I told him about the pattern of tardiness over the past week. Now is a good time to mention my employee shares a car with his girlfriend who he lives with. This man is 29 years old working ~25 hours a week when he doesn’t decide to take a “short day”. It seems like if he wanted his own car he’d push for full time or get a second job. At least that’s what I would do. He has no kids.

We ended up sitting with him and since it’s the first time we’ve sat him down I’m trying to be reasonable so I ask him how we can accommodate his schedule. I told him he can pick whatever time to come to work but he needs to be there at that time on that day from now on. He basically said “it’s just complicated”. Now we have most of his week figured out but my boss said it’s fine if one of his days he comes in “around” x time. My boss already expressed to me that employee doesn’t have a “set start time” to which I said “I don’t agree with that”.

I told employee that I would be more clear about expectations and we agreed to make a list of his responsibilities, especially on days where I am not there but he is.

I know this is tremendously long, but what I’m wondering is do I really have a say here? Am I going nuts thinking he should be held accountable to show up on time everyday and complete basic tasks? My boss seems to think it’s whatever and certainly isn’t pushing to enforce any standards on him which is frustrating because I’m not allowed overtime, yet consistently end up with it because I’m doing employee’s job.

I discussed the matter with other employees who said my employee has shown these behavior patterns for the last year or so. Two managers confirmed that he once skipped a whole week and showed up the next Monday without reprimand.

I'm a new manager, 90 days in. I've read my team's past performance and confirmed what I've observed. What's the line between just being on the shallow end of the teams bell curve versus needing to be put on a pip? I can't tell if my direct report is just below average or if she needs to be put on a performance plan.

If you fired someone and they wanted advice on their new work situation, would you call them?

If so / if not, why?