“my employee uses constant jargon, unpleasant coworker wants to have lunch together, and more” plus 4 more Ask a Manager

Ask a Manager

“my employee uses constant jargon, unpleasant coworker wants to have lunch together, and more” plus 4 more Ask a Manager

my employee uses constant jargon, unpleasant coworker wants to have lunch together, and more
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my employee uses constant jargon, unpleasant coworker wants to have lunch together, and more

Posted: 22 Jan 2018 09:03 PM PST

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

1. My employee uses odd, repetitive jargon

I have an employee who has a very unusual habit. She uses the word "visibility” in almost every second sentence she says. For instance, someone will ask her, "Can you tell me why we give a free teapot to all our customers?" and she will say, "Yes, it's to give them visibility on the ongoing tea." Other examples are "We need more visibility on this issue," "visibility is key," and "Let's turn that around by creating visibility." She says it so much, I wouldn't be exaggerating at all to say it's in every three to four sentences. It's actually hindering people's ability to truly understand what she means.

I have addressed it with her in a one on one, and then ongoing I try to dig deeper into what she means in terms of actions.

I have a meeting coming up in which she will be a large contributor. How can I continue to address this or help her overcome this odd, repetition jargon speak she is using? As you can see, I could use some visibility on this.

If this were just an annoying habit but wasn't really impacting anything, I'd say you should give her some feedback on it and then let it go. But since this is actually interfering with people's ability to understand her, I think you've got standing her to push harder on it. (And really, it sounds like it's so constant that it's probably impacting her reputation, which really sucks for her.)

I'm wondering how direct you were when you addressed her with it. Did you take a soft approach like asking her to try to be aware of how often she says it and cut down on it, or did you directly tell her that it's impeding people's ability to understand her and she needs to stop using it, period? Managers often take the first, softer approach, thinking that it's kinder to soften the message. And sometimes that works — but often people will miss the message or not realize that the manager is serious about it (as opposed to giving an optional suggestion).

So unless you were very, very clear and direct the first time, I'd go back to her and say something like, "I know we talked about this in the past, and it may have seemed like a small thing. But it's at the point where I think it's hindering people’s ability to understand what you mean — which means it's making you less effective and potentially frustrating others. I know it's not easy to change a habit overnight, but I'm asking you to really work on this. Your work is good, and I want people to see that — not get distracted by this habit."

2. Unpleasant coworker always wants to have lunch together

I work in a department of about 25, but my position works most closely with Jane. Jane is junior to me and has only been in the position for about a year. I’m close friends with my manager, and essentially second in command in the department, and we often have lunch together where both work (not pertinent to Jane) and social matters are discussed. Most of the rest of the department has lunch together in the meal room and anyone is free to join (which I also do about once a week).

My problem is that Jane doesn’t really have any friends to have lunch with, and is constantly chasing me to have lunch with her. Which wouldn’t be a problem if we had anything in common, or I found her pleasant to be around. She’s a very negative person and spends her time complaining about other people in the company. I do make an effort to have lunch with her at least once a week, but I’ve stopped scheduling meetings with her before lunch so I can avoid the inevitable “what are you doing for lunch?" conversation. I’m now feeling guilty that I’m leaving her on her own for four days a week, and the “what are you doing for lunch?” conversations are getting awkward. Should I make more time for her, or if not, how do I set reasonable and kind boundaries?

You do not need to eat with Jane more often than you're doing now. Frankly, you also don't need to keep up the once a week lunches if you'd rather not, especially since like she's welcome to join most of the rest of your team in the lunch room. (But even if that weren't the case, you still wouldn't be obligated to spend lunches with her.)

It's perfectly fine to say you're heading out to do some errands, or reading a book, or any other solo activity. It's also okay to ask her to readjust her expectations by saying something like, "I won't be available for lunch as much as I've have been — I'm trying to use that time to catch up on work / read / get some exercise / clear my head / ____."

Your lunch is your own time, and Jane is an adult who can figure out what to do with that time herself. It's certainly kind of you to eat with her on occasion, but you're not responsible for providing her with lunch entertainment. There's definitely no cause to feel guilty when you're already eating with her 20% of the time.

3. Company Easter egg hunt

My company is planning on doing an Easter egg hunt for all the employees this year. Based on similar events they’ve done, it will probably be less than an hour and in the building.

The thing is, I’m really not comfortable participating in what I consider an overtly religious holiday since I don’t celebrate it. What makes this more complicated is that they had a hunt last year, before I joined the company. I don’t want them not to have the hunt, I just don’t want to participate without seeming like an Easter grinch. Should I bring it up? Or just not participate and hope nobody comments on it?

I'd just not participate and not proactively explain — it may turn out that you're not the only one not participating and you may not be asked about it at all. But if anyone does ask, you can just say, "Oh, I don't celebrate Easter. I hope people had fun though!" If someone responds that you don't need to celebrate Easter to participate, you can say, "I appreciate that — but I'd prefer not to” or “I have religious reasons for not participating.”

4. My boss told me not to get pregnant

I am an EA for a VP of a medium sized company. This VP has a background in social work so boundaries tend to be crossed both ways (we each share way too much info). I have chronic pain which she knows about. I don’t mind her questions about how I’m feeling, but several times she has asked if I’m pregnant. Lately she has told me that I can’t get pregnant until I figure all this out and today she wouldn’t let me end the conversation until I agreed with her.

For some background: While I was on maternity leave a few years ago, she constantly texted me asking if I’d had the baby yet, which made me feel rushed to come back to work. She then went back on her word to let me work a flexible schedule when I returned.

Normally I would go to HR but since I work so closely with her I worry about how that will affect my job. She can’t tell me not to have a baby, right??

Nope, she cannot. You don't need to factor in her thoughts on your reproductive plans at all.

You'd be quite entitled to tell her to back off if you want to. Or you might find it easier to just "mmm hmmm" her and then ignore whatever she says. But if you do want to tell her to back off, you could say something like this if she brings it up again: "I'm really not comfortable talking about any potential for pregnancy with my boss — I'm sure you can understand! So I'm taking that topic off the table for us." Other options: "I really consider the pregnancy stuff private and don't want to talk about it at work." Or, "I worry this conversation is putting us into really weird legal territory, so let's just have a moratorium on pregnancy talk."

5. Sending customer praise to my boss

I would like to share some customer feedback with my boss, but I’m not sure if doing so will come across as bragging. I’m a government contractor, working on-site with a federal agency. My primary government customer sent me an email saying, "You received mad props in the attached document.” Said document was internal notes, from another government entity, saying I did a “magnificent” job on some work with them, and deserve “special recognition.” I’m a team of one, and the only way for my boss, back at company HQ, to see this feedback, is if I share it with him. My first instinct was to forward the email, but I’m hesitating because I think it might be showoff-y. I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Do share it! That's the kind of thing that most managers love to see, and it's not show-offy. Think of it as keeping your manager in the loop. When you forward it, you can include a short note like, "It made me really happy to see this, and I wanted to share it with you."

I have two people from undergrad that I would consider sponsor/mentors and, today, friends. They were not professors but were employed in my department and I got to know both of them very well throughout my four years. I volunteered for every open house and outreach event for the school, was hired for competitive paid jobs thanks to them, and I have met their families, attended many awards banquets and university events with them, and basically expanded my network thanks to their influence. I am grateful for our relationship, as it helped me grow and stand out in a very large and competitive program.

Fast forward five years: I have been working at a very large (>10,000 employees worldwide) company that hires graduates from my program, as well as similar programs at other colleges. I’ve been promoted within my department, but I am still basically a nobody. These mentors frequently reach out to me with resumes from students looking for internships, which I am happy to pass along if they look like a good fit but I ultimately have no say in whether they receive an offer. They have also asked me to come back and speak at different panels and forums and volunteer events as “a successful graduate,” but all of these events are during work hours and I can’t commit to attending.

When I missed one of these email requests, the mentor wrote on my Facebook wall “are you getting my emails?” rather than calling, texting, or private messaging me. I feel like he was subtly calling me out, but I am not sure if that was his intent. The other mentor has asked me to give him the contact info of a VP in an entirely different department than I work in, which is not allowed per company policy and I told him so. He then asked me to reach out to her directly and ask if she would be a keynote speaker at an upcoming banquet. I have no connection to this VP other than working at the same company and no political weight that would make the request not weird. The mentor has since followed up with me asking if the VP is available, and I really don’t want to but can’t think of a good way to say that other than “this is weird”. If it were a peer I could say no much more easily, but because of their roles as mentors and sponsors I am afraid to appear ungrateful for their sponsorship and mentorship in the past.

I don’t think that either of them is malicious with these requests, but they are asking me to support things that either I logistically cannot, or to do so would put me in a very awkward position. Are they taking advantage of their mentor relationship with me? Or am I taking these requests too personally?

A little too personally, I think, yes!

I think you're reading these requests as having more pressure attached to them than they really do.

Most of this reads like pretty normal networking, but you’re not obligated to agree to any of it if you don't want to. It's okay to say that you can't attend events during the work day, and it's okay to say that you don't have much influence in hiring (it's also okay to say that a particular resume doesn't look like the right fit and decline to pass it along at all), and it's okay to say that you're not connected enough with that VP to make a request of her. But it's also okay for your contacts to ask you these things — these are all pretty standard requests that people might make of former mentees/professional contacts/friends.

Generally people make these sorts of requests already knowing that it's possible that the answer will be no. You won't be delivering a devastating blow when you decline! But they're asking because they think you might be interested or willing; they can't know ahead of time that the logistics won't work for you. You just need to explain that no, sorry, you can't do that.

I suspect you were already feeling pressured in an unwelcome way, and so your mentor's "are you getting my emails?" post on Facebook felt like additional pressure … but I'd read that more as someone just taking the path of least resistance in trying to contact you (or possibly just not being very technically savvy). Unless you know other things about this person that make it likely that it was an attempt to shame you, that probably wasn't the intent. Mildly annoying, yes, but not more than that.

If the requests are really frequent, then it might make sense to say something like, "Hey, I wanted to let you know that my schedule is crazy right now, so it's hard for me to say yes to this kind of thing — but I'll let you know if that changes at some point." Or, depending on the context, "I can forward along a few resumes a year, but generally not more than that. So will you send me just the top few students who you think are the strongest matches with what we hire for?"

But often you can set your boundaries in the moment, case by case, by matter-of-factly saying no to the things you can't or don't want to do, and trusting that your contacts will be okay with that.

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