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“coworker gave my presentation without my okay, acupuncture as team-building, and more” plus 3 more Ask a Manager

“coworker gave my presentation without my okay, acupuncture as team-building, and more” plus 3 more Ask a Manager


coworker gave my presentation without my okay, acupuncture as team-building, and more

Posted: 19 Feb 2018 09:03 PM PST

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

1. My coworker gave my presentation without my okay

I recently had to call out sick last minute, which meant I missed a brief presentation I was supposed to give as part of a larger meeting. I told the meeting organizer I wouldn’t be there, and they told me I could just present at our next meeting.

My colleague, David, who works with me on our small team, also attends these meetings. Unbeknownst to me, he gave my presentation at the meeting while I was out sick. I should mention that he was in no way involved with or very familiar with the work that I was presenting on. He followed up with an email to me later that day with some questions from the audience that I had anticipated and planned to address as part of my presentation if I had been there. How can I tell him that he shouldn’t have presented work that he didn’t do and wasn’t familiar with? He’s been at the company for less than a year and I think he’s still trying to prove his worth.

First, make sure that your boss didn't ask David to fill in for you or something like that. But assuming he just acted on his own, yeah, that is a huge overstep. You could say this to him: "I had arranged with Jane that I was going to give my presentation at the next meeting instead. I didn't arrange for someone to fill in for me, because I wanted to give the presentation myself since I'm the person most familiar with that work. In the future, would you please check with me before stepping in on something like that, so that I have the opportunity to say that I'd prefer to handle it myself?" You could add, "That's especially true with a project like this that you haven't been involved with and wouldn't be able to answer questions about."

2. We're supposed to try cupping and acupuncture as a team-building activity

My workplace is big on team-building and morale-boosting events. Normally the events are not bad and are something everyone can enjoy (everyone gets taken to lunch on company time/dime to a restaurant chosen from a list by all employees, motivational speakers who are actually interesting, an employee art display for individuals who like to draw or paint, etc.). The morale and working environment is good and I have never had any issues until now.

The newest activity my boss wants to do is for everyone to try both cupping and acupuncture. He is touting the health benefits of these "treatments.” How do I tell him I don’t believe in woo and no one is putting suction cups or needles anywhere near me? In my opinion, treatments like these are nothing more than snake oil and I refuse to have any part of them. I’m not the only one who feels this way either. Before this, everyone was always excited about the activities and events put on by the company, but most of the individuals I have talked to want nothing to do with this woo.

Are you required to participate, or "strongly encouraged to" even if it's not technically required? If not, I'd just sit this one out. But if you're discouraged from opting out, then say something like this: "I don't feel comfortable participating in health treatments as a work activity, and as you probably know, alternative medicine in particular isn't universally embraced. I'm hoping we can reconsider this event, or provide an alternative for people who aren't comfortable with it."

3. Inviting all coworkers except one to a personal party

I’m the manager of a small retail team, there are nine of us including myself, and we mostly get on really well. Recently we were struggling as we were understaffed and couldn’t find anyone suitable, so I took on the best candidate that had applied, let’s call her Sam. Even though she was far from ideal, we were really that desperate.

Although Sam’s performance hasn’t been great and she hasn’t integrated into the team at all, that’s not why I’m writing. Another of my team, Cat, has recently got engaged and is throwing an engagement party with her fiancé. Cat is excellent at her job, is well liked by everyone, and would like to invite the team, except for the fact that she cannot stand Sam and doesn’t want her there. I have a feeling I already know the answer, but is there a way to invite all but one of the team? (This isn't a work event. It's a personal event, but she’ll probably give out the invites when she sees us at work.)

Because it's Cat's own personal event outside of work, you can't dictate who she does and doesn't invite. But inviting everyone but one person is a pretty unkind act, and it has the potential to be a really toxic act, by making Sam feel clearly excluded and making others feel that excluding Sam is now a thing that happens.

While Cat can invite anyone she wants to her private event and you can't control that, you do have standing to point out the problem to her and ask her to consider handling it differently. You could, for example, say something to her like, "Inviting the entire team except one person is really exclusionary and is the sort of thing that could impact the team dynamics here in a negative way. It will look like you deliberately singled out Sam, and that's unkind, even if you don't intend it that way. I’d ask you to take that into account when deciding how to handle your invitations.” And certainly if she proceeds with her plan, you can tell her she needs to keep it out of the office.

4. Explaining I was fired for ethical disobedience

I’m a college student, hopefully graduating in May. I’m in the middle of job applications, and there’s one issue I’m not sure how to handle. I was fired from a previous job for ethical disobedience. It made actual international news and is easy to find on Google (here’s an article about it), particularly since I have an uncommon name. I’m not embarrassed about what I did, but I’m concerned about what employers will think. On the one hand, that episode demonstrates my dedication to ethical behavior, on the other, it shows that I’m willing to disobey my boss if I think what they’re asking me to do is morally wrong and go to the press about it. How can I best explain this to possible employers and where? I feel like a cover letter is the best spot, but I’m not sure how to frame it as a positive.

First, kudos to you for what you did. (For anyone who can’t access the article because it’s behind a paywall, a commenter has summed it up here.) I don't think this article is anything to worry about at all — you come across sympathetically and while some people might side with your old employer, plenty more will side with you, or at least not be terribly concerned by it. A lot of people in your shoes would choose to help a suffering animal (and that's a good thing), and it's not the kind of disregard for instructions that's likely to translate into most office jobs, where you won't typically be running into injured animals.

You don't need to address this in your cover letter at all! It might come up in an interview, at which point you can answer questions about it, but it's very unlikely that an employer would see this and choose not to interview you because of it. As for explaining it if you're asked about it, you can say something very simple like, "I felt strongly that it was the right thing to do, and that Scout law backed that up.”

5. HR manager is pushing for me — what does that mean?

I applied for a director-level position several months ago and didn’t get it but was told I was highly considered (I took the bronze). I was disappointed but understood their reason.

The position became available again, very quickly. I re-applied, and the HR manager emailed me and said he was glad I was still interested, he was going to reach out to me, I just beat him to it. He called a week later just to check in and say no decisions have been made, hang tight.

Two weeks passed, he emails, says the team is busy, haven’t met yet (they have a big event this weekend). I promptly respond that I’m still interested, and asked that he pass along to the general manager some additional information. His response back was a thank-you and he said he was pushing for me.

I don’t expect to hear anything for another week, but when an HR manager says they are pushing for you, does that actually mean anything and what kind of push do they have? Are my odds better or is it just fluff?

It's really the hiring manager's call. The HR manager may have some influence, but ultimately it's not his decision. "I'm pushing for you" can mean anything from "I think you are the best candidate and I've told the decision-maker that, but it's out of my hands" to a more general "You seem like a nice person and I wish you all the best, but who knows if this job will pan out or not.”

I would try very hard not to read anything into any of this — you're trying to interpret things that you're just not going to be able to figure out either way from the outside. The best thing you can do in this case is to assume there's no offer coming — and then if they do contact you with an offer, it'll be a pleasant surprise.

coworker gave my presentation without my okay, acupuncture as team-building, and more was originally published by Alison Green on Ask a Manager.

how to speak up as a group at work

Posted: 19 Feb 2018 10:59 AM PST

I sometimes suggest that letter-writers who are concerned about a problem at work get a group of coworkers to all speak up about it together — because there's strength in numbers and it can be harder to blow off a group than a single person. But I want to talk more about what that looks like.

The first question is how to get this group together in the first place. This doesn’t have to be a big formal thing where you’re sending memos and organizing clandestine meetings. Just talk to people and see what they think of whatever the issue is, and ask if they'd be willing to join you in asking for it to be reconsidered. For example:

You: "Hey, I've been thinking about this new request that we all have our tonsils out in order to cut down on sick days. It seems invasive and wrong to me, and I wondered what you thought of it."
Coworker: "Yeah, I'm not happy about it either."
You: "What do you think about several of us going to Jane as a group and pushing back on it? If a group of us spoke up about it, I think she’d take it seriously and we'd have a good chance of getting the policy changed."
Coworker: "Yeah, I'd be up for that. But would it just be me and you?”
You: "Let me check with a few other people and we can see who else is up for it.”

From there, the group of you talk to your manager or HR or whoever the decision-maker is that you’re trying to influence. Do it in-person, though; this isn’t a memo thing or an email thing.

If you already have regular team meetings, it can make sense to bring it up there while everyone is present, and multiple people can easily chime in.

Or, depending on what the issue is, sometimes it makes more sense for multiple people to each bring it up individually with the manager. If you do that, you can be transparent about the fact that you've all talked. You don't need to make it seem like it's a coincidence that everyone's raising it — it's okay to say "I was talking this over with Jane and Bob and realized I think X." You generally don't want to speak for Jane and Bob, but it's okay to acknowledge that you talked about it, and that that was part of developing your thinking on it.

For something more serious, you might say, “My sense is that a lot of us have concerns about this. Could we set a time to sit down as a group and talk it through?"

In general, though, I wouldn't recommend having one spokesperson going and talking to the manager one-on-one on the group's behalf. There might be a rare time when that makes sense, but most of the time it will be less effective. The manager is likely to wonder why a spokesperson was necessary, and how accurately other people's viewpoints are being represented, and if the person is really speaking for everyone else they say they're speaking for.

For the same reason, if you’re meeting with your manager (or HR, or whoever) as a group, avoid having one person do all the talking. You don’t want to create the impression that there’s one person who really cares and the rest are just there for moral support. You want multiple people participating in the conversation.

To make sure that happens, be very explicit ahead of time that that needs to happen. Otherwise you may launch in and figure that others will speak up too, but in reality they may sit there silently, figuring that you’ve got it covered. Ask people to agree ahead of time that they’re all going to actively participate so that it doesn’t end up looking they’re not as invested.

In the meeting itself, the basic framework you want is this:
* “We’re concerned about X.”
* “We’re hoping we can share our perspective with you. Here are our concerns.”
* “Given those concerns, can we change the way we’re doing this/can this be reconsidered/would you be willing to try Y instead?”
* “Thanks for hearing us out.”

You don’t want to use this approach for every concern that comes up at work, of course! In most cases, it will make more sense to talk to your manager one-on-one. But when something is a particularly big deal or affects a lot of people, or when your manager has a tendency to personalize disagreement, this is sometimes the most effective way to go.

how to speak up as a group at work was originally published by Alison Green on Ask a Manager.

I don’t want to do Toastmasters with my boss!

Posted: 19 Feb 2018 09:30 AM PST

A reader writes:

My boss would like me to work on speaking up more in meetings. I am by nature shy, and this is something I have always struggled with. I have a particularly hard time speaking up around authority figures. However, I am actively working on improving in this area and I’ve joined our company’s Toastmasters club. Almost immediately, my boss decided to join also because he said he wants to work on his public speaking skills also. He asked me if I would mind, and I said “No” because Toastmasters is supposed to be a really supportive environment, and I thought it would be okay.

Well, it’s been a few months, and I dread going to the club meetings because it is so anxiety-provoking. My boss is a very outgoing person who doesn’t have a lot of problems with public speaking. And although he is not a terrible boss, he can be very judgmental about employees’ abilities, and I am afraid of making mistakes around him. Consequently, Toastmasters meetings have become more like work meetings than a place where I can safely practice public speaking. I am extremely nervous before the meetings, and I don’t think I am getting much out of them.

I’d like to quit the club and find another place to practice my public speaking that does not feel so threatening, but I don’t want my boss to think I am flaky. Do you have any advice on how to handle this? If I switch, I think he may wonder why I am doing this.

I answer this question — and four others — 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.

Other questions I'm answering there today include:

  • How to reject an internal candidate
  • Being asked to fill out a reference questionnaire instead of giving a reference over the phone
  • How do I know if I did well in an interview?
  • Approaching my boss about a weekly therapy appointment

I don’t want to do Toastmasters with my boss! was originally published by Alison Green on Ask a Manager.

what’s up with candidates turning down our job offers after we pay to fly them out?

Posted: 19 Feb 2018 07:59 AM PST

A reader writes:

I work in the fundraising profession, and my role (not to mention the department that I manage) is somewhat specialized. My department has been expanding after a long period of being under-resourced and under-staffed (yay!) but one of the challenges I face with recruitment is that the talent pool in our local area is not very deep.

As a result, I usually have to conduct national searches for all but the most entry-level positions. This means that I’ve had to work pretty hard to identify applicants who are serious about the opportunities and would be likely to say yes if offered a position, given that we invest a lot of money both during the interview process (travel and lodging expenses, etc.) and if an offer is accepted (relocation assistance). My process has three distinct stages, culminating with an in-person interview for the finalist(s), followed by a period of feedback collection from the hiring panel, formal reference checks, and, if everything looks good, a verbal offer. (I should also mention that anyone who interviews with us in person is connected with a relocation firm, offered a real estate tour with a local realtor, etc. — all things that telegraph our interest in the candidate and also help them to think seriously about the practicalities of relocating to our area.)

Obviously, we don’t invite out-of-town candidates to interview in person unless we already feel confident that they a) can do the work, b) would fit in well with our team and organizational culture, and c) are as serious about us as we are about them. That being said, I have had the experience twice (in less than a year!) of going through this process with two separate candidates for two separate searches (same role, just two slots to fill) only to have my verbal offers turned down. In both instances, the candidates had expressed above-average interest and even enthusiasm for the position, for our mission, and for the region of the country where we are located (we’re in a diverse city with a fabulous year-round climate) and yet when I made the offers, they simply declined for vague “personal reasons.” If they had questions or concerns about the job, the work, or the relocation, they never voiced them, despite being given ample opportunity and encouragement to do so. Needless to say, I was left with a bad taste in my mouth — did they just want a free trip to our beautiful city? Were they trying to leverage retention offers from their current employers? Does it even matter?

I guess my question is this: what are the ethics of accepting an in-person, out-of-town interview (as a finalist, no less!) when you have no intention of accepting the position if it is offered to you? In my own career, I have turned down invitations to take the next step in an interview process when I know I’m not interested in the job. Personally, I wouldn’t dream of going all the way to the reference-check/verbal offer stage when I knew I wasn’t going to accept an offer — it seems like a colossal waste of the interviewing entity’s time and resources, not to mention wholly disingenuous.

I once traveled to interview for a position at an organization that told me they would reimburse me for just half of my travel expenses initially, and for the other half only if a) I was offered and accepted the job or b) they decided to go with another candidate. I remember thinking at the time that that was a little odd, but now, as a frustrated hiring manager, I’m thinking it’s something I might want to talk to my HR department about putting into practice!

What suggestions do you have for sussing out how serious out-of-town/out-of-state candidates really are, because I’m clearly failing on this front! I try to be a good steward of my budget, and I’m tired of spending money, time, and energy on candidates who aren’t really serious. (And please know I’m a very empathetic person — I understand that stuff happens and people’s circumstances change. An opportunity that seemed feasible at the start of the process might not be feasible at the end for reasons a candidate can’t control. Personal and family concerns can intervene, etc. But in both of the instances I’m referencing above, I felt that my organization was deliberately misled and, quite frankly, used.)

(As an aside, applicants are given information on things like salary and benefits early on in the process, so they know how much they’d be earning up front and can make a decision right away about continuing if compensation is the issue.)

Two rejected offers in one year isn't really a lot. Of course, it depends on how many total offers you're making — if you only made two offers and they both got turned down, I can see why you're worried. But it sounds like you're doing more hiring than that, and in a context where plenty of your offers are being accepted, I wouldn't look at this as a problem at all.

Some portion of your offers will be turned down. That's how interviewing and hiring works!

It sounds like you're assuming that by the time someone is flying out for a final interview, they should know whether or not they'd accept the job. But that's not the case. Just like you don't know whether or not you want to hire them at that point and are still doing your own assessments, candidates are doing their own assessing and reflecting as well. The point of having them out for that final in-person interview isn't so that you can do a one-way evaluation of them; it's so that both sides can figure out if they want to work together. Just like your decision will sometimes be no, theirs will be no sometimes too. But that doesn't mean that it was already a no before the interview.

And there are lots of possible reasons why that could happen. They could realize once they visit your office in person that the culture or energy there isn't for them. They could find they don't love the dynamic they have with the hiring manager or other people they'd be working with. They could spend that time getting to know your city and realize they don’t want to move there after all. They could decide to pursue a different job that they're more excited about, or could have multiple offers to consider. They could just conclude that the job isn't right for them, once they've finished the full process. The "personal reasons" they cited to you could be true — they could be dealing with a sudden family health crisis, or a divorce, or all sorts of other things.

People turn down offers! It's a normal thing that happens.

It's true that if someone knows for sure that they wouldn't accept a job, they shouldn't fly out on your dime. But there's just nothing to indicate that that's what's happening here.

And you definitely should resist any impulses to hold back travel reimbursements unless someone accepts an offer from you. Candidates will rightly be turned off by that. You'd be conveying that you think there's an obligation for them to accept an offer if you fly them out, and since there is no such obligation, you'll come across as not understanding something fundamental about interviewing. It’s also simply wrong and unfair; people shouldn’t be financially penalized for deciding a job or company isn’t the right match for them. (And good candidates will turn down that arrangement anyway.)

What you can do, though, is to take a look at what might change for people in between their pre-interview enthusiasm and their post-interview lack of interest. Is there something about your culture that people are seeing in-person and being turned off by, and if so, can you be more transparent about it ahead of time so people can self-select out if it's not right for them? Same thing if they're getting turned off by a difficult boss or cranky team or something else that they're only seeing once they arrive for the final interview. You also might ask candidates who turn down your offers for feedback.

But truly, you can do everything right and be an excellent place to work, and some of your offers will still get turned down by sincere candidates, because that's just how hiring goes. You probably understand how it’s true on the other side — that your intentions with a candidate can be utterly sincere and you still might decide in the end not to hire them — and it really does work both ways.

what’s up with candidates turning down our job offers after we pay to fly them out? was originally published by Alison Green on Ask a Manager.

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