do I have to go to my boss’s son’s wedding, I manage a habitual phone checker, and more Ask a Manager

do I have to go to my boss’s son’s wedding, I manage a habitual phone checker, and more

Posted: 13 Oct 2019 09:03 PM PDT

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

1. Do I have to go to my boss's son's wedding?

My boss’s son (who is my coworker) is getting married next year. I hate weddings, am not particularly fond of this coworker, and am a pretty shy person and a large wedding where I won’t know many people sounds terrible to me. Our office is very close knit (less than a dozen employees who have worked for our boss for, on average, several decades) so it WILL be noticed and commented on the weeks leading up to the wedding and post wedding if I don’t go. Should I suck it up and go anyway?

Nah. This isn't like attending one lunch for someone — weddings often mean giving up an entire weekend day, or at least many hours. Come up with a conflict that allows you to say something like, "I wish I could, but my family reunion is that weekend and I'd never hear the end of it if I missed it."

If you feel guilty about that, tell yourself that your boss's son deserves to be surrounded by people who like him on his wedding day and who are genuinely happy to be there (rather than attending as a work obligation)! It's more than okay for you to politely bow out with a date conflict and just send a nice card.

2. Should I include my photo in my email signature?

Is it unprofessional to include a photo in your email signature? I used to think it was, but now I’m feeling like it is needed. As my career has matured, I am now working with people all over country via email, and then meeting them in person at conventions and annual meetings. Often, I feel like people are surprised by my age (I’m younger than most at my level in my industry), and are not able too match my name with my face. Is this unprofessional? I see a small portion of my contacts doing this, but it is definitely not the majority. I would, of course, use my professional headshot. What is your take?

If you're the only one in your company doing it, it's probably going to come across a little strangely (assuming you'd be using it internally as well). If other people there do it, then sure, you're fine.

I was apparently staunchly opposed to this when I answered a letter about it in 2011 and again in 2014. So either I have mellowed as I aged or it's common enough now that it no longer raises my hackles. It's a thing people do now! So be it, as long as you're not the only one in your company doing it.

3. I manage a habitual phone checker

One of the people I supervise is a good, solid employee. He does his work on time and to deadline, juggles multiple projects, and supervises some temporary workers. I have no complaints! However, I have noticed multiple times that he has a terrible habit of being on his phone during larger presentations and trainings (say, more than 40-50 people, sometimes more like 80-100, not like a staff meeting). On both recent occasions I clocked him looking down at his phone, scrolling, or reading on his phone more than half of the time. The most recent time, I even checked my watch (it was bugging me a bit, and I recognize there’s a feeling of annoyance that might be clouding my judgment, which is partly why I’m so torn about saying something) and it was more than half the time. And this was in a fairly small room, about 30 people in total, in the front and center. (And just to note, he in no way has responsibilities that are vast or time-sensitive enough to not be able to take an hour or two to step away from their phone.)

Doing this in no way is impacting his work. But I personally think it’s rude and it’s not how I personally want to conduct myself at work. For people who might notice it, it looks bad and reflects badly on him. I’m not sure if it reflects badly on our team as a whole.

I am his supervisor but I don’t really take on much in way of “mentoring” for him. (I would consider this conversation to be more of a mentoring conversation than a work performance conversation, because it’s absolutely not.) But our office is pretty conservative, and I know that if one of my supervisors or the big boss noticed, they would not be pleased. Finally, I think this person is very interested in advancing in his career, so I think there might be a way to frame it as, this might make you look bad and is easy to avoid. So really, I don’t know if I should say something (and if so, what?) or keep my mouth shut and know that this adult human is making choices at work but outside of his work performance so it’s not anything I need to stick my nose into. What should I do?

Say something.

You're making too much of the distinction between managing and mentoring. Managing well means you'll need to have conversations with people beyond just their work product — you'll need to talk to them at times about impressions they're giving off or their relationships with others and so forth. While mentors might do that too, it's also part of managing. So this is very much in your purview, and in fact I'd argue you have an obligation as his manager to let him know when he's repeatedly doing something that will affect how he's seen by others. (Frankly, even if that weren't the concern, you'd also have standing to just tell him you want him paying attention in these meetings, since that's why he's there.)

4. My employee plans time off at the last minute, and I'm worried I'm taking all the good dates

I’m a reasonably new middle manager with three direct reports, one who is experienced and two who are new. We have very generous PTO at our company and I am responsible for approving vacation requests for our team. We're not supposed to deny vacation requests unless there is an operational requirement that trumps the PTO. On our team, the way this works out is that, the experienced employee and myself need to avoid overlapping our time off, in order to provide support and mentorship to our new hires.

I make several trips to my home country each year. Because of this, I plan my vacation many months ahead to take advantage of flight deals and make plans with family and friends. My experienced employee is not a planner. She prefers to decide at the very last minute and requests vacation time accordingly. I have changed plans twice since July (fortunately prior to booking flights) to accommodate her requests. After one particularly last-minute request for time off, I told her directly that she needs to get better at planning ahead, but she just laughed and said that’s not how she rolls.

I feel like it is my responsibility to ensure my staff have the opportunity to use all of the vacation they are entitled to, and to pick up the slack when needed to support my team. However, since I plan so much further ahead, if I request my vacation ahead of this staff member, she will have to plan her vacation around my already approved time off. She also struggles to use up her vacation days more than I do, and I can see this becoming even more of an issue if I request first (vacation is use it or lose it and is not paid out at year end). If I don’t, I risk not being able to take the trips I want to take, or having to pay double the price I could be paying. Do you have any suggestions on how to make this work?

Ask her if she minds! Say something like, "I tend to book my vacation many months ahead, and I know you prefer to plan closer to when you'd like to be off. I'm concerned that ends up giving me first dibs on dates and you're stuck working around my time off. Does that concern you too, or does it not bother you? Would you like me to give you a heads-up about the dates I'm planning before I book them so you have a chance to tell me if it conflicts with your own plans?" That way you're at least giving her the opportunity to speak up. If she chooses not to after you've explicitly given her the chance, then I don't think you need to worry about it. She'll know the trade-off for planning last-minute is that you might have gotten there first, and she'll know that you tried to mitigate that for her.

If you do this, you shouldn't feel you need to change your plans to accommodate her last-minute requests (unless that's very easy to do). And it should help if there's a central place where your team can see each other's scheduled time off, which you can ask her to consult when planning her own.

It's also reasonable to sit down with her in, say, August and say, "You've got three weeks of vacation to use this year and nothing on the calendar, so let's figure out good times for you to take it so you don’t lose it at the end of the year.”

5. Reviews are being delayed — which means so are raises

I’m in SAAS sales in the Silicon Valley. Year-end reviews are being pushed out as we just “don’t have time for them." This is the third year in a row. There is no back pay for reviews being pushed out once they do happen. Am I wrong in being a bit annoyed at this, as I feel I am missing income potential as a high performer hoping to receive a raise?

You can still ask for a raise now, rather than waiting for your review to happen! And if your manager tells you to hold the request until review time, you can say, "Since reviews are getting so delayed and we haven't done back pay with raises from delayed reviews in the past, I'd like to be able to make my case now."

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