First, Be a Person
First, Be a Person
Even if you work in AI, you don’t work with robots.
There are many rules to people management, but the foundation of every other rule is this: first, be a person.
When people talk about terrible managers, many, many stories are rooted in managers mistakenly believing they manage robots who only exist within the confines of their office.
The people you manage, whether they’re at the start of their careers or have decades of experience, are people. They might also be a project manager or an analyst or a director of products, but first, they’re people. They might also be married, single, mid-separation, have kids or pets or relish their privacy, but first, they’re people. That whole person comes to work each day.
Severence aside, your innie and your outie are one person.
You might think this is obvious—duh. You might disagree—and to the lion tamers and animal wranglers reading this: you are correct. But a recent conversation made me realize this is worth directly addressing.
A friend recently recounted his struggles with managing a mid-20-something. The employee, Mike, had been promoted to the position and was now reporting to a new manager. During the first half of the year, Mike was great! He was going above and beyond. His work product was outstanding. He showed initiative and the ability to stretch beyond his current role. And then he fell off. The back half of the year was an exercise in mediocrity. Serviceable. Check the box, and move along, kind of work. The fall had been fairly quick and everyone noticed the drop off in performance. Mike’s project list hadn’t changed. His workload hadn’t adjusted. There hadn’t been turnover on the team, and he didn’t take over anything new.
The manager shrugged and moved on. Just another 20-something who’s (pick your favorite way to denigrate younger employees). It fit the narrative and the performance, so, shrug, whatever the stereotype was, it fit.
Turned out that Mike and his first serious partner had broken up right around the time his performance dropped off. The manager only found out months later when someone casually mentioned Mike being in a funk since he and his girlfriend split up.
The manager hadn’t bothered to be a person. It’s easy to be callous. It’s easy to ascribe a drop in performance to whatever biases, conscious or unconscious, you might hold. It’s easy to keep the walls up and “keep it professional”—frankly, it’s easier to keep the walls up. And it can be awkward! Who wants to hear about all the messy stuff in someone’s personal life or to share that with their manager?
First, be a person.
The manager didn’t need to sit down with Mike and pry into their relationship—no one wants that, and it crosses a line. However, the manager could have asked if everything’s okay and it doesn’t need to be a robotic: IS A RELATIONSHIP IN YOUR PERSONAL LIFE CAUSING DISTRESS? I HAVE NOTED A DROP IN YOUR WORK QUALITY.
These are super basic questions that you could ask to anyone in your life.
They’re human questions: Are you okay?
Good Ways to Ask This:
“You do anything fun this weekend? You recharging?”
“You taking some time off soon? You’ve seemed burnt out recently and just want to make sure you’re taking care of yourself.”
Or, if you have a good relationship with the person, you can be direct:
“Hey, everything good at home?”
Bad Ways to Ask This
“Whatever’s going on in your personal life, get it figured out or I’ll have to let you go.”
“Are you and your significant other/roommates/something having issues? Because that’s the only explanation I can think of for your drop in performance.”
“You’ve been a real Millennial/Boomer lately. Is something up?”
“I know you told me everything is fine at home, but is that true? Are you sure? You can tell me.”
Why are the Good Ways Good
Good questions come from a place of caring about the person, not their work output.
People can smell when you’re only asking because of how they are affecting you—which is selfish, fake and off-putting.
Good questions invite non-answers.
The goal isn’t to pry, and it isn’t to force the person to answer you. You’re asking because you care and part of caring is ensuring they have the agency to decline answering.
Good questions don’t add to stress, they relieve it.
When you’re threatening someone’s job, you’re adding to their stress. If someone’s performance has already dropped, stress is likely part of it.
Good questions lack assumptions.
Everyone has stressors in their life that will impact their work quality. Don’t assume that you know what it is or ascribe it their age, gender, religion, etc.
Good questions don’t cross personal boundaries.
If you ask, and they say everything is fine, then leave it. Don’t push. Don’t circle back. Don’t come at it from a different angle—again, they get to decline to engage!
Manifesting
The most common causes I’ve encountered in these situations are family illness and roommate/SO struggles. Being a person means helping out and giving grace where you can. Being a person doesn’t mean letting the person walk all over you, their team or the job.
Examples
You’ve got a sick pet? I’m sorry to hear that: do you need time to take them to the vet? Do you need to work from home more often over the next x weeks so you can monitor them?
Sorry to hear about your dad: if you need to take them to some doctor appointments or stay at home to help monitor them while you get care sorted out, let me know and we’ll juggle things.
Two roommates are suddenly moving out? Sorry to hear that: if you need to head out early to check out apartments or meet with a perspective roommate, just let me know and I think we can cover it.
Sorry to hear you two split up. We’ve all been there and it sucks. You’ve got a bunch of PTO/We have unlimited PTO: why don’t you take some time off? Or do you want to bury yourself in work?
Each example:
(1) acknowledges the situation
(2) empathizes
(3) offers some time bound flexibility
(4) doesn’t pry into additional details.
There is no follow up with, Tell me about the illness/breakup/roommate drama — gimme the details! Absolutely, do not do this. If the other person volunteers info, you can listen, but carefully assess whether you’re pushing them in this direction, if they’re assuming you want/need to know more or whether they’re very open.
Empathize, offer realistic things you can do, set expectations, be done.
The other half of this is remembering that YOU, the manager, are also a person. You face the same stressors. You have same limitations.
But that’s for another post.