boss says parents can’t be good at their jobs, how to get coworkers to actually help, and more — Ask a Manager

It’s “where are you now?” month at Ask a Manager, and all December I’m running updates from people who had their letters here answered in the past. Here are five updates from past letter-writers.

1. My boss says people can’t be good at their jobs if they have kids or sick relatives

I’m still at the job. I think part of the issue was that Aria was really overworked and stressed out and I was coming off as too blase. She’s since come to trust that I actually know what I am doing and get stuff done so I had a good annual review and we get along. We also hired more staff for our team, so she has more support. I’ve been pretty firm with my boundaries and allowing my reports to prioritize their health and family when needed. I’ve also taken time off for family emergencies, unapologetically, even missing important meetings to do so. It was a rocky start but things are manageable now and I’ve learned I need to present as more serious moving forward. I am looking for a new job that will allow me to prioritize my family more, the job market is tight in my field so that might take another year or two.

Thanks for publishing my letter and to the commenters who correctly noted that it wasn’t a great environment and that I also might be giving off flaky vibes.

2. How do I ask for things and get people to actually help me (as a manager and as a volunteer)?

I have to report mixed results. First, thank you to you and your readers for your comments. I had read the post, and spent a long time reading all of the comments. Thank you to all of you who took the time to respond. I wasn’t able to respond in the comments in the way that I wanted, but I did read them all. Something that I had mentioned to Alison afterwords, but didn’t put in my initial question, is that I am a Black woman, and I wondered how much of my inability to get help from people was due to my communication style, and how much wasn’t. I know that it’s both.

Some things have changed, and some have stayed the same. I have taken from Alison and the commentariat to be specific in my requests for help. In my work, I continue to find that while the people who report to me lend a hand, the same does not extend to my direct manager nor the people who are at the same level as me. However, a new person joined our team this year, and he has been great about helping me. For example, I asked my same level colleagues to please help me with a specific, time-sensitive task (for example: “these teapots need to be glazed, and there’s no one available to do it. I need you to join me on Tuesday at noon to get them glazed, as they are being fired on Wednesday morning. It should take about 10 minutes to get the teapots painted”). No one responded to my messages, but he showed up to help paint the pots. I’m hoping that this help will continue. Unfortunately, I have learned that I will simply not get the help from the rest of my colleagues, but have learned who in other locations I can reach out to for help or advice.

As for my board, the lack of willingness to help is part of a larger issue that we see with a lack of engagement by the board members. That is something that we have been trying to work on with the members. I did find out that one of the reasons that people didn’t respond to my message asking for help with fundraising is because they couldn’t access the link (not because it was sent on a Friday — it’s a volunteer board, and I can’t send messages during the work day). Again, I have been working on being specific about what help I need. This year, I was clear that I couldn’t help with fundraising, and could only do one specific task, and let everyone else be responsible for the other things. I also exit-counselled one of our board members off the board (after she stopped taking minutes, tone policed me after I called her on it, then stopped attending meetings) and found new board members. I decided that last year was going to be my final year as chair and recently stepped down. This is my final year on the board, and I will move on to new opportunities.

I will continue to work on clear, specific requests for help, and hope that things get better.

3. My coworker announced she’s quitting and now is upset that she wasn’t invited to a conference (#3 at the link)

So, our coworker did not move out of state to be with her boyfriend immediately and actually moved only a week ago (10 months later) because her job search was so difficult. In the meantime, she actually did go to the conference!

From information I didn’t have at the time (but now know) is that other staff who were chosen for the conference were also planning on quitting sooner than her but for graduate school. My boss at the time equated their departures for graduate school as more worthy of professional development than her departure … which frankly was completely unfair. She brought this up and he agreed and rectified it by giving her his place at the conference. All was done right by Helga.

Since then there were some major changes on our team. Our boss moved into a new position in a different group as part of a promotion and I was placed into an interim supervisor role for my group. To hopefully ease some of the frustrations people had with this situation I’ve been more transparent in getting people more equal access to conferences and making sure they know which ones are on our radar so they can be better informed ahead of time and decide based on personal lives what will work best for them. I recently sent out a big list to employees which conferences we can go to and all the details — then I had them send back a ranked list of ones they could attend and were most interested in. I think overall everyone appreciates being able to choose and figure out what works for their life better even if they know they won’t be able to go to more than one or so in a year. And to Allison’s advice also not give off a perceived preference towards people on who ends up going or not.

4. Coworker’s office is gun-themed (#2 at the link)

I loved reading the comments and discussion on this topic. Home office decor is highly personal, and with that thought, I decided to not say anything (and, the co-worker in question was assigned to a different project and we didn’t have many meetings together). However, in the last month our work got closer again – and now this co-worker uses an aggressive background blur. So although I didn’t say anything to him in the end, I imagine someone else did.

5. Is this too many interviews? (#3 at the link)

Thank you for answering my question. Commenters clearly have very strong feelings about the interview process! Lots of speculation but I assure all that this was very much an entry level role and we’re not trying to sneakily underpay a mid-level. We hired someone fresh out of university with a few internships under their belt.

For context, my hiring process was happening in the midst of a wider organizational rejig of the hiring process so there was not a lot of up to date guidance. My team is small and retention on it is high, but this is the first entry level we’ve hired for in several years and was trying to avoid some pitfalls I saw on other teams and ended up trying to over engineer slightly.

After I flagged candidates from review of CV/cover letters, I did round one interviews with six people with a colleague and moved 3 candidates to a written skills assessment (short, discussed in interview, explicitly designed to take 30 minutes, really important for the role). That actually cut down our field to one person, so was a really useful tool! I still had the candidate meet with the ED as the hire would partially support him (20% of role) and thought it was important for the candidate to have the chance to connect before the role started given that they would be working together. The new hire has been in the role for five months and is doing very well and looking forward to supporting his further growth in the role and wider team.