Work request

I don’t really get this thing of people deciding meetings are pointless so they just don’t go or make themselves appear unavailable. If you think your time could be spent better, have a conversation. Your calendar isn’t a tool to communicate to your colleagues and seniors your dissatisfaction about the nature of your job.

Oh - and yes you need to make sure you're having a development conversation with her.

You need to lead with the outcome/impact and then talk about process.

So: thank you for covering the manager responsibilities while a permanent appointment was made. Now I'm in role I need your capacity back on core team activities so you can stand down from x y z meeting.
I've been struggling to book team meetings because so much of your calendar is booked out and it's not clear what is client critical work and what is not. So please can she adjust the settings to show details so you can book these short-notice high priority meetings.
(Is she delivering the desired outputs to deadlines? If not, raise that and make it part of the discussion to understand how she's spending her time/helping her with time management).

Ultimately though, you need to work out how critical it is that she is always available 9-5 if she's getting the job done.
At my workplace we have a degree of day-to-day flexibility eg occasional school pickup and make up the time in the week.
If you are a modern manager focus on results on presenters. HOWEVER that doesn't mean you shouldn't be able to schedule meetings with the whole team because she's never there.

I think the first thing that should be addressed is her calendar/time management. Explain why you need full access to her calendar and ensure that any meetings that are put in there, there is a reason for them to allow you to assess the priority over any team events you need to book. Also see pp around the privacy function if needed.
She may be blocking out time to complete tasks and if she is doing so she should make it clear on her calendar so you can assess the priority.
Explain to her that she seems overwhelmed with work and there are new starters eager to take some of the load off. Review what her duties/workload looks like day-to-day and re-assign some of these to the new starters yourself rather than allowing her to do it. Have a chat about what aspects of her role she enjoys more so you can negotiate her keeping those aspects as opposed to feeling like she is handing over everything she enjoys doing.
I know from personal experience I can be a little bit precious over work I have looked after for a long time but when it begins to be looked after by someone else, can actually be a massive relief.
It sounds like maybe she didn't want her promotion to be temporary and if this is the case you should talk to your manager about progression opportunities within your team. This could give her an incentive to be more of a team-player and manage her time more effectively as well as treat you with more respect and more warmly.

From your description of her (and I think you've posted before about her not relinquishing her temporary duties to you?) this is a symptom of a wider issue. She needs performance managing and some firm boundaries. I'd use the complaints about her conduct/inappropriate meeting attendance as the hook.

On the blocking out time, I do this to manage my working time and also to avoid being pulled into pointless meetings that could be a teams message, or having people put in back to back meetings so I'm booked up for 4 hours straight (those people have a special place in hell!!). So perfectly possible she is doing that, especially if she has poor time management issues. She still needs to have her diary open though if that's the org policy.

But over all she sounds like a bit of a nightmare to manage! Good luck.....

sorry about your nan.

Your behaviour is ridiculous though. (this also for OP) as companies are switching over to more agile forms of management - this leaves their employees more free to manage their own calendars. For that reason they at least need to be available to their manager (it's your company policy: write her one email saying that you are required to have full access to her calendar and that is to be implemented by Monday. If you can't see it on Monday, send her a reminder then escalate to your manager)

Set up a meeting to discuss her time management and planning. I always think an informal 1-to-1 every other week is very useful (i work in a hybrid way - i do this with my boss and we spend 45 minutes walking around the area we work talking about anything that comes up, work related things etc). This would be a good time to bring up why she tries to attend meetings that aren't in her job-scope. If she is suffering from FOMO it would be better to nip it in the bud and be firm that if needed she will be invited. If she is angling for promotion, find out what she wants, then take this to your boss and discuss if it's realistic.

The other thing that agile working is that you should feel free to say "I'm not required at this meeting, i can be productive elsewhere" and leave it. Equally anyone holding a meeting is free to bin off people who aren't needed.

Don't want to be confrontational? send a reminder team-wide that it is company policy to have their calendars fully open to you, and that your team isn't compliant and for everyone to check their settings.

This.

As long as you can justify it, it’s a reasonable management instruction. Be firm, clear and fair, starting with open and honest conversation about their concerns. And then move from there if conduct doesn’t improve.

It's entirely possible to create a personal calendar if needed in Outlook (other calendar programs are available). That is one that only the creator can see. So no need to put personal details in the work calendar if that's a worry.

Most places I have worked have been setup so that managers can see direct report calendars (it's why you enter reporting lines in Active Directory, so you can use a group policy). Particularly on the tech side you can find yourself invited to a meeting by your boss if they want some expertise. Woe betide you if your calendar wasn't up to date.

Last enterprise organisation I worked at dictated calendar access, resource access (who could book what and when) and permission level (view titles, view full, view & edit, create) from the organisation chart before you started. (They also took 3 months to authorise a £10 expense claim, so size isn't everything 😀)

My company has a culture of "openness" Everyone including directors have their calendars open to some degree.

As her line manager tell her that the expectation is for her calendar to be available. All of this blocking off chunks of time for no reason is ridiculous (I have someone like that and ignore it, it's on him if he doesn't go to meetings).

I think you're going to be a bit hard nosed with her.

I used to have 90mins once a week in my Outlook as I went to my Nan's for lunch during that time. Then she passed away but I just couldn't bring myself to remove it from the calendar.

In more recent years I just got fed up with people demanding pointless meetings to go over the same shit I explained the last time, when I had my own work to be getting on with. So it got to the stage where I was booking all kinds of "meetings" and marking myself as busy just to get through the day.

I meant to add, she may be a total pain but she equally may just be struggling to adjust her way of working that’s never been questioned before.

I have an issue in sharing my calendar so now I’m not sure what can be seen by my manager (I’m now going to check as it all changed after an upgrade). I often shove things in my calendar for longer than I expect them to take, knowing I’ll get interrupted and really it’s saying that by the end of the time I want that piece of work done rather than it took me the full 2 hours allocated. I think you just need to talk to her as she may believe her calendar is open enough and not appreciate how you want to work. Go through her meetings for the week and if there’s some you would want to be at ask her to forward the invite and she can introduce you at the next one then she won’t need to come after that. if she’s historically done the meetings before you were in post it’s quite insulting to then be removed because it’s too senior when it wasn’t when they needed her to pick it up.

Our calndars are open to the whole team, but not organisation-wide.

Any private appointments are just put in as "personal appointment" and I've never heard of anyone being questioned about what they are.

Our manager will sometimes notice that someone has a lot of appointments with clients that week, and relieve them of some of the work that comes in via email etc so they don't get overwhelmed or have a long turn-around time.

Sharing calendars is standard practice in my organisation, not just with team members but all. It's about transparency. There shouldn't be anything in there you don't want people to see and for dr's appointments etc there is the 'private' function. Insist she does it and get other teams around to do so as well.

Can you show her how to mark personal appointments as private?

^she booked herself in meetings that are not grade appropriate - if they want to develop, then not allowing them to attend a meeting because of their grade is short sighted imo. If their conduct is an issue, you need to understand what that issue is, rather than putting it down to their grade. That's keeping people in a box, when a manager's role is to guide and allow for growth.

your management style sounds very old-fashioned. People nowadays should be mentored and guided, with clarity on boundaries and priorities but not stifled and restricted. It takes patience and skill but you get better cooperation and productivity if you support staff by giving them some elbow room.^

What could be a clearer boundary than someone not being invited to a meeting? OP says she’s adding herself to things that are ‘not grade appropriate’. It’s not micromanagement to hold meetings at the right level of seniority, it’s just using resources and handling information in the right way. You can’t just have people unilaterally deciding to rock up to SMT meetings because they want to. And I’m not “old fashioned” - we do invite junior staff to our SMT as a development opportunity but using a managed sign-up and rota process and they duck back out when we’re talking about sensitive information eg staffing issues. Just adding yourself to other people’s meetings which are inappropriate for you to attend is pretty shocking behaviour.

I think there are lots of factors at play here that have all been mentioned above and I think you need to address them otherwise she will think she can pull the wool over your eyes.

• not sharing calendar fully: where I am it is company policy that calendars must be shared with managers - not adhering to this would be questioned we can set appointments to private so the manager can’t see what they are but too many of these raises questions - check with your manager what the company policy is
• attending meetings she shouldn’t be - she has already been removed from meetings and questioned about this - if she is still doing it then this also needs to be addressed

continuing to be obstructive not being a team player etc would be addressed as a performance issue in our office with a improvement plan put in place and if no improvement in the agreed timescales then it would be escalated.

I would start with a conversation about the by she doesn’t want you to have access and also address the working outside of working hours as this would be seen as well-being red flag for me - either her workload is too much or she is struggling for another reason during the day resulting in her needing to catch up later on.

i think these need to be proper meetings with her, minuted and possibly with a third party there as I fear the minute you try and deal with this there will be push back from her and it could result in a he said / she said situation.

Sounds like her ego is bruised and she thinks she is higher up than she is. This needs resetting especially her not giving work to others.

Have you asked her why she isn’t comfortable giving you full access? This may be something that can be resolved in a conversation.

try and explain it in a way of what is in it for her I.e if she is sick you can see her day and cancel any appointments/ send apologies do it doesn’t damage her reputation. Also show her the option when making appointments that she can put the occasional one to private so you can’t see it. This can be used if she has a medical appointment or other personal reasons throughout the day.

Just be firm it’s not an unreasonable request
she sounds difficult do take advice from HR as no doubt she’ll push back and you need to make sure it’s all done correctly

YANBU OP

Someone always pipes up with “micro managing” or “old fashioned” on work threads.

Did she apply for your job, is that why she’s so résistent to being managed by you?
I think you need to be able to see what your team are doing. You’re not managing if you can’t have an eye on workloads, who’s doing what etc.

Exactly.
I worked in a team with one of those, they also booked lunches as meetings so that they could claim the time back later. Office setting but in a satellite office.
Then the systems were upgraded to automatically show when you were away from the desk and it became apparent that they were going in and out of the office on a whim and doing school runs ect.

Another person wfh whilst looking after the kids. Do these blocks of time coincide with start/ end of school day or school events?

I’d suspect she’s dropping kids off and collecting and possibly attending appointments for or with them. If your company encourages flexible working, that’s fine. I’d arm yourself with what the policy is and if she’s catching up just tell her to put school run/ toil in. If your company doesn’t encourage flexible working you’ve got a big problem managing wfh workers’ productivity.