Bit of a boring work one

[moshmoshi]

I work as part of a job share, my partner is much more experienced than me and does more days so has more of the workload. I started fairly recently so she has definitely done more than her share at times while I get used to how things are done.

She asked me to complete some paperwork which I haven't done before. I did, then asked her if she wouldn't mind checking it before I sent it to our manager. She got back to me after a week and answered a couple of questions which was fine.

I sent the document into my manager who returned it asking for more detail and one section to be set out differently. Fair enough. I did that but wasn't sure about one target (one sentence in the whole document) so asked my colleague if she had any ideas. No reply at all even though she'd been emailing about other stuff.

Now I'm not sure what to do. I need to send the document back to my manager today. It is one of her work days today. Do I just try my best with the tricky bit and assume she doesn't want to help or wait and see if she responds, but that might mean sending it back late.

My job share is very mild tempered, I don't really know her very well. I'm think she is fed up helping me and thinks I should just do things by myself and pull my weight more and this is her passive way of telling me that.

Any advice? I have another job and the communication with my other colleague is so much easier!

I'd send it and just say to your manager that you weren't totally sure about this one area, so you've put in x because of y and z.

It sounds like maybe your job share feels like they are acting more like your manager, or they may have forgotten or not known the answer to that question.

I'd say get it in on time. Do you have regular catch ups with your job share, it may be worth asking her how she thinks things are going and what her preference is for communication over questions.

I think you should communicate directly to your manager. If this was your full time job and you didn’t have a job partner, you’d have to ask your manager for help if you didn’t understand something. I think that’s the approach you should take, rather than using your job share partner as the middle man.

Thanks @rookiemere you may well be right, I do tend to treat her as my managerand she's probably fed up of it. Problem is my actual manager can be quite unresponsive to emails, it's easier to talk to them in person. With hindsight I should have asked my manager my initial queries in person rather than my colleague.

I think things have got a bit confused because when I started in May my line manager was there but not really much of a presence. I addressed any queries directly to my colleague. Over the past few months though my line manager is becoming more involved with our work.

It is the kind of job where colleagues do usually help each other out with this kind of paperwork and target setting rather than go straight to the manager.

We do a handover each week so maybe I'll ask if she prefers any questions to go directly to ourline manager.

I'll get the task mentioned finished to the best of my ability and hopefully it will be OK. It has to go straight to the big boss.

Without making excuses it feels like the communication and training in this place haven't been the best. I have experience in a related but quite different area and I feel like I've just been left to get on with it. There's been some training, but a lot of the time I feel I'm just expected to pick things up by osmosis! I only seem to find out what I don't know when I'm in the middle of it if that makes sense. I haven't had a problem being pt before but think it does make a difference here, I'm really out of the loop

Thanks @Backy think you're right. It's the kind of job where job share partners do usually turn to each other first bur maybe she prefers not to work like that.

What would you do if you didn’t have a job share? You’d ask your manager or someone else I presume? So do that
id be frustrated if we were being paid the same, but I was effectively supervising you, doing more than 50% of the work, and then finding time to check your work too.
totally understand how you’ve got into that habit but she needs to be able to rely on you as a partner, and you should value you yourself as her partner too.

you have had many months there now though
it will be a learning curve

Do your best, send it to your manager, mention it briefly in the email if you are that unsure but do double check - is this a genuine worry that it is significantly wrong, or just perfectionism?

Don't hold up your reply waiting for your colleague to respond on her day off.

If you're left floundering that is poor, but if you yourself are prone to perfectionism, and procrastinating if you are not 100/% sure (this is me!) then maybe you could try actively deciding to take a more "best endeavours" approach. Make a decision, follow it up afterwards sometimes when it's really necessary but be prepared to live with less certainty with what you submit. It does depend on the role. Maybe discuss with your manager.

Oh and make sure you are addressing your colleague "adult to adult" not "child to parent" in terms of transactional analysis. When we are asking favours it's easy to slip into "child" mode, which can be really annoying to colleagues who want to work adult-adult. I'm projecting wildly here, of course you're free to ignore.

www.philgowler.co.uk/therapies/the-parent-adult-child-model-simple-yet-it-works/

I do feel like I'm floundering @PingPongMerrilyWithPie but it could be me as well needing reassurance because I want it to be right. I'm so used to feeling confident in my related field that it's difficult in this new role, especially when I feel everyone thinks I should know what I'm doing. I'll definitely try a best endeavours approach.

I don't think it's the right job for me in the long run though for lots of reasons, and maybe that feeling is making me too reliant on my job share colleague.

I am seriously considering retraining in a completely different area so I definitely need to get over my uncertainty about things I'm not fully confident about!