Work issue - to speak up or ignore and keep out of it?

[TashieWoo]

I’ll try to keep this short! I work in a small team but we aren’t working as a team in that we all work work on individual projects with groups of internal stakeholders within the business. Sometimes we work together on projects if they are large with a short deadline, if we are quiet etc.

Some of the team members are quite sociable and cliquey, I am not, I prefer to just focus on the stakeholders and my immediate role. I have people I speak more to though and one particular person I confide in more if I am struggling, I’ll call her B. My line manager said that I was going to start reporting to B a few months ago and I was fine with that, although nothing has happened about it yet. He is notoriously bad at getting on with things like this as he’s so busy, probably why he’s offloading some of his direct reports!

There is a relative newcomer to the team, E. She is a junior, the grade below me, and she recently worked on a project with B and didn’t impress her. I don’t know much about her but having worked with her a bit she isn’t great but she is pleasant, and she is learning. I don’t think she really enjoys or cares much about her immediate role though.

However I was in the office on a quiet Friday afternoon last week and it was just me and B, I was sitting a few rows away from her but I could hear B giving E some feedback. I know I shouldn’t have been listening but it was very quiet and I couldn’t help it. There were plenty of meeting rooms / soundproofed areas that she could have used and the onus was on her to do that. B was quite harsh, E was crying and turned her Teams camera off,
B was telling her to put her camera on and asking if there was something else going on, and saying that she didn’t want to go home on a Friday knowing how upset E was etc. It made for uncomfortable listening. Then she called our managers to forewarn them that E was upset. This was at 4pm last Friday and E is off this week so really it could have waited.

I know it isn’t really my business but it doesn’t sit right with me at all, and I don’t think I want B to be my line manager now if this is how she carries on if someone isn’t good enough. I also don’t want to work with her, but I do want to keep my work friendship with her. My line manager said that B and I would work well together as she could open up more technical opportunities for me that he doesn’t have time to do, and that I could calm B down a bit, but I’m not sure that is my job?

My question is should I speak up about how B spoke to E? It could have been done a lot better in my opinion and was gone about in entirely the wrong way.

thanks in advance!

IS B the actual line manager of E?

You can’t really decide you don’t want someone to be your line manager because gave someone else some feedback.

@AlisonDonut No she isn’t. We all have the same line manager.

I get that, and feedback is a necessary part of management but it could be delivered in a more sympathetic and appropriate way in my opinion.

I don’t disagree that you can be bothered by it. But it would be highly unusual to have any say in it.

Ok so I'd have a discrete word with your line manager if you know him well enough, unless B is his daughter or something.

If B is not trained in management which it doesn't look as if she is, he is risking upsetting all his team by moving them to her for day to day line management.

I would stay well out of it. Especially because of your friendship with B. If she does go on to be your line manager and you have reported her, no only will you have soured that line management relationship but she will also know your weak spots from your previous conversations and could use those to get back at you. If you report her and she subsequently does not get the manager role, that could be even worse for you.

As things stand, B made a hash of handling a conversation with a peer. That's not for you to wade into.

I'd keep my mouth shut and eyes peeled. If you haven't heard anything about her change in role perhaps it's not happening at all. But I agree with PP, it may well blow up in your face if you raise a concern and she finds out about it.

As an aside I would be rethinking my friendship with someone who behaves the way she has done.

That's just your opinion.

Don't voice it unless you're happy to receive unsolicited opinions on how you work.

I’d stay out of it. Appreciate you heard because it was in an open plan office but you’re unlikely to have heard all of it and you don’t know the complete background or context. It’s not really for you to critique how a peer gave feedback in an overheard conversation.

Personally I would play dumb and just act like you heard nothing. I don't feel anyone would thank you for butting in, and it would just serve to make your own position untenable. I learned over the years that better lessons are learned if people are left to sort out their own mess, and only intervene if invited.

Thank you all, I agree and will keep quiet but also be mindful of what I heard and keep it in the back of my mind. I wouldn’t want anything to get back to B and it inevitably would, she isn’t stupid and knows I was the only one there. I think I will tread more carefully with our work friendship as well as I’ve seen a different side to her.

How do you know the feedback was inappropriate or that it’s something that has been raised before and needed a more direct approach. It’s possible your colleague was upset because she’s being given negative feedback, it’s possible B had no idea she would react in the way she did and was caught off guard, it’s possible something else was going on that you don’t know about.

In your shoes I’d take a step back, presumably there are avenues for your colleague to raise concerns about B if need be. If I had become aware of a sensitive conversation that I could overhear I’d have moved elsewhere, got a cup of tea or something rather than sitting listening, while the onus may have been on B to ensure privacy, I’ve had situations where a conversation has developed beyond where I thought it would go - I’d hope my colleagues would recognise that and not listen in while I found a way to close things down or move to somewhere more suitable.

I think it's really unprofessional to give negative feedback in an open plan office, the conversation should have been in private. I think it's fine to say "I heard x and it made me uncomfortable, I think it would have been better in private"