I need to have a difficult conversation with a colleague today.

[TheWifeofRequirement]

I’m 6 months into a role where I’m an expert in charge of a team of slightly junior experts.

My colleague used to be a junior expert under another ‘head of’ who had the role before me, but before I was given the job my colleague took a sideways step into a facilitation role which, although requires him to have some knowledge of my area, no longer requires him to get involved in the day to day.

Anyway, since I started, this colleague has struggled to maintain distance from the specialism and is dictating to me how to do said specialism on a daily basis.

It all came to a head over the last 2 days. He asked me to proof read an email and give feedback before it went to a client. I read it, and asked him to make a minor change because he was promising something in the email I’m not prepared to deliver. It was a minor thing: basically he promised to report to them daily which would be untenable from a commercial perspective and would put pressure on my team for no additional benefit. I asked him to change this to weekly reports and adhoc check ins with the client, he argued back and I clarified that as it’s my team delivering this, it will be weekly not daily.

He sent the email promising daily reporting.

I feel patronised, undermined and really bloody cross.

His role is to facilitate, not to dictate to me how to do my job and I’m now going to have to phrase this in a way that’s diplomatic and I’m struggling.

WIBU to basically tell him to back the fuck off and let me do my job? If so, how on earth do I phrase this??

I can’t wait for an update on this. Sadly, I doubt he will cave and do stuff your way. He sounds set in his ways. Remain cool professional and polite and be very sad when he realises that management prefer you and that he needs to find another post. Bless, he can’t cope with someone being better at the role than him.

How many of these training sessions do you think you could do? If the first doesn’t break him I’m sure you wouldn’t mind redelivering the same one multiple times, would you?

Erm... wife - does the meeting room on Tuesday have any sort of video conferencing facility that could possibly I don't know... work secretly and v/c direct to anyone on the thread who wanted to learn how to take down an OD commercial systems work?

Back the fuck off and let me do my job.

I would just say this and leave it at that. I would also email the client CC’ing your colleague correcting your colleague’s ‘mistake’ and clarifying that they will be WEEKLY reports.

Don’t let him walk all over you.

How can he get out of your meeting on Tuesday? You can bet he'll try.

More balls than Millwall.

Go girl.

Just a quickie to say you appear to be very talented at the business side of management and only a little lacking in terms of people management. There are courses or self-help books that will help you until you've got this aspect nailed. Your manager's refusal to get involved is demonstrating his confidence that you can deal with this, by the way.

The person you describe is familiar to me - builds a close relationship with those in the client company that he's involved in (gets to know their kids names, medical problems, holiday plans etc etc) and convinces them that his endless attention makes him the best thing since sliced bread. But those people may not be the client's decision makers, so even if they think he's wonderful his influence is actually quite limited. I'd lay money on him having a bitch about you to them behind your back, though - watch out for this!

Discipline his ass for insubordination.

(Did I say that out loud?)

Well done OP, sounds like you're handling everything brilliantly.

My pennies:

1. Tell your team to ignore anything he says
2. Patronise the hell out of him back - "What you don't seem to realise is that your methods are loss making and unsustainable. Under my leadership, the channel is now profitable and back on track, which is why these decisions fall to me, and not to you. In future, I need you to respect my decisions and the processes we've put in place. I trust we won't need to have this conversation again."

Good luck bringing him down!

Also, some great tactics for quickly establishing authority...

• you start to determine meeting times and deadlines, deliberately reschedule them at very short notice, etc.
• get your most junior team member to liaise with him when you would normally do it
• delay responding to his emails and send very brief replies when you do (I think this was mentioned earlier on)

STay angry! You’re far better when you’re angry!

Stop thanking him and ‘offering’ him...start expecting & telling him.

He is a nasty piece of work, don’t give him an inch.

No shagging in the morning, you need to be frustrated and angry...not happy!😂

...could you get one of your staff, preferably the incredibly young office junior, to take the training session for you? ‘Fred is going to take you back through the training and presentations as it appears you didn’t understand them the first time.’

Problem is, he’s got my back up anyway because we were out for drinks the other night talking about office romances and about a male colleague he said ‘yeah he seems to get right in there whenever there’s a new bird in the office’ - I nearly bit my tongue so hard it bled

I would refrain from going out drinking with him and talking about office romances because some people sometimes say silly things when they drink and he, or people, might say something to offend you while their guard is down.

Being you are young and still unexperienced, but learning quickly, maybe you should be all business all the time and not meet socially until you feel more secure in your position.

I was managing a department when I was 28 and understand what it can be like. I was the only female btw.

As you are senior to him and you appear to have taken a dislike to him, it is in your power to destroy his confidence, career and life. But do it subtly. When he has done things well point out where he could have done it better. When he does things badly patronise him and say he tried hard. Generally make him feel that however hard he works it is not quite good enough. Eventually he will quit or have a nervous breakdown. Then you will have won and can feel smug

For the record, I think you've probably got the makings of a bloody good manager. When he was being a pain in the arse to you, well, you were a bit peeved. When he started being a pain to your team, you wanted to rip his throat out. Your team tends to know if you protect their back as long as they do their best. And my experience is that they give you their absolute best when they know that you protect them.

Is there someone above you both you can go to for help?

Am I the only one to think the language on this thread is a bit hyperbolic? Rip his throat out? Drive him to a nervous breakdown?

I don't for one minute think anyone really thinks these things. But I think they feed into the myth that women can't manage objectively.

OP, try to take some of the emotion out of this. You are his senior. Direct him. If he doesn't co-operate, take it to his manager with a paper trail.

I like the training session idea. I would email the slides to him and reference the 1-1 training session and length. Inform him you have briefed your team to only accept work requests via official channels and any non compliance may result in a delay in processing.

flowerpott 😁👍

@queendoris

Is that a joke or are you actually that evil?

@Thisreallyisafarce

I agree. This thread is a poor show. Many posters encouraging the op to become a bully. It's almost an advert for an MRA to say 'see, women shouldn't be in the workplace'

The OP is doing a fantastic job - she has behaved with consummate professionalism and is continuing to do so. So fuck off with your: 'women shouldn't be in the workplace' and 'my husband's a better manager than you' regressive bullshit. You believe that sexist twaddle regardless of what any woman does or says and you are desperately scraping for confirmation in this thread. In fact, you have a woman at work managing a situation well, supported by her on line sisters - no one but sexist idiots takes the hyperbole seriously, which is just to give the OP a smile while she deals with this useless twat.

Just in case anyone is worried, i fully understand the concept of a joke and won’t be ripping anyone’s throat out because vipers on the internet told me to.

I’m still a bit angry but it’s a cooler anger this morning. It’s been a bit of a transformational 24 hours really.

If his job is troubleshooting. The way you are running things is making his job redundant because you are good at your job. I can see why he is nervous

For the record, despite you saying you are suffering imposter syndrome, you are actually really good at this OP. He was hoping for a rage response. Your response is to give him more training. I love it!

Was your feedback in writing regarding the reporting? If so just email him and ask him why after asking for it to be proof read and you said you couldn't delivery daily reporting he ignored you and promised it anyway. Or ask him how he will facilitate this.

I'm not worried you intend to rip his throat out, OP

I just think you need to take the advice offered by cooler heads. I'm often guilty of being a bit rash, and it it almost never helps.