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??

Oh, I see you have met with him.

I think you do not need to do anything more. I would NOT recommend following up with an email. You don't need to. Repeating yourself makes you seem weak.

Stay cordial and friendly with him. This was not a big deal. You're his manager and he was out of bounds; you did your job and told him so.
For now, proceed with the assumption that he's going to take it on board and all is well.

@thewifeofrequirement yes you ARE cut out for this!! You got this job fair and square, DO NOT be intimidated by this knobhead. Hold your head up high, be calm, polite and firm. Do not sugar coat this with 'methods to work together better' bollocks. You need to show him that you are somebody to be respected - it sounds like your efforts to get him onside have worked against you, maybe you came across as a bit sycophantic? Put him in his place - as pps said, say that you gave him a direct instruction and he ignored it, ask him why, tell him it is not his decision and ask him to rectify the situation with the client. Follow up with an email reiterating all of the above. If he continues to be a dick, reply with said email in the chain and cc his line manager in.

GO FOR IT op, we're all rooting for you xx

OP I would suggest you follow up with an email to confirm your discussion with him this morning.

Make sure you include that you've agreed he will email the client, his role & responsibility has been clarified and that there is no requirement for him to be involved in checking work that falls under your remit.

Cover yourself and act as if the issue is resolved. If he continues to play up you have the attached email to confirm the summary of your discussion and ask his manager to stop him interfering.

This. Don't cc either manager but save the email in case anything blows up in future. This sort of person often interprets a conversation totally differently to other participants so definitely confirm it in writing - and get your version in first. I agree with PP saying where possible speak face to face but I would always summarise the conversation in writing afterwards just to cover your own back.

Also ask for a copy of his amended email to the client (as I wouldn't put it past him to have said something like "TheWife isn't capable of providing daily updates so you will only get them weekly.")

You're doing really well.

Oh and can people please stop feeding the trolls. Just ignore.

Just saw that you met him - sounds like you handled it really well, well done.

I would just leave it now and see if his behaviour changes. If he pulls this again, just repeat what you've done, pulling in his line manager if it persists. What a total dick he sounds, feel very angry on your behalf xx

Lot of bitterness from @suttree. Possibly a bloke who lost a promotion to a female colleague and rage-wanks about it a lot.

Anyway, agree with pps to put everything in writing, and make it clear its not your job to facilitate him stepping away. You've discussed it together and you're satisfied that he has no current concerns about how you are fulfilling your role. Your managers have confidence in you, he's not part of any handover process, so he can happily get on with his job and you can get on with yours - glad we all got theat all sorted, OD! now fuck off

I really disagree with the perception that sending an email to confirm the conversation either makes things more fractious or makes OP seem weak. It's standard practice, makes it clear to OC that he can't pretend the discussion didn't take place, and will be pretty essential if this situation doesn't get resolved.

OP I used to do what sounds like a similar job to you, and you do not sound shit at all, so stop that thinking. The fact you are tackling it directly, face-to-face and honestly is good management.

I agree you should follow up with an email thanking him for a useful conversation and for rectifying the issue about reporting frequency. I’d then say he eluded to matters which were giving him concerns but didn’t give detail. Youd appreciate his insight, so please could he put these IN WRITING to you so you can understand them. He’ll either back down as he’ll be too scared to put his money where his mouth is on minor gripes, or you’ll get genuine feedback. You have to be ready to take this though, which might annoy you even more, but you’ll have something concrete to respond to.

I worked in several roles like yours. We often had issues like this where the project manager offered services to their clients that the back office teams could no longer provide. The project manager wanted to look good for their clients and take the pressure off themselves by kissing the clients arses daily. We also had to scale back services and 'hand-holding' to the clients that were previously offered because of costs.

Your colleague is struggling with the lack of direct control he has over the 'product' that he delivers to the client. (He's also a sexist pig and lacks self awareness.)
It sounds like you did a great job with the meeting. You will have uncomfortable feelings - but don't take those feelings to 'mean' anything. What you did was hard, and you had to dig deep but you did it. Digging deep is always uncomfortable, but you will learn from it.
You stated your case. You were polite and respectful. Now walk away and let the dust settle. Email a synopsis if you think that's appropriate.
You also have to keep the communication channels open with Mr Sexist Pig, even if he's a shit. A good trick is to use this formula for communications:

1. Identify what's important to that person and reassure them you know that. eg. "I know that delivering a superior product is important to you" or "I know you strive for perfection and I respect that".

Then state what's important to you just like the way you did. Just clearly state your position and just leave it with the person. Don't overspeak or overexplain. If you feel defensive and find yourself defending yourself, stop talking immediately. Just repeat your few 'position-stating' statements again. If the other person starts to derail, distract or make jibes, ignore it, and go back to your central statements again. Prepare your 'exit' how you will end the meeting, what exactly you will say, as you might be flustered. 'I better get back now as I have a few calls to make'.

One thing I must add OP is that in my experience people like this always do it becuase they are failing in their own roles and are projecting it on to you so their managers don’t notice their failings or they want to make you feel insecure too.

Simply put, he’s not good at his job. He will be found out. Checking your work for grammatical errors and writing massively long emails using overly elaborate vocabulary to show how knowledgeable they are are classic signs.

Three times I’ve experienced this and it wasn’t until the second time I recognised what was going on. The first was a woman senior to me who felt threatened the moment I was hired and spent 90% of her time rewriting my emails saying exactly the same thing I did but just a lot longer. I let her seriously dent my confidence but unbeknownst to me, management were on to her and were playing the long game to manage her out, she eventually left.

The second and third were both peers who spent time either talking up how good they were compared to others or claiming they knew more than me. Both ended up on PIPs and left.

Just be confident in yourself, be assertive. Do not let this fucker make you doubt yourself. They gave you the job becuase you can do it. Don’t get sucked into playing games with this guy because you’ll take your eye off the ball job wise and will then give him ammunition. As Michelle Obama said ‘when they aim low, you aim high. Brush him aside and focus on what you’re paid to do. It will see you through.

TheWifeofRequirement you do not sound like your crap at your job quite the opposite actually.

It sounds like your dealing with alot of crap though from a manchild who is jealous of your job title but that is his problem and his problem alone!

Another saying you've handled this really well so far op.

YES to a short, sweet email stating the agreement you came to during the meeting, ccing his manager and asking to be copied into that email to the client. In it I personally would ask him to explain his concerns, but you may not wish to give him any oxygen, which is fair enough. You do need to take control of the narrative though - it's necessary with weasels like this, you kill it with absolute clarity and sunlight.

If he does anything like this again, you can forward above email to his manager, reiterating the behaviour hasn't changed - or to HR to raise an informal grievance.

He doesn't want to do the job well, he just wants to wave his willy around. If op was a man I doubt he would be behaving this way.

Re the perceived 'lack of support' from your manager - the way I see it, your manager had confidence in your ability to deal with the situation. If he had stepped in and dealt with it, that would have seriously undermined you in OD's eyes.

Maybe the meeting with the OD didn't go perfectly, but it sounds like it went well enough from your side of things. You got your point over assertively. He could only retaliate with bluster - if he had specific examples of anything you can be sure he would have used them. So what if you did come out of that meeting thinking you could have done x better or said y - you will use this experience next time you have to have a difficult conversation.

Your manager's confidence in you was justified.

I hate confrontation and could never be a manager, but agree with PP about emailing a follow up of what was discussed so that you have a paper trail, especially regarding the clarification to your client of weekly rather than daily reports.

People like him would probably deny that they had not done was was asked in the first place.

Follow up the meeting with an email confirming what you spoke about and what was agreed moving forward.

Be brief
Be specific
Don’t apologise

@TheWifeofRequirement you have this. You are so not shit: you are thoughtful, committed and clearly an asset to your business and your team.

None of this is nice, all of it is stuff that you sometimes have to deal with along the way in (many but not all) lines of business through the course of your career.

You do not have to enjoy it. In fact, I much prefer working with people who don’t! But you do have to develop the skill set to deal with it.

You did really well with that conversation, even if you don’t feel like it right now.

A general rule: No long emails. No referencing HR. No need to copy managers.

But do send a v short note saying “following our chat today, I am writing to confirm we have agreed that you will contact the client today re xyz. Given the circumstances, im keen to help you avoid any further
issue in communicating our services to this client so please make sure you share a copy of the proposed client email with me ahead of time.
Kind regards
TheWife

If you take him at face value, his 'can see things might start to slide' does accurately reflect your narrative that you have been bought in to scale back his over delivery. If he believes the over delivery is required, it's going to look to him that you are cutting corners and risking failure. Can you come back to him with some re education acknowledging that this is anxiety provoking for him, but this is the current business objective? Risk is not going to be fully avoided, if bad things happen they will be dealt with, but resources will be directed to problems as and when they occur, not at preventing them entirely? And you understand that this may be challenging and frustrating for him, and may theoretically bring down the company etc, but overdelivery was definitely going to bring down the company?

Lot of bitterness from @suttree. Possibly a bloke who lost a promotion to a female colleague and rage-wanks about it a lot.

Not at all, just an alternative perspective. I encountered this behaviour from both male and female managers. And I don't feel like I've lost out on anything I'm in my dream job in a profession that still calls for knowledge and experience of the role from management staff.

I work in an approval authority (AA): company A sends in results of tests they've done for company B, who wants to get their product approved (we AA then check these and issue the approval). Each company B generally has a choice of companies A to do this work.

One company A in particular was in the habit of sending in rush jobs: formalities not completed on the paperwork, testing apparently not done 100%. Particularly when I then pulled them up on it, I'd get, "But company B really needs this approval quick, they have to ship soon!" Basically this company A had got the gig by promising a fast turnaround--and not just on the bit they were responsible for, but the timescale within AA.

I put it to the rep from company B when he pulled this shit too often: "AA is not DHL. We don't keep your promises."

It's a line that might be relevant to the OP.

Oh OP, seriously I think you're awesome. Well done for meeting with him and tackling the situation. This isn't down to you at all - he sounds a patronising shit who is so full of his own self worth that he fails to see how your department/channel can possibly run as effectively now he's not involved.

And as for management skills, I run my own business and have a team of people that I manage. I absolutely LOATHE confrontation and that's exactly what this is - it's not a gentle steer or finding a way to encourage or motivate someone to do a better job. This is having to confront someone who has clearly decided to overstep the mark and challenge you every step of the way, so don't feel bad about struggling with this. We're not all the same and hating confrontation and wanting support is no bad thing.

He said he thinks I’m being ‘massively unfair’ to him and I’m ‘making it difficult’ for him to step away because although he insists he has confidence in me and the team, he’s ‘noticed things’ that make him feel like things ‘might’ start to slide

You said he perhaps regretted not applying for your job, and now it seems he's identified another way he might get it

This isn't going to get better, so use some of the excellent suggestions on here to shut it down NOW - and make sure you document everything

For all of those who think op should stamp down on her colleague have they considered that if he's well respected he could start a mutiny?

His over delivery was costing an absolute fortune and client relationships. He was so relentless that we had a couple of key clients say they appreciate his attention to detail, but they weren’t reading the commentary he was sending constantly so could he stop and focus on the job he was supposed to be doing for them

When I joined, we had an 80 hour per week deficit, so we were over servicing clients for 80 hours of work a week that they weren’t paying for which is like paying for 2 mid level practitioners and not having the income to cover them basically.

As a result, the team had basically imploded and had a massive turnover of junior staff, the business channel wasn’t profitable And ultimately a bit of a mess.

I brought in processes that sped up the way they were doing things and introduced some bounderies between facilitators and the delivery teams. Every other facilitator has accepted it and it’s working well, but this guy can’t let go and just wont step off my teams necks. He’s got a massive chip on his shoulder about the delivery team and I think genuinely believed the team would fall apart without him. I can not afford for the churn to come back because I’ve worked too hard getting the team trained and happy with the new processes, so my main fear is him driving them out of role with his pedantic bollocks.

I’m limiting his exposure to my team as much as possible, but it’s becoming time for them to start interacting with him directly and I’m worried if he pulls the same shit with them that he has with me, they’ll up and leave. I would.

I’ve emailed him:

‘Hi OD,

Following on from our conversation earlier, thank you for agreeing to send clarification to the client regarding the reporting requirements, please keep me CC’d so I can pick up on the outcome.

With regards to our ways of working, I believe our conversation was constructive and we’re in a good place to move on.

To reiterate:

It is the responsibility of the delivery team to maintain and optimise their activity in line with client priority. They are ultimately responsible for the delivery against target and therefore have full autonomy over decisions which influence this.

It is not the responsibility of the facilitator to police this output or decide on deliverables autonomously, but to facilitate distance between client and delivery, provide strategic input and manage client expectations in line with the directives given by the delivery team.

I hope this is clear and I’m confident this clarification will allow us to work more effectively going forward.

Thanks,

Wife

I feel a bit sick

If you do want to follow this up with an email, I would do it once he has sent the email to the client or because he has failed to send it. That way you are giving feedback on his performance rather than getting embroiled.

I actually think that you did very well especially for someone so nervous about confrontation. He tried to hook you into a pissing contest, you refused and ended the conversation. Thanking him for his time was unnecessary but he may have interpreted it as sarcasm so don’t go overthinking this.

If he sends the email and you want to follow it up, you can tell him you are glad to see he has rectified his mistake. That you trust he will take no further decisions on responsibilities within your remit and should he need further information pertinent to his role, you will advise him.

Obviously if he doesn’t send it, you can tell him he has until tomorrow 10 am to rectify his mistake otherwise you will be stepping in and sorting it out.

You’re doing well!

Personally I think he will see the email as stroking his ego. Of course he’s a dick and of course you know what you’re doing but in this email you’re treating him as a peer. Or even a client. I’m not sure he deserves it. He’s a minion. Albeit a minion, who has been promoted above his level of competence.

What is the environment you’re working in, collaborative or cut throat? It it’s collaborative, you can use this as evidence that you tried your best to get on with this disk.