Dealing with needy colleague

[Thepeopleversuswork]

Wonder if anyone has any advice: I'm at my wits' end with this. Sorry, long.

I have a colleague who is constant need of support, advice, feedback, hand-holding and its driving me absolutely nuts.

She's not junior, mid-level role, mid 30s and has been with the firm well over a year so it's more than teething problems. She calls or Teams messages me five or six times a day to discuss REALLY trivial things about the job which she should either know herself by now or know which channels to go through. Or unilaterally puts meetings in my diary with her without checking first.

I'm senior but not leadership, three levels above her and she doesn't report into me I think she just finds me sympathetic. But she has a lot of support already in place and it's really not my job to deal with it.She's got two senior mentors (from the top management) and a line manager already, (none of them me).

She's technically good at her job but struggles with "soft" skills: boundaries/inappropriate behaviour/wasting time and generally bad at reading a room. Has had various flare-ups with people over her manner. Very bad at taking any criticism or feedback, which tends to trigger tears, accusations of victimisation and requests for more support from management/training etc. Numerous people have tried to coach her through various aspects of this (not being too much of a drain on management time, asking questions appropriately, not hogging conversation etc) and she takes all of it incredibly personally and it triggers tears etc. All of this has been raised at performance reviews. She's been told to stop bothering people (including me) with tiresome questions and demands for more mentoring etc.

I was giving her the benefit of the doubt -- and I'm generally a big fan of giving people time and of mentoring and support and helping them adapt culturally. But it's got to the point where dealing with her requests is a massive drain on both my time and emotional resources.

I've started screening calls and I will say "can you just email me and I'll come back when I have time?" etc, but she still hasn't got the message - every professional interaction I have with her leads to a request for a "debrief" or "feedback" and a meeting being booked in my diary. It's as if any engagement at all is seen as a green light to ask for more. I'm now at the point where I'm considering asking her not to contact me at all without a specific business need, or asking HR to do this, but I know this is going to trigger another furious meltdown. Should I do this or should I ask my managers/HR to do it?

Came here to say thank you for this reply @ChlorrOfTheMask 😊 I relate to both OP and the employee as I am both.

I wonder if, as part of the performance review process, an assessment on learning styles has been completed? For example I am a very visual learner, show me step by step while allowing me to take notes (eg click this button, then a dialog box appears, then click this), being patient when I ask can you show me again. Or a step by step guide with screenshots. In these situations I absolutely thrive, and at most may ask "can you check that I've done this correctly please?". I openly ask for baby steps.

OP my suggestion is to suggest this to your line manager. The making of the resources (if they don't already exist!) will take time, but it is for the two mentors and the line manager to plan and execute/delegate. If there is a particular task the employee comes to you about repeatedly, you could offer to prepare that guide and then reply with "have you checked your guide? This is covered in (section 4/page 7/etc)"

I also acknowledge how being empathetic can lead OP to sometimes feeling drained. I 'latch' on to other people, as others 'latch' on to me. Going to your manager with this solution hopefully provides both yourself and the employee a way to reset boundaries, but also still respond tactfully to future requests.

Does this article on rejection sensitive dysphoria sound like her?

https://www.webmd.com/add-adhd/rejection-sensitive-dysphoria

You have your own job, objectives, targets to deliver.

Minutely supporting her probably doesn't figure in those essentials.

Her line manager is responsible for her performance management.

Make it clear to your own LM that delivering to your own targets is your number 1 priority and that to this end
you'll hand all this over to her LM with a written statement why this is essential.

Tell her from now on all requests for metoring/coaching/feedback etc must go direct to her LM as you must focus on your own workload and time management.

If you have that feature, lock off your meetings calendar for now - yes that will mean nobody can book a meeting and they will all have to email you to ask when is convenient.

PS I re-read and notice the mentors are senior management. Is there no one at, or closer to, the employee's hierarchical level who can be a mentor?

Just from experience that "blokes in suits" terrify me, which in turn is likely why the employee comes to you. Whenever people from head office come to visit, I literally only speak if I'm invited in to the conversation, or to offer a tea/coffee/etc, otherwise my tongue is likely to get me into trouble!

Speak to her manager and HR and let them deal with it.

It’s a disciplinary issue and it’s simply not your problem.

Just be less helpful to her. Go back every couple of days referring her to other people (don’t answer every query she’s sent you in 2 days, just one or two). You are feeding it by giving her attention so you have to cut off the oxygen supply.

And revive her access to your diary or just send a bcc round Robin email (which will only be sent to her) informing everyone that any meetings put in your diary without checking will be deleted. And then delete them.

Some great suggestions from pp here. I’d not accept any meeting requests from her and answer all calls with “sorry, can’t talk. Crazy deadline. Can you email me and copy x so if I can’t get to it maybe x can”. You need an email trail for HR. If she doesn’t copy x then forward to x copying your colleague. When she realizes that management are seeing all her requests she will likely stop.

If you feel it’s ‘risky’ for you, you need a very frank dialogue with her actual line managers about the situation, and repeatedly.

OP - I soooooo sympathise because I have the exact same problem with a colleague who Teams messages and calls me ALL DAY LONG and if I don't reply immediately she emails/texts me. Everything takes me 10 times longer to do because I'm constantly busy replying to her inane questions

Make a detailed record of her incursions into your time for a defined period, preferably a month. This will help when she complains about you, as she inevitably will.

However, I think you also need to ask yourself why this has gone on for so long. What about her has made this difficult for you to stop?

If you know she's been told about this but is still doing it, not just to you but others as well, why on earth is she not on some form of performance management?!

I think what you've said about learning styles and guides is important <3

Exactly this, she's probably turning to those around her because it's scary to continually annoy managers. She might be frightened she'll be sacked

At my place when someone’s being taught to do something, they’ll be encouraged to take notes, or given a manual if someone’s written one. Is that a far too simplistic answer?

The issue with having a mentor closer to her level is that she's fallen out with almost all of the people at her level.

As for the "blokes in suits" thing: all of the senior leadership team at this company are women. As are all of her mentors.

I don't think she's terrified of anyone. She's extremely forthright and confident in work situations. She just reacts really really badly to being told what to do or criticised.

She is. Her probation was extended twice. She's now technically completed probation because it was felt she'd dealt with these issues but she seems to have slipped into old habits and she is now on a performance review (none of which I have any input into).

She's theoretically eligible for promotion at the end of the year and has told everyone she is going to be promoted and told her line manager she will find another job if not promoted. But SLT are giving serious thought to actually terminating her contract. She seems not to be able to learn from mistakes at all.

No, this doesn't sound like her at all. She's extremely confident in her own abilities (almost too confident) and will happily go around telling people at the firm that she's the best person at a particular element of the job. She's an absolutely relentless name-dropper.

She's the opposite of a people pleaser: she's incredibly insensitive to other people's needs.
The only element of this that resonates at all is the inability to take criticism.

Could you set up a 1-1 with her each week 15/30 min and everytime say you will discuss it then. Any immediate project related issues send on teams/email.

Appreciate it doesn’t fix the core issue but might help - document what is discussed in these 1-1 for her mgr and yours so it’s crystal clear to them she might have some problems/worries?

It's not really the sort of thing you can take notes on.

The problems with her are all intangible "soft" things as opposed to technical competences. They're things you'd expect people at her level to have learned by osmosis.

It's things like:

• Not understanding that management can't have endless meetings to discuss her issues because they are too busy with their own work
• Butting in to senior level conversations which she's not party to
• Delegating junior level work to people who are significantly senior to her and then complaining to SLT when they fail to prioritise it over their own (more important and more remunerative) work. Stuff like sending emails to suppliers etc.
• Complaining very freely to SLT about people junior to her failing to deliver work which it turns out she hadn't properly delegated
• Tact and appropriate behaviour in front of clients: inappropriately rail-roading client meetings with long and tedious sagas about how she used to work with x or y in a previous life and what they would have thought about x or y. Relentless name-dropping, to the point that its embarrassing.

She's not bad at her job as per the job description, just a bad people person, tbh and if these things are every pointed out to her she will never take responsibility for them: she will challenge other people first and then burst into tears.

It's crossed my mind that she may have some mild neurodiversity but its certainly not something that's stopped her progressing in her previous roles. She has held some quite senior roles in other similar businesses. I actually think its primarily arrogance.

I don't think that's forceful enough. It's just batting the problem away for another time.

I get the impression the OP has already done this kind of thing and it hasn't worked, and on these type of people, it won't work.

She certainly sounds exhausting and you definitely need to put boundaries in place. It’s obvious that everyone else is fully aware of her behaviour so you now need to protect yourself and your time.

Presumably she will be managed out at some future point.

I would grey rock her ie be a grey rock and give her nothing

decline any meetings

don’t even bother to tell her why, you don’t need to justify declining meetings by using excuses. It’s none of her business.

like others have said log everything and pass it on to her manager and HR

If it were me I would be honest and say I am not your line manager and I am not being paid to manage you so please go to your own manager. I’d even tell her I’ve had a meeting with your manager and asked them to take it up with you.
you owe her absolutely nothing.

if she is doing it to other staff you have support.

I have this awful colleague who happily bitches about anyone including me to my manager, my manager then raises the ‘issue’ and so the cycle continues. Said colleague then happily will teams me to bitch about other staff and I just ignore her messages or reply telling her if she is unhappy talk to our manager as it’s not my problem.

I had someone like this in one of my teams, spent so much time ringing round people basically getting them to do his job for him. The crux of it was that he couldn't do the job. We put him on a PIP in the end, and he moved to another role he can do better.

We tried giving him a mentor, he literally took up their whole day and they fell behind.

I'd let it continue for a couple of weeks and "time record" the time she's taking up eg monday phone call 2 hours Tuesday meeting 30 mins phone call 1 hour etc. Then take that to your manager.

At the end of the day it's not your problem to sort out, she probably needs a PIP of some sort but that's her manager's shout. They are evidently very happy for you to pick up the slack tho and are most likely jumping for joy that she's taking up your time and not theirs!

I'm not sure trying to diagnose this colleague is the solution for op or the colleague. Its something HR/occupational health could bear in mind but even then the solution can't be that this person takes up vast amounts of people's time.

I'd also be curious why they aren't on a PIP anyway as if they are doing this they can't be delivering their own work.

@jenpil

I get the impression the OP has already done this kind of thing and it hasn't worked, and on these type of people, it won't work.

I have done a lot of passive aggressively signalling to her that I don't have time for her issues: eg she will say "can I catch up with you this afternoon to debrief from this call" and I will say "sorry no time, can you ask your line manager". That isn't registering, so I think I will have to be more explicit and say I don't have time for any of this.

The difficulty for me is that while I'm not her line manager or her mentor, she has a dotted line report to me on a couple of specific accounts which she technically leads and which I'm not very much involved with but am there as an adviser and senior supervisor. It's meant to be a very light touch job for me: basically to check everything is ticking over, but it's taking hours of my time.

Although these are "her" accounts, she wants my advice on every element of the job and is apparently incapable of having any interaction with the client without running past me first. It's absolutely exhausting. I've been asked by my bosses to be a "sounding board" for her but in practice I'm basically running the account.

I think I am going to have to explicitly have to ask to be taken off it as it's taking up so much time I don't have and is preventing her from tackling it herself.