What would you do ? Colleague giving unfair feedback to me vs colleague

[bottleofwat]

A big part of my job is taking customer calls.

We have a trainer who watches our calls and gives feedback.

Her feedback on my calls is always really harsh. Whereas for her feedback on my colleague's calls are very positive.

I thought I was being sensitive but I've now actually spent time to watch my colleague's call and read all the feedback and have watched my own calls and read my entire feedback back too.

She criticises me for not doing enough of certain things. When I watch my colleagues calls back, he completely skips the part I spent a good 5 minutes on ( which she says wasn't enough ).

I'm really disheartened because I have really taken the feedback on board and I'm really trying but she keeps giving me bad feedback and praising my colleague and he's literally not even doing the things that I apparently don't do enough of.

I'm starting to take it personally now that I've really analysed it all and I don't like it.

I don't want to bring it to my manager in case they'll think I'm a problem.

My colleague and I are quite new at the company ( same tenure ).

What else can I do here ? Just ignore ? It's just not fair.

Are you a union member? If not, join one, and ask your rep for advice.

I assume that you're permitted to listen to your colleague's recordings? You couldn't be criticised for that? As long as that's the case, I would approach your trainer like this:

"I'm trying to address the points you've brought up in my feedback, and since Brad always gets such good feedback, I thought I would try to learn from him. I'm confused about X and Y, which I've been pulled up for not doing - I also couldn't see any obvious examples of these in Brad's calls. Can you help me understand what he's doing to fulfill X and Y? I feel like I obviously don't understand these requirements well, and there may be techniques I don't recognise that would help me fulfil them. Thanks so much for your time."

Do this on email, not in person, so that the trainer (if they are being unreasonably biased against you) can't claim that you've been unwilling to take feedback, or complaining about Brad, or challenging their authority, or whatever. Even if they reply in person, your original request shows that you're accepting their judgement about Brad being better than you, and asking for help to reach Brad's standard (even if, in reality, you don't feel that way at all!)

You involve your manager or ignore it.

There’s no magic solution where it all works out without you doing something about it.

No one likes confrontation but learning how to deal with difficult situations is an extremely important skill.

Yes I can watch everyone's calls and everyone watches mine. We are encouraged to do so indeed.

There's also other stuff where Brad does it exactly the way I do it and she criticises me for doing it that way. It's really strange.

I agree with @MaterCogitaVera - go to either the person giving feedback or your manager, but don't say "it's not fair". Say that you've been trying to improve based on the feedback and you would like to understand more about what you can do differently.

Why do you think she's doing this ? She just doesn't like me / doesn't like my style ?

I'd certainly bring it up with her in case there is something you are missing. Be interesting to get how she explains the disparity.

I'd put it in writing to show you are concerned at why you're being singled out. And alongside that if your manager doesn't back you, look for a new job.

I'm a bit worried to make a big deal out of it, on one hand. Maybe I'll await another couple of sessions and if it continues, I'll make a record of it in writing and ask for more detailed feedback, in order to improve.