To think my direct report is being over sensitive? How to handle this

[Squarestones]

Ahead of a team chat about this later in week, seeking thoughts on how to handle or support or coach my team member.

We;ve just had a team restructure which involved this person (call him A) being promoted and he now has to directly manage/oversee a long-term contractor who works with us. It involves allocating tasks to the contractor on each of his days, as well as allocating tasks to others in the (very small) team.

The contractor has always been a bit prickly. Prone to passive agressive remarks and grumpiness. He's been working for us for about a decade, has excellent knowledge and skills, but is just hard to manage. ON occassion this does result in challenges with external stakeholders who he also handles roughly, but generally this is rare and we remove him from situations where that can be a risk. He's also entirely remote so that adds an extra dimension of it being hard to judge tone in messages etc.

A believes that the contractor's attitude has been worsening since A took over in new role, and that the remarks are becoming more personal. The contractor will often push back on tasks - he will do the thing he's asked but not before setting out his own view on what should be happening. A thinks he is doing this more now.

Sometimes I think A has a point - I have been on receiving end of this behaviour and I know it's annoying. But I just let it go as contractor is good overall and also I know he's having a rough time personally so I take it all as reflecting that rather than a sleight on me.

So in general terms my approach would be to encourage A to do same - just rise above it unless and until the contractor starts to not do his job well at which point we could consider alternatives but our field is very specialist so would be hard to replace him.

Problem is that my job share colleague who leads the team with me thinks differently - they feel we have a duty of care to A as it's his first 'leadership role' and the contractor is making that unpleasant so we should start to look at replacements.

A has sent me and the other team leader screenshots of messages he was upset by last week. To my mind they are just normal grumpiness from the contractor - nothing personal. I think A is reading too much into these small remarks because he is sensitised to it due to one or two more legitimate issues.

I also think that ending our long-term relationship with a contractor who does agood job overall is an over-reaction to A's hurt feelings.

What do you think? Am I being insensitive? Do I have a duty of care to A? Or should we be coaching him to rise above rather than removing the contractor?

For context both A and the contractor are white men but contractor is much older - so it's not a racism or sexism issue, but there's definitely a chance of age-sensitivity on both their parts.

I started out from decades of working in IT, thinking, it's better to have someone who's a bit less technically able than one who is expert, but you can't work with them.

But unless there's something wrong with Contractor's tone, I don't actually see the issue with querying priorities. I'd want my team to bring these things up, in case I'd overlooked something, and then I could agree, "yes, that way makes sense," or "no, I still want it done this way, so if it causes issues, it's on me."

You can't always choose who you have in a team, especially if you come in to an existing team. But you still have to work with people and deal with challenging personalities, and it's generally easier to assume that ill iintent is not meant, but just imperfect phrasing, at least as a starting point. And maybe A needs to learn that.

Though I don't want anyone to be a single point of failure, so I'm very keen on people doing documentation, so if anyone is knocked over by a bus when they on their way in, we might be slower, but not completely stuffed.

My two penneth...

1. You're dealing with this as though A is the unreasonable one for taking umbridge at the way Contractor treats him, when it's actually Contractor who's unreasonable because he's acting like a knob.

If you want to be a good manager then you'll have to own this situation. You cannot tackle this with the stance of "A isn't happy with the way you treat him as he thinks you're unfair/harsh/whatever, and you need make sure A has no scope to feel that way". That's laying the blame at A's feelings and not C's behaviour. Be firm and set your stall. "The way you act on occasion is unacceptable to this company and we really need you to change how you interact with staff. We understand this can be difficult in XYZ circumstances but the way you've treated A recently can't continue".

1. You've had to pull him up on it before and nothing has changed. Why would it when he's been there since God was a lad and he feels irreplaceable and holds all the cards?

1. You've been trying to decide whether what he's done counts as misconduct. What? Theres DOZENS of steps between "Its all good" and "Misconduct". You're treating it like it's all or nothing, debating whether he's over a definitive line of HR-ness. A good manager will have tools for getting staff to consider and adjust their behaviour or see that they need to stop being a knobhead MUCH earlier than the "misconduct" line.

1. You're obviously not in a great place with your job confidence right now are you? That's ok. Don't beat yourself up about that. Sometimes pilling on the burden of what you need to do to improve yourself just makes things even worse. Improving is hard work, so it's yet MORE stuff you're finding difficult. More stuff you're failing at. I've been there and crashed and burned. As a manager I was utterly miserable and waved the white flag and admitted defeat FAR later than I should have done. Management aint for everyone, and there's no shame in admitting that. Some people are great at 'factory floor' but would be awful holding a clipboard, and others relish their clipboard but would fail spectacularly at the coal face. If this job ain't for you then the sooner you give yourself permission to admit that, the sooner you can decide what role IS the one for you.

Don't forget... Your job title is what gives you authority. How you use that authority is what gets you respect.

Thanks @bringthecactusin I just noticed your post and appreciate you taking the time to offer advice on both counts.