Direct report sent me a voice note feeling sorry for themselves

[Mistymeg]

AIBU. I’m not your mum. I’m your VP. She isn’t genZ, she is in her late 30s and is Director level.

We work at an American tech company, it’s beyond start up; hundreds of millions $$ turn over a year but still has the start up feel.

I’ve know this direct report from our last company but didn’t manage her. She started four months ago (I’m quite new too) and she has been off sick a good few times. Has two young kids and it’s been for a day or so but last week was most of the week.

On Monday she said she needed to go offline and was sick. I told her sorry to hear and let me know i could do anything. The next day she was back online, sounded awful in calls but she’s an adult (and director) I let her make her own decisions.

All of Wednesday she is offline, meetings cancelled, didn’t hear a word until Thursday when she sends me a long voice note on WhatsApp along the lines of….. sorry she’s been MIA, hasn’t known what to say, she stated that leaders are reliable and seemingly she has taken time off again for illness again. Told me it was flu and secondary bacterial sinus infection and needed antibiotics, that she just spoke to HR who encouraged her to get a GP note and keep me informed. Then spoke about her iron deficiency and that was the root cause of the immune system challenges. Even went into her iron levels and why it’s so bad with two young kids in flu season and how she feels so bad about missing work.

I get it totally but a single message would have been fine. I don’t need a long emotional WhatsApp voice note and GP note. I just need you to get better and let me know if I can take work while you’re gone. She said being a leader is showing the human side and that she’s never been so unwell in her life to catch flu then had the most excruciating head pressure due to the bacterial sinitius that followed, she stated we too work for a tech start up who has a value to ‘be human’ and not a big corporate bank. AIBU?

Why do you talk about people like they are machines?

Woman, colleague, employee, a woman in my team? Something humanesque.

I think the lack of empathy that is shown in your reaction - & the failure to understand what may be driving her obviously over-anxious behaviour - itself needs to be reflected on as a workplace issue. Your job is to get the best out of a team. This requires realism yes, but an overly harsh ‘robotic’ attitude to staff will absolutely not achieve the best result- quite the contrary. I think it’s very possible that the way she has dealt with this illness may reflect the team atmosphere - and that this in turn may reflect your own approach to your role.

If I were you I would respond in one of the quick and friendly ways described above, and also take this as an opportunity to reflect on my own management style and whether this may have fed into it. There is no shame in this - all managers of teams should be keen to take opportunities offered to them to reflect on whether they can better motivate & sustain their teams. This is one of those opportunities. Be grateful for it!

100% this.

OP I'm at a senior level of seniority to you with a number of senior direct reports. I've always found I get more out of them if I treat the relationship as a relationship with another human, rather than the transactional approach you appear to prefer.

You talk in your post about what you need - but you don't seem to make space for what she might need. You might also benefit from reflecting on why she felt the need to justify her self to you to the degree she did, and whether there is something in the culture you are creating that has contributed to this.

She clearly sees you as a friend or at least someone she can trust and relate to. She was clearly wrong…

Did you have an empathy bypass?

She clearly feels bad about having taken time off and her voice notes were not her 'feeling sorry for herself' but simply explaining that she's taken steps to try and find out what the root cause is and what she needs to do to fix it.

You sound ghastly.

This

Sounds like something she should be saving for a face to face catch-up.

If she's sick a lot, I would be extending her probation period. How long is it?

Poor woman, she obviously feels as if she has to properly justify why she is off sick, maybe because you come across as uncaring and harsh.

I agree with you.
All the babbling on about humanity etc is unnecessary. We all feel guilty for being absent, but sometimes it's necessary.
At best, save it for the return to work meeting.

You are being paid to manage people so it is important to develop those skills. Referring to someone as a 'direct report' is a bit dehumanizing and makes you sound a bit self important.

I agree. She is very ill, under pressure, and needed to offload. It might be a bit much for you but it hasn't actually caused you harm and may have helped her.

Things will improve. Nobody knows what is around the corner but we muddle through as best we can.

Good luck.

Wow. She's a human being and she's struggling. Have a bit of compassion. As a manager you should be able to be a listening ear for a rant sometimes when people are having a hard time.

The definition of empathy doesn't vary by context. At work or elsewhere it's the ability to share someone's feelings/experiences by imagining what it's like to be in their situation. Understanding colleagues' feelings and motivations isn't a touchy-feely indulgence, it's fundamental to getting the best performance from your team.

I agree your second paragraph is a good message in most cases. If, however, the employee feels from her experience that her manager may judge her absence, the lengthy self justification makes sense. No-one is arguing that hours of work time should be devoted to this, but the OP should perhaps wonder why such an explanation felt necessary.

Finally, if we are judging communication styles, there is no indication the OP has told her colleague how she prefers to communicate. If she doesn't like voice notes, she only has to say.

Why are you so wound up by this?!

Personally, I wouldn't have waffled on like that - TMI. Just because you're a VP though doesn't mean you're anything special when it comes to line management so as a line manager presumably she sees you as someone she can offload to.

She sounds like she's struggling so a conversation about how you can support her in both short term and long term is needed. You know, like regular line managers would do.

Why would she be sending her mum voicenotes explaining or contextualising her absence from work? You sound quite cold and mean.

And what difference does it make that the company who employs you has a multimillion pound turnover.

She's off sick. You just want her to stop being off sick without the waffle. That's fine but she's clearly having a hard time so being gentle and kind won't do you any harm reputation wise.

She is obviously deeply uncomfortable with how much time she is taking off. She’s sick so she is probably all over the place. Senior or not, just cut her some slack.

It’s crazy in corporate now with mixed messaging, “be yourself”, “mental health / talk to your manager” messages, ERGs popping up encouraging this etc. She does it. And you do not like it.

please just cut her some slack.

My first response is you do need to show some more humanity, and that might be why she mentioned it!

My second response... how long was this voice note? if she talked for 20 minutes, I can see why you're pissed off.

Go on, tell us...

Well I hate voice notes.

But I am currently on a WFH thread saying workplace does offer value because otherwise people can no longer have normal interaction and well here’s a perfect example 😂

It depends, is she normally like this? I manage someone who used to drag me into long meetings about her MH, various relationship issues, illnesses, life concerns etc. so id have expected a long voice message speech like that when a simple "sorry ive been really ill" would have sufficed ☹️

I say used to as i did have to get quite harsh recently and make it clear im not a GP or a therapist and to just let me know what I can do to help IN WORK. So far so good!!

Yeah YABU. She sounds like she's anxiously over-justifying her absence and as her manager, I'd reflect on why my direct reports feel the need to do this.

It might just be that she's new in role and has worked in toxic cultures in the past.

Or it might be that you/your business has created a toxic culture where unwell people feel like they need to give you the ins and outs of their blood test results to prove they really are too sick to work.

You're her manager. It's unfortunately your job to support her - I say unfortunately because you seem fairly disinterested in what is sitting beneath her behaviour. She could be wobbling and need your support. She could be a total chancer and spinning you a right line. Either way, you don't seem to give a shit beyond how it impacts you personally in terms of projects that might need picking up. Could be because you are wildly over-stretched and stressed and don't have the capacity for other people's shit right now. I'm a manager/business owner with 15 or so direct reports and there are many, many days when I do not have TIME for the pleasantries and nitty gritty of people management. So I get it.

But. It's kinda your job to respond with empathy, at least on the outside, and also to understand whether there's anything in this that means you she's unsuited to the job, or that your business is failing people in terms of causing anxiety around entirely necessary absence.

Absolutely not. She sounds really unprofessional.

Em yeah. You're being very unreasonable.
I have 'direct reports' and if I got a VN like that from any of them, I'd just presume they were feeling absolutely rubbish and on top, guilty about being sick and trying to offer a 'I am genuinely not taking the piss' explanation.

Don't believe I would have thought much of it, other than to feel for her.

You get more from your team when you treat them with decency and kindness IME. We're all human.