Reeeeally bad annual review... please hold my hand

[maggiethemagpie]

I had my annual review on Wednesday and it did not go well. Although I got an 'achieved' rating for the actual work, there was some negative feedback from some senior internal clients which was really upsetting.

I work in an internal consultancy role and have been there for 2 years, everything has always been fine before and I have had nothing but praise in the past.

I haven't changed the way I work AFAIK but suddenly I am being told that I'm bossy, pushy opinionated and forceful. Really personal comments without examples to back them up. I am a strong, confident and decisive person and this has always been a strength in the past but now it seems like it is ruffling feathers big time.

Why are they telling me this now, surely if I'd been like this from the start they would have told me earlier?

My boss has been ok about it, quite supportive, but says I need to sort it out. I need to meet with the senior clients to discuss what their expectations of me are going forward.

At my last review 6 months ago I was the golden girl with great feedback coming from all angles so I'm not sure quite how this has happened....it's really upset me but I've tried to be ultra professional and say I'll take it all on board.

Any advice emotional or practical?

Oh yes you won't be thorough enoug.
Tbh I started this job staying within my remit and not having confidence in my own knowledge. I thibk knowing when to push and when to insist is a good skill to have. Presumably she paid for your expertise?

if they are in financial trouble then they may be setting you up for redundancy. This has happened to me before, so beware

They want your expertise until you disagree with them, that's the problem!

I hope that's a joke about being a yes-woman, because it's a bit of an over-reaction if it's not.

So you advised her to remove the conversational I-said-she-said parts. She didn't want to do that, and continued to add more in. She'd made a decision (rightly or wrongly) at that point and if you continued to press your point then yes, she's going to take that as not hearing her side of things.

I would think it is likely that it's the way you put things across that is grating on others. Not a matter of politics, more a matter of rewording your advice

oh I hate this shit. Hired to do a specific job then not allowed to do it because some delicate flower cannot cope with constructive criticism. You are wasted in there. I would do what I needed to to make it work for another six months and be on sharp lookout for another job.

"If I'm going to be too clever for my own good I need to be a little bit cleverer so I learn how to hide it IYSWIM."
Yes. it is a huge part of work, if you are a woman. not effortless, but important.

"Do you think it's possible to ruffle someone's feathers and suddenly they start seeing everything you've done in a negative light?"

yes.

I think that them being women is irrelevant btw to Stealth's very good observation that this is partly about you being a woman. Women are not necessarily impervious to received ideas about how nice women behave.

this sounds like very emotional feedback. It is not to do with the content of your work, it is to do with how you made someone feel. The fact that you are being held responsible for someone else's feelings is a position that is very much more likely for a woman to find herself in than a man.

"They want your expertise until you disagree with them, that's the problem!"

Yes, this is exactly your problem.

If you solve it, it will be by learning how to advise them in a way that makes them feel that they have ownership of your recommendations - you will do it socratically so that they think they are partly (or mostly) their own ideas. the trouble is that this then makes you vulnerable to the "what does she actually do? Is she so great when we could have done this without her stuff? I mean, we like her, but times are lean, and...."

We're fucked. all of us.

I have one of these, or, since someone at work got massively promoted into a new layer of management above me that didn't exist before, two of these. Everything I do that goes well has to be attributed to someone else or I can't get it to happen at all. There are a lot of good things about this job but I am thinking of leaving just because managing up in the way that I'm forced to is so exhausting and time consuming.

Are you in one of those tricky jobs where you have to give advice but ultimately it's someone else's job to decide how and what to do? My job is like that and it's so wearing.

I say "have you done ABC?" and they saw yes. Oh good I think, before I remember that part of my job is to check and test. So then I say "can I see the contract/letter" and so it is begrudgingly handed over often after much chasing. Or worse, it turns out there isn't an ABC at all... or it's been done wrong

When it's wrong I say "thank you, that is an interesting/usual/different way of doing it. What made you decide to do XYZ?" and then they say something fucking stupid while I wonder how the hell best to fix it while staying on the right side of the law, minisise cost, loss and waste for the company and stay on the right side of the idiot who has done the fucking stupid thing.

It is exhausting. Not they ever know my real thought process of course because I expend so much energy hiding it and pretending I'm nice. I do wonder how much quicker and easier life would be if we could just be honest and get on with doing a proper and thorough job without pandering to those who struggle with assertive women?

And no. Men don't have to deal with this shit because men don't get called bossy or a bitch or pushy.

If you were a man you would have been praised for being assertive, confident and showing good leadership skills.

Colleagues, inc female colleagues, can be threatened by a confident, assertive woman. And certainly if you've ruffled some feathers by being assertive then they will use this against you by turning your positive attributes into negative sounding qualities.

Years ago I went on a lengthy mentorship course and the one good thing I learnt in six months was the positive criticism sandwich or some such jargon shit.

Basically if you're trying to point something a bit negative out to someone you sandwich that negative thing in between two positive things.

IE: I really like the way you've got straight to the point and addressed the issue, but I think it would flow a bit better if in this section we removed some detail. You've summed the issues up really well and suggested a good solution.

Maybe I'm teaching you to suck eggs but I use this a lot now at work.

I've had this too in the past, people asking for help/advice in my area, which it is part of my job to provide, but then not taking on board what I say.

They don't actually want 'expertise' - what they want is endorsement from an 'expert.'

Simon I use thay with my own staff but never thought to apply it to this sort of scenario - brilliant idea, thanks

Yes, I am in an advisory role..... I advise a team of junior clients (who deal with the day to day issues they need advice with) and they are managed by the senior clients who provided the feedback.

I think the issue is that because I'm confident and assertive there has been a tendency for the junior clients to become too dependent on me for my advice which the senior clients don't like. So the junior clients love it as I'm giving them good advice and making their lives easier, and they've had great feedback for me... but the senior ones think I am 'taking over' and this coupled with the letter issue has resulted in them saying I'm bossy/domineering.

I think they are afraid I'm doing the junior manager's thinking for them, and they want to discourage the dependency but rather than see that as a management capability issue they see it as a me-too-bossy issue!

One of them even said she though they (her team) didn't feel able to challenge me. I don't see that they don't feel 'able' to challenge me so much as they don't see a need to. Usually the junior managers will come to me to ask what to do, or assurance they're doing the right thing so there's very rarely any opposition from them, quite the opposite.

Could the senior ones be afraid that I am having too much influence on their team? That would totally explain why they are now saying I'm bossy and forceful after two years of saying I'm good.

I think you probably acting outside an internal consultancy role and the managers feel that. I act in an internal consultancy role in my company, but ultimately the business has to decide where and when they take my advice. I give them the tools to do their job within regulation, then they should go ahead and do it.

It sounds here that the junior clients are asking and possibly 'using ' you too much. When they show their work upwards, they probably tell the senior clients that they were 'told' to do it like that, which again would come back to you.

I think the senior clients need to redefine your role and what their expectations are of you.

I think that's exactly it Beachys, I have ended up taking on too much responsibility for what happens and there is a dependency there which senior managers don't like.

I know one of them was told by the senior manager not to always do as I said if it was not right, and replied 'but it is always right'. So they think they cannot think for themselves any more.

I can imagine if they are telling their manager that they did something on my advice and the senior manager doesn't agree they will very easily say Maggie 'told' me to do it.

Its a told in the sense that they came to me for an answer and I gave it, but that answer was never opposed so it's not a 'forced tell' IYSWIM. I never force my advice, but the senior managers seem now to think that I am! I think I need to start being more consultative in how I advise.

Thing is if I let go of the reigns too much that will come back from the junior managers at my next review that I'm not being supportive enough!

Beachys, in your job if it goes tits up does it come back on you, even though its not supposed to?

I'm sure you're dealing with this in the right way. It sounds as though you have identified a lot of factors about the organisation and how you fit into it and the need to be playing internal politics better. But with no specific examples it's going to be impossible properly to understand what they want of you. Of course, they may not know themselves and it is probably a case of you keeping your head down for a bit while life moves on

Then they can convince themselves that this vague half assed review "resolved the issue", pat themselves on the back and think of something else.

I think GeorgeTheThird is spot on.

I also think you need to find out what your manager's take is on this. Is your manager handling this as a diplomacy issue - some senior people are pissed off and have to be managed; or as an actual "your work" issue - you need to improve aspects of how you do your your job and improve your skills and performance? If you are subtle you can find this out and if it's a matter of a. or b. and this will affect how you proceed. It effectively means you get the answer to how many people are pissed off (it could be literally one, or two) and how wide ranging your repair approach has to be.

The difficulty is you have to be very subtle about all this because you can't be seen to be defensive as you explore this feedback - as you know. So a question that amounts to "what actually is the problem?" can't be phrased in a way that sounds like you're going into battle - "there is no problem!" (even if there isn't). It's obvious that you can do all this of course.

This question:

"Beachys, in your job if it goes tits up does it come back on you, even though its not supposed to?"

Makes me think that this is what happens in your job?

I think it might be time to think very boringly about some arse-covering. If you want to take a step back as you give advice more delicately and more obviously "optionally", think about how you can record ways of putting on record what you proposed and your primary recommendations. Ballache. And again, has to be done delicately and non-confrontationally.

Finally - I am sure you have seen this:

www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/compost/wp/2015/10/13/jennifer-lawrence-has-a-point-famous-quotes-the-way-a-woman-would-have-to-say-them-during-a-meeting/

It does come back on me, I suppose. My boss is also the boss of the business, so between us we highlight a problem area, which is not being done correctly. I then devise a solution, think training, templates etc and show the business how to do the process correctly. I then check and report on results.

However, and this is the big however, if the business don't like my solution, then I have to work with them to come up with something that does work. This is the bit that takes time and therefore the results often aren't very quick. This is the bit I get blamed for!

And also, a bit like you, the business often waits for me to 'tell them how to do it' then argue that they don't want to.....

Thanks. I think there is a big mismatch between my/my department's understanding of my role, and my clients' understanding. So, on my job description it says 'ensure legal and procedural compliance' but then when the business don't like my legally compliant recommendation they say I am being black and white and too prescriptive with the law and not looking at other options. But compliance IS black and white! You're either compliant or you're not. So my job description is out of line with what they want. (if you hadn't already guessed I work in HR)

If they want to move to a less compliant, more choice/risk type environment then that is something that needs to be discussed at a more senior level than me. I am going to ask the senior people what they want from me, if it's massively different to what I think my role is then speak to my manager or manager's manager as I'm confused as hell as to what I am supposed to be doing now and have I been doing my job wrong all these years.

HowBad - it's being treated as a work style approach, as in the actual work I do is good but how I am doing it needs to change. To a softer, more consultative approach. Which is fine, but if I am still expected to 'ensure compliance' then I'm going to give a firmer steer on what to do /not do than if this is less of a priority and of course this will strongly weight certain options over others.

I think my own department want the compliance but the business does not!

Yup I'd guessed. Me too :)

Actually a large part of my job is giving the advice and then letting them go to make a pig's ear of it

Sounds like you may have started "doing" rather than advising? Perhaps dial it back a notch and put in some smooze time with the big boys and girls.

One thing I do to cover my arse is send a memo detailing everything we agreed and discussed after any meeting. That way I have everything in writing should it come back to bit me on the arse.

I had the bollocks in my last job. In the same WEEK I had the feedback

'you have excellent knowledge but just need to be more assertive in delivering that' and from a different manager about the same project ' you need to be quiet and listen more, stop putting your viewpoint in and learn from the people around you'

The difference was one manager was a sexist twat and one didn't give a fuck about anything but getting a good job done.

Thank fuck my job is now more technical than managerial, and most people just see my reports without knowing what kind of a person wrote them.