Started a new job last month (internal move) and managing a team of 3 people. I thought all was fine. One of them was a bit whingey and said she'd not been given development opportunities in the past, I said I'd develop her but put together a proper plan once I'd been in post a little while and done her PDR which would be in the new year.
She asked if she could note take at a senior meeting, I said fine. She then started to get overly involved with making suggestions to me for how I should run this meeting, what I should do etc and when I tried to bat it back a bit (such as saying let's see first what so and so says at the meeting) she came back a bit more forcefully.
Just before the meeting I suddenly thought she may start trying to input in the meeting itself which would have been inappropriate and so I rang her to say 'you understand your role at the meeting is just to note take don't you'
Perhaps in hindsight I could have said it more gently but to be frank, all hell broke lose. She accused me of being rude and not helping her. I rang my manager to put it on her radar, she then rang my manager and cried down the phone about how horrible I was being.
I tried to call her to smooth the waters, she then attacked me with a tirade of all my faults as a manager and how she'd made me want to leave the company etc. And I've only been managing her four weeks!
I tried to move on but that evening I just got more and more upset at home with how she'd spoken to me and criticised me, felt totally undermined as a manager and so spoke to my manager who got us on a 3 way call without warning or consent. She continued to berate me on the call despite my manager trying to play mediator, eventually saying she was refusing to work with me any longer as she'd lost confidence in me.
I had to leave for another meeting and my manager has basically told her she has to work for me or look for another job but wow wtf has happened here? I really do wonder about her mental health as she said this all started when we had a meeting at head office and went out as a group later (this was before I'd even joined that team). Some of us got separated after the bar and ended up at a different restaurant - apparantly I was ignoring her calls and laughing at her the next day? I didn't even know she'd called me! I wasn't even managing her then!
I feel like I'm in the twilight zone with the employee from hell - HELP!!!