Managing a compulsive ‘yes’ person

[Theweedygarden]

TLDR: A compulsive ‘yes’ female colleague has made one to many errors and now I need to manage her incredibly emotional, and slightly childish, response.

I line manage someone who manages a compulsive ‘yes’ woman (A). Anything anyone asks of A, she will do. The person I line manage has been off for several weeks now, and although I have always been aware of A’s issues it is now becoming ridiculous and impacting on business need and my time. Her inability to say ‘no’ means she is late actioning things for me and several times this week I have had to step in and tell her she is not to do something. She cannot manage other colleagues, including those more senior than her (which whilst uncomfortable is part of her job and she knew this when she applied for the role), and her desire to consistently say yes to them means we are actually failing to deliver priorities. She seems to rely on more senior people delivering tough messages that, when I was doing her role, I delivered with ease and others doing the same role can also deliver.

Her interactions with colleagues often go something along the lines of;

B: ‘Can you book this room for me?’
A: (more senior) ‘yes, of course. I’ll do it now.’
Me: ‘Absolutely not. It is B’s job to do this.’

C: ‘We can’t do this. X won’t be happy.’
A: ‘Of course I understand.’
Me: ‘Unfortunately, C it is not our problem if X is not happy - our job is to deliver these outcomes, if your contact is not happy with that it is your job to manage the fallout.’

D: ‘We can’t say this. It will upset them.’
A: ‘Of course. What would you suggest?’
Me: ‘The steer from above has been we are to say this, it does not matter if it upsets them. We gave advice on this, our advice was taken under consideration but the steer from above is that we must proceed. You will need to deliver this message directly to V.’

She seems to worry more about upsetting her contacts across the office than she does about doing a good job. It feels almost as though in her mind if they are upset, she can’t be doing a good job. But in reality it’s the opposite - her contacts across the office should be upset because it is their job to push for unreasonable things to keep their external contacts happy, and it is our job to manage them and prioritise ruthlessly.

Anyway, earlier this week I ended up giving her a first written warning and stated that if she did not improve that I would have to put her on a performance management plan. She’s clearly devastated. She’s been crying at work all week, bursting into tears on video calls etc. But she’s also barely spoken to me (leaving messages read but unanswered on our internal system), and yesterday she failed to action something on time and to a decent standard (I received it after COP and it was very poorly drafted, and I had to send it on to my seniors for 09;00 this morning).

I’ve put an hour in our diaries today and told her I want to talk. I need to address the crying, the poor work yesterday and ignoring me when I asked for things to be done.

I know what to say, but I’m a bit torn on how best to say it. I don’t think being gentle will be help, in part because I am not sure I can as she has made some significant errors in judgement recently that have impacted the business and also because she’s an adult and I don’t think I should coddle her because she’s upset. But I know that if I am too harsh she will probably just cry again and that won’t be conducive to delivering the messages she needs to hears. There’s a happy middle, I’m sure, I’m just not sure what it is.

Has anyone ever had a similar conversation with a colleague? And, if so, how did you handle it?

The language here is really awful - ruthless, should be unhappy. While I understand she needs to be comfortable with managing priorities and delivering that are you absolutely sure she isn’t trying to manage in a less confrontational way? the first example fair enough.

Plenty of business research suggests happy staff=better outcomes

So people ask her to do things which aren't her job and she's the one in trouble? Wow. Glad I don't work for you.

The OP isn't talking about a junior admin person, she is talking about someone at a senior director level.

She's been offered employee support. She's been offered a mentor. She's refused both and taken offence.

I read that as her line manager having tried to help her in a positive way, and it hasn't worked. So asking with all the other things that have been tried I'm really not getting why people are insisting that she's not been being helped, and that OP is being over critical.

It's just extremely unfortunate all round that OP had had to take this over due to the absence of the line manager. It's not ideal for either party.

She sounds infuriating to work with. Does she manage a team? If so, this behaviour will be having an effect on them and their performance too, so you should draw this out in your discussions with her.

She is also just in the wrong job for her - there is no shame in this per se, and I've found it helpful to be honest about this with underperformers, while making clear there are other jobs their undoubted talents would be much better suited to.

What was the first written warning for? If she isn’t on a PIP, that suggests a misconduct disciplinary?

I think sometimes you have to accept that you're not cut out for something, rather than trying to force the entire way the job works to change around you because you're non-confrontational, a people pleaser, etc. The working environment OP describes sounds awful to me and I wouldn't last 5 minutes in it, so I wouldn't apply for a job there, or try to stick it out being "just me" when it became apparent that it wasn't working. I think the colleague leaving and finding a role more suited to her is the only actual solution here.

@LandSharksAnonymous@turkeyboots thank you. I will write it up and take a third person - if needs be I’ll bump the meeting to give her time to find a forth to make her feel more comfortable. Obviously the third would be independent (HR), but I’m conscious she may see HR being present as us ‘ganging up’ on her.

@InfoSecInTheCity thank you.

@fiorentina she was offered and didn’t want to - even though it would have been the same pay, a role better suited to her and with less pressure.

@ChilledProsecco if you had read my first post properly you world see I have pushed back on these requests. But, being honest, a deputy Director with her level of responsibility should be able to say no to admin staff. The fact she can’t is the issue!

@FrangipaniBlue no worries! It keeps freezing for me as well. I do accept my posts read a bit frustrated, but this is a member of staff who is senior so I am slightly bewildered that she’s unable to say ‘no.’

@MrsPinkCock apologies, written warning is the first stage (in our organisation) of putting someone on a performance management plan to manage them out unless there is improved performance. So she’s had several months ‘pre-warning’ in that she was told she needed to improve and stop saying ‘yes’ and prioritise effectively or she would be moved to this stage. She’s failed to do that, but now her manager is off sick, so with HRs agreement (as I was sighted on the issue and it made more sense/was fairer for me to take over than to delegate to someone else who was unsighted) I have formally notified her that she is on a performance management plan and has three months to improve or she will face a review board and ultimately will likely be dismissed

She sounds like she is struggling with her duties, which in standard professional language is referred as 'poor organisational skills', rather than 'being a yes person'. She might be beyond help now, who knows.

One thing that is coming strongly across is that you are managing the situation, which sounds to be a part of what is expected of your position, as badly as she is. Your choice of language alone is totally unprofessional. Have you received training in managing people?

I would focus on your skills before focusing on hers. In the meantime, maybe leaving it to her direct manager to manage her when she is back.

Well done OP for tackling this asshat employee.

She sounds like an insufferable and incompetent person. Heres hoping you get to sack her off!

Agree with every word.

Your Opening Post is long winded, difficult to determine what’s actually going on and the terms you use to describe your college are shocking! That’s why you’ve had a lot of posts supporting your colleague.

You’re making the situation a whole lot worse rather than better.

"I line manage someone who manages a compulsive ‘yes’ woman (A). Anything anyone asks of A, she will do."
"Her inability to say ‘no’ means she is late actioning things for me and several times this week I have had to step in and tell her she is not to do something"

Change this second sentence to be more accurate:
"My inability to stop people telling my team not to do things that aren't in their job role, means she is late actioning things for me and several times this week."

So that's your problem, how are you going to protect your team from people who are instructing them to do things not in there remit? This is your job.

I would focus in one or two concrete things in the meeting. Lack of delivering concrete outcomes. Stop telling her the sort of person she needs to be. Calling her a yes person is unhelpful. She may be unsuited to the job but your job is to point out where she is failing to deliver.

The late delivery if the work you asked her for and to an unacceptable standard is a concrete issue. Stick to that and any other recent specific instance of failure to meet a deadline .

Deal with those specific instances, asking her to explain here failure ti deliver and giving her feedback as to what she should have done in order to ensure she could meet that deadline. Offer support for the things she is finding difficult

Who on earth gave her the job in the first place? Must have been a pretty superficial process not to have occurred to anyone that she may not be suitable.

I don't understand your criticism of her in any of the examples in the post. You sound very unreasonable. I feel very sorry for her.

@stichguru I don’t think I should need to tell someone who is Deputy Director level, and thus on well over £100K a year, how to manage her workload and push back on someone.

I completely disagree my job is to protect her. My job is to protect one of my departments, of which she is a joint head, because that department is failing to get what they need from her because of her inability to say no and prioritise effectively.

She has had significant support, beyond what HR even felt was necessary.

People are entitled to think I am awful, but as PPs have said: HR never support this sort of performance management process unless everything else has been exhausted.

Edit: typo

This whole company sounds like a nightmare. Surely you should make some sort of uniform rules and guidance which dictates who can have what. These times im greatful I work for the NHS. It's simple. You look after people's health as a team.

Seriously?

This person isn't getting the work done because she's constantly doing other people's work for them because she's incapable of saying no. How can you not understand that OP being critical of that?

Completely agree @Theweedygarden At that level of seniority saying no is absolutely part of the job. Alongside that you need to know that your manager supports you in doing so, that tension over differing priorities is normal and that you shouldn't be everything to everyone. Natural friction is how good efficient businesses get to the right outcome and as a senior person you have to be able to manage that. I have to say to my boss, if A complains to you about me then it's because of this situation but I am confident I made te right call. And I know my boss will 100% back me up.

In which example does she come across yes person? Very unreasonable. The examples actually rather sound like "my decision is 'right' and you are wrong.".

This sounds like a nightmare. I don’t have advice people haven’t suggested previously but I did find it intriguing that she’s very capable of asserting her boundaries and saying no to all the different types of help and assistance you’ve offered - to the point of telling you never to mention it again. Perhaps there’s a way to work back from there (a place she’s comfortable saying no), and asking her to expand that same resistance into other areas.

I felt really uncomfortable reading this. I know it’s ‘business’ but god what a world. Does sound like she struggles to manage boundaries and expectations with other people, but ultimately she is keen and wants to help. Surely better than someone who’s all “sorry that’s not my job”. If I were her I’d be terrified for this 1 hour meeting you’ve put in, it sounds like you’re attacking her whole personality and are just so negative towards someone who probably thinks they are being kind and a team player. I’d be looking at why she agrees to help so many other people; how do they react if she says no? Are they nasty or gossiping about her if she doesn’t appear helpful, so therefore she is overly helpful to them?

The whole workplace culture sounds so toxic to me. I get that business is tough and sometimes requires tough decisions but bloody hell. Is it worth making someone so upset over? One of my close friends worked for a company that sold stationary and there were so many issues like this that I just said to her, look, nobody’s going to die if you don’t produce enough chuffing pencils, it’s not worth you being so miserable over!

Leaders, lead people and help them achieve you are not doing that with this poor woman. She has things to learn and presumably this is why she is where she is in the company, if she was perfect she’d be manager. You need to coach her not attack her personality.

Your work place sounds fucking toxic, frankly! And you sound utterly without empathy…actually scarily so!

Yep, I know the type. It is really draining to deal with this kind of incompetent people pleasers. You have to be there to really understand how can frustrating it can be.
Is there a chance you can give her a damning appraisal so the company gets rid of her ?