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?

I have empathy but most of it is geared towards the 200 people in the department she’s joint head of that are struggling to get things through her as she’s too busy doing things that aren’t in her remit to do her job.

I think a lot of people can't imagine the sort of role you mean, OP - but I can, and have a lot of sympathy for your position. I manage a compliance team and absolutely it is part of the role to be able to say 'no', but it also isn't a situation where you can just expect other people to stop asking! It is true that some people just aren't very well-suited to that: there are some roles in which being willing to go 'above and beyond' for any request without using judgement and discretion isn't just unhelpful, it's a failure.

Your job is to protect you department - ok so if your department is being told to do things that are another department's job, you say no before those tasks ever get to your team.

I'm confused though because you started by saying you have "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"
This sounds like A is two levels down from you i.e.
A is managed by B who is managed by C (you)

But now you are saying "My job is to protect one of my departments, of which she is a joint head, " That sounds like A is on the same level as you - confusing!

It sounds like she’s been given so many opportunities to improve, but she’s taken none of them. She isn’t going to change now.

Your job now is ensuring you follow your HR processes to the letter.

Document everything.

When you speak to her today, stick to 2 or 3 specific examples that you can evidence the impact of (one of which should be her refusal to engage with you this week). Try not to overload with information. She will take this badly and feel victimised however nicely you put it, so be prepared for her behaviour to deteriorate.

You could try asking what support she feels she needs, but given her “it’s just who I am” attitude, I suspect she’ll say she doesn’t need any.

Is the other role she was offered previously still open? Would you / she consider a move into that role?

I’m frustrated for you OP just reading this. In this yes-woman’s job, saying no is not an optional personality trait, it’s a key part of the job. So she is fundamentally not doing her job. I’m baffled as to why so many people here are feeling sorry for her - she’s a department head, in a leadership role, and has been offered what sounds like a very reasonable amount of support, training and guidance, and not engaged with it. How on earth did the get the job in the first place?

I can only assume people sticking up for this useless woman have missed the part that she’s director level and are assuming she’s a junior assistant, or have had a nerve triggered because they too are compulsive people pleasers.

Do you try to figure out why she does this? I’m a yes person in work, it’s because we have a few managers and the line of command isn’t totally clear. I have kids and need to be a people leader in work as if I get on the wrong side of people and my hours get changed I’m effed. Maybe it’s purely trying to save her own skin as she’s afraid of confrontation or losing out in work.

Is the problem that she has a number of very senior people who expect their needs to come first and are annoyed that she can't prioritise all of them?

At that level, it is so much more than an issue with not able to say no to anybody including people she manages herself.

Either the issue is the former or she is seriously incapable, in which instance, I also wonder how she made it through the interview!

I read the opening post and thought blimey. But the OP’s later posts shine a different light. A is clearly not suited to this job.

Honestly, I would be highly surprised if you can turn this around given the efforts to date and resistance. That’s then leaves you either grinding through a performance improvement plan or looking to do an exit now. That will depend very much on where you work and management/HR’s attitude, but if they are willing to do settlement agreements, I would look at that route. When I’ve had to exit people for under performance where we are confident it can’t be met, we’ve normally gone down the settlement route rather than taking up a lot of time and misery for three months.

I appreciate that that might sound quite brutal to some people, but then my current employer is. And it does at least mean that we don’t get stuck in making everyone miserable for months on PIPs that people cannot meet.

given this you should be thinking if you haven’t already about what the organisation would look like without A in it. For example would you need to promote someone into that role and do you have good internal candidates?

It’s who she is it is not who she needs to be. People pleaser, she can’t stand the thought of someone being uncomfortable she’d prefer to be uncomfortable. I’d be asking why do you volunteer all the time, how can I help you say no . Give her strategies to help, it’s reflexive at the minute every problem is hers to solve.

she will feel like she’s going to die if someone else is angry with her .

There are some fucking weird replies on this thread. This woman is in a highly paid managerial role, she can't perform properly and she's got a bad attitude. Of course she needs to be on a PIP. I'm sure OP would have handed the task to someone else if it didn't fall within her remit! All this talk about destroying her confidence and her personality- come on.

Does it really matter?

There's obviously a reason why op isn't going into the full minutiae of her exact organisation structure and individual roles and job descriptions- a) it's outing and b) nobody, apart from the permanently pedantic, cares!

All we need to know is she's in a relatively senior role where what's expected of her (saying no) isn't above what you'd reasonably expect someone in her position to be able to do, but that op is of sufficient seniority to her to be heading the disciplinary process.

@vivainsomnia the senior people are annoyed as she is telling them all ‘yes’ which means they all expect things to be done. But, her desire to please them means she then generates additional work for her department (who are miserable and pushing back) which they can’t action because the demands she’s placing are so unreasonable. So they are told yes, then things can’t be delivered.

She was the standout candidate through the application stage. She came across as calm, capable of managing upwards and delegating downwards and, crucially, confident etc. The employee she’s turned out to be is very different to what we saw through the interview process.

Bullying doesn’t bring out the best in people, as you are now discovering.

No one’s bullied her. HR have been clear that what I, and the person who I line manage who is now off, have done to support her goes ‘above and beyond’ what can reasonably be expected.

Sorry, if you've already said this OP but I couldn't see it - how long has she been in role?

Ok, but it doesn’t sound like it is all going swimmingly.

I work with a people pleaser and it does sometimes make her less effective but she does a lot of good stuff as well. I give her a confidence boost and she marches off to tell someone she can no longer do their job for them. Sometimes it doesn’t work and she gives me a sheepish look and stays late to do someone a favour or has to deal with the fallout from a client who has been promised too much. She used to cry quite a lot but she doesn’t anymore and she is much better than the lazy fuckers who keep trying to get her to do their jobs.

She used to crumble under her previous boss and basically go into panic spirals but she is doing very well now.

@Neemie Whilst it’s great that you are able to provide that’s level of support to someone, in my organisation it is simply not practical nor appropriate. And in this instance, A is senior and has roughly 200 people in her direct (once or twice removed) management chain depending on her to make effective decisions and lead them. This is not simply her being ‘less effective’ but doing actual, real world, damage to our organisation’s ability to function and harming other colleagues by generating unnecessary work and causing confusing by ‘yes-ing’ everything.

Ignoring ‘senior leadership’ as she has done this week, is not acceptable. You don’t ignore your boss for any reason - it’s grossly unprofessional - for days on end.

I really hope no one here has to deal with a situation like this - it’s absolutely horrible for those above, and below A, all of whom have been working extra hours to compensate for this behaviour. And, whilst A is clearly upset, the role, and requirements of it, (i.e ruthless prioritisation and ability to say ‘no’ and manage upwards) was made clear on the job advert. A has asked we hold the meeting next week, which I have agreed to.

@TheRealMagic a little under a year. Four months whilst we let her ‘bed in.’ Then six-ish months of warnings and giving her a chance to improve and take advice on board. Which HR have judged is more than enough time (we usually give four before we start formal performance management).

I have no idea why you’re being hounded here OP.

Underperformance needs to be dealt with, and it sounds like at the moment it’s your job to deal with.

I would be having a formal, witnessed conversation with her about why she’s ignoring you and why the work was substandard.

If it’s because she’s upset, then why is she upset. The feedback remains valid and what does she need to do to cease to be upset.

Then she has to commit to those things, and if she doesn’t you move to managing her out of the business. If you feel like you’ve already exhausted this then move straight on to managing her out of the business.

She might be nice and she might be sad, but they’re not excuses for not doing what her job requires. If she isn’t emotionally well enough to be at work then she needs to take time off until she is. I wouldn’t address the crying other than to say that, and only then if she says the reason she’s not doing her job now is because of how upset she is.

Yes but this is like being a oncologist, and instead of meeting any cancer patients you’re answering the phone at reception, you’re making sure the hand sanitizer dispenser is full, you’re mopping up sick and every now and then driving the ambulance when a paramedic rings in sick - then realising you haven’t had time to see a single cancer patient. They’re all things that help patients help, but that are not in your role so you’re actually hurting YOUR patients by doing those things.

It’s critical in every organisation that employees put boundaries in place to ensure they are doing their job first before helping others with their role. This person isn’t capable of doing that, or isn’t willing to.

The idea that there are one set of people trying to regulate what can be provided while the others constantly demand more is what is problematic.

You are busy and important and know you are right so why on earth are you on mumsnet talking about it.

I'm a people pleasing yes person.

But I'd rather skydive naked than manage anyone, let alone lead a team of 200!

She sounds like an absolute nightmare to be managed by, let alone manage. I've had a manager like that, who promised everyone the earth and expected us to deliver the impossible. I ended up off work with stress, I'd imagine she's merrily walking your company into a slew of grievences if she's left to continue as she is.

Under a year’s service? Well that changes it significantly.

if you don’t think a PIP can resort in a successful outcome the only reason to do it is to prove a fair dismissal. But given she can’t bring an unfair dismissal claim at this point, absent discrimination, why go through the pain for everyone? I would speak to senior HR people about looking to exit now. And she should have no claims to settle.

You sound like a bully. You should first be giving her support. How senior is she? Is she an admin person?

Eek. Sorry OP, just read that she’s senior. As you were.