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?