This is sound advice. You have a significant amount of control over people's lives as a manager, and that should be treated with a level of respect. You have no idea how people feel, and it is quite possible that someone you manage doesn't know where they stand with you. At times that is more than enough to cause them stress and even convince them to look elsewhere. Work is stressful enough, and you don't need to add to it.
I should also note. If you're a manager, your job is to do things that make you uncomfortable. If you can't handle sitting there and telling them you're letting them go in person, it's probably not the path for you. Have the decency to look someone in the eye. Don't pass it off to HR, because that's more convenient.
I've discovered when there's a power dynamic going on between two people, it's usually not a very good idea to pretend like that doesn't exist -- despite the fact that it is my natural inclination to joke about it and downplay it.
Instead, I find it's better to be kind, take things seriously and treat people with respect.
Yes, the power dynamic exists. Yes, I believe it's somewhat unfair and I wish society wasn't structured that way. But make up for it by being kind, being direct and treating people fairly.
Otherwise, it just comes across as an inability to accept responsibility, and if someone with power over you doesn't seem predictable it just feels scary and unstable. Or worse, you'll give people the impression that you're actively taking pleasure in toying with them.
I agree with this. I recently had an honestly disastrous experience at a job because we tried to pretend that power dynamic doesn't exist. My boss (the CTO) considered me a friend and vice versa, but that made every work interaction so awkward (for me at least) because I could never tell whether we were talking as friends, teammates or employer-employee. I attribute this as both of us being incredibly young (lower 20s) and naive, but we still hold a lot of respect for each other now that I'm not working there anymore.
I recently got promoted to be the manager of a guy who has literally been my best friend since we were 10. Anyone got advice about how to not be doomed to be a bad boss or bad friend?
Relax and don't take all advice and catch sayings a gospel. I have risen thru the ranks to the CTO position several times in my career and I brought my friends along with me. If he is a good worker, he will remain a good worker most likely. In my career I have only had to fire one of my friends and it was literally because he developed a drug problem so bad he was showing up to work totally out of it. I counseled him, tried to get him into rehab and did what any friend would do but the drugs had taken hold. I was friends with him for years before that and did not know he had a drug problem before we met. He relapsed and just could not shake it this time.
That being said, there is no doubt the dynamic changes but that does not mean you have to give up your friends. It means you have to be more transparent with them, it means an absolute commitment to honesty so that you remove the feeling that you may be "managing" behind their back.
Jumping back to my friend, I was candid with him that he would leave me no choice, that it was completely unacceptable and that most of all I was concerned about him as a friend. He understood and understood my actions and that it was he who left me no choice.
I had another friend who battled depression, she was a rock star for years and then just hit a wall, due to a life event. I took off my CTO hat, put on my friend hat and worked with her thru it. Helped her build a path to put her life together and helped her get her career back on track. She had some extremely self destructive behavior in the throws of depression and I resisted outside pressure to fire her, due to knowing the sensitive nature of her medical condition, that knowledge came from being her friend not her manager. In the end what I gained was a loyal employee and a rockstar again. What I also gained is a group of people that any time I have an endeavor, I can pick up the phone, make a call and they will quit their job on the spot to join me. Have an unwavering commitment to your people and they will have an unwavering commitment to you, when they know that you are honest to them.
Point being take conventional wisdom with a grain of salt. Don't be jerk and don't manage behind peoples back and you will be fine. But the original point of the article is spot on, never, ever, even jokingly, joke about someones employment if you have a position of power or a decision in that continued employment. It's off limits, but if they are not meeting a standard be honest with them and be honest with them in the short run. Be a friend and put a plan together to get them back on track. Help them be successful, part of being a good manager is being a people builder.
I recently got promoted to be the manager of a guy who has literally been my best friend since we were 10.
There will come a time when you will know something he can't know, such as layoffs are coming. Or maybe he deserves that promotion/raise but you can't give it to him because everyone knows you're friends and you open yourself to accusations of favoritism (or worse). If you really want to square this circle the only way to to get yourself moved to a different reporting line.
This is one show where I believe most agree the US remake is superior. Character development gives the US edition far more depth at the expense of trading off a little subtlety. Gervais masters cringe to the point of extreme viewer discomfort. Opinions vary, of course.
The UK version was fairly short but hit all the high points pretty well. The US version had several more seasons and had more opportunities to build characters and explore ideas, which worked until around Season 5-6. The later seasons of the US edition had their moments, but were clearly running out of steam.
Cue the inevitable Ribbonfarm link in 3... 2... 1...
> is quite possible that someone you manage doesn't know where they stand with you
Higher level performers tend to disproportionately believe then need to improve so they tend to take group jokes or threats of termination much more seriously than underperformers.
Be very very careful making groups statements and jokes about performance and firings. It’s a fast track to losing high performers who leave because they start to believe they are not wanted and not doing a good job.
"While early research focused on the prevalence among high-achieving women, impostor syndrome has been recognized to affect both men and women equally."
"The researchers concluded that the women who participated in this study experienced impostor phenomenon more so than the men who participated."
am I misparsing this sentence? how can both be true?
I may be wrong because it is worded unclearly, but I think the first is referring to the magnitude by which men and women are affected, i.e. those that are affected, be they men or women, experience the same impact to their self esteem/worth. The second is referring to the fact that women are more frequently affected by it.
In this context, prevalence means something like "the proportion of affected people in some group."
Men and women could be equally likely to develop some form of imposter syndrome (thus, equal prevalence), but the women could be more severely affected (scores of, say, 5 vs. 3 on some kind of test or questionnaire).
yeah, the definition of prevalence is clear to me.
but it's the other way around. Men and women are affected with the same severity but women are more likely to develop it. ( or at least that's what I understood from bradjohnson's comment).
No, I don't think that's a correct interpretation: if women are more likely to develop it, then the prevalence isn't equal. Affect and prevalence just focus on rates, not severity.
I can only see two ways to make both statements consistent:
- Men and women are both likely to have an general 'diagnosis' of imposter syndrome, but women experience more 'acute attacks' of it per unit time. Half of of men and women feel like imposters during a year, but the affected women feel that way twice a week, while the affected men feel it once/week.
- Women experience it more severely than men: a male colonel feels like a lt. colonel, but a female colonel feels like a major)
Could be some combination of the two...or the writing is just a mess!
Severity is the same for both genders (those that have it, feel it with similar enough degree and frequency), but in equal sized groups of men and women, there are more women who exhibit it.
It occurred to me that the original sources might be a lot clearer:
From Wikipedia's ref #1 (Langford and Clance, 1993)
"Studies of college students (Harvey, 1981; Bussotti, 1990; Langford, 1990), college professors (Topping, 1983), and successful professionals (Dingman, 1987) have all failed, however, to reveal any sex differences in impostor feelings, suggesting that males in these populations are just as likely as females to have low expectations of success and to make attributions to non-ability related factors."
And Ref #9 (Kumar and Jagacinski, 2006)
"Women expressed greater imposter fears than men and were also higher on ability-avoid goals."
The writing in the Wikipedia article is not great though, so it could have gone either way...
the way I parsed the question made it seem that they are incompatible. hence why I asked. it's my bad because I didn't explain myself.
I understood the first sentence to be saying that the proportion of men experiencing "imposter's syndrome" is the equal to the proportion of woman experiencing it.
I understood The second sentence to say that a higher proportion of women experience it.
To my understanding, it's not possible for these two statements to be true at the same time. So one must be wrong.
> if a study can't be replicated then the study is wrong isn't it?
Not necessarily. Maybe the replications were flawed. Characteristics of a population can change over time. Blah, blah, blah. It's incredibly hard to say something is flat wrong or absolutely correct. A good scientist uses what others might call "weasel" words (I hate that term), like, "The data is (in)consistent with the hypothesis."
The more evidence that mounts for or against a hypothesis, well, it's up to you to decide how to act.
This discussion revolves around advice, which set my expectations that these are claims based on experience instead of something that can be cited. If you don’t agree because you’ve had a contradicting experience, that could be a valuable addition to the discussion. It’s also fair to not adopt the advice if you want a study and one cannot be provided.
I’ve experienced the feeling the grandparent post shared.
One qualifying segment is the rarer over performing subset of Dunning-Kruger personalities. That is people who accurately measure their own performance but do not accurately measure their peers and thus improperly devalue themselves in comparison. To compensate for that improper devaluation these people will attempt to over perform in an effort to feel comparable.
Under that condition it is anticipated these people will take criticism and risks with a greater degree of personal sensitivity.
If you're a manager, your job is to do things that make you uncomfortable.
Yep, one thing I noticed when I moved into a management role, was that the things that would make you move along as an employee, are the things it's now your job to fix or deal with. Maybe this is obvious, but there's kind of a visceral shift in perception that goes along with it.
As your circle expand, it is impossible not to notice the walls and blockers that are endemic. If one doesn't see this, it's often because that person is in their own little bubble, and not doing much to improve the organization either.
Often, it takes both employees and managers to really make the shifts, over many many years. By the time it happens, the individual contributions are mostly forgotten or employee left long ago.
I had a manager do this to me once. In a situation where I knew for sure he was joking. I was top of the department, and it wasn't even in the context of having done anything wrong. He had just been given some new responsibilities, and I asked him what he was planning to change, and he said, totally jokingly, 'well, today is your last day.' And I knew 100% it was a joke, and I still felt a horrible sinking feeling for a fraction of a second that was enough for me to promise myself that, should I ever be a manager, I would never ever do that to anyone.
Fast forward a couple of years, I'm a manager in a different company, the company wants to move everyone over to a different legal entity by firing and then rehiring them. Totally innocuous. Remembering the above conversation and self-promise, I planned very carefully how to tell my team and in which order to say the words, and... someone interrupted with a question and I managed to cause exactly that moment of panic I'd been trying to avoid. You win some, you lose some...but at least I wasn't doing it as a joke.
It’s a strange feeling “being fired” even if it doesn’t affect your income.
The company I worked for in 2011 was acquired for its customers. We all knew that we were going to be let go as soon as the acquisition happened. Most of us had other jobs lined up and we were sticking around for the severance.
In my case, not only did I have a contract lined up with one of our customers, I knew I was going to start working the following Monday and getting paid more, and my termination letter had a special provision that gave me access to all of my former company’s intellectual property and software that I needed to work with the customer. I still felt bad for getting let go.
After we all “got fired” we ate lunch, had a few drinks, and came back to the office and just hung out.
I understand that sometimes the topic of a conversation can't be revealed beforehand. However, I wish more managers would give some kind of indication beforehand about how anxious one should be about it because for many people the worst-case scenario is the default presumption.
Totally agree, and I actually did do that! I started by saying, 'There is absolutely nothing to worry about, everything is totally fine' - but of course nothing worries people like being told there is nothing to worry about :)
I had a great relationship with my team and no-one held it against me, it's just that moment of emotional response that gives a shock until the rational mind kicks in.
I think it's best to keep the notice for that kind of meeting as short as possible.
My work cut our hours by 20%, and we were given notice about the meeting only a couple of hours beforehand. It would be cruel to schedule that kind of meeting for several days in time, leaving your staff in purgatory, wondering if they should get a head start on looking for a new job.
I had the same thing happen recently, being rehired under subsidiary company, and they were great at explaining why (at least in a general sense) and reassuring us it had no effect on our job security.
We had to lay off a new hire and reduce hours across the board due to Covid-19, and once again they did a great job at reassuring us they had every intention of keeping (the rest of) us employed as much as possible.
I think it's good advice because the prediction of the social situation around becoming a manager is accurate (and often not discussed at all).
It is awkward for people to go from not being a manager to being a manager among their peers. In new social situations I think that 'awkwardness' is actually uncertainty about how to behave because you haven't been in that position before. A lot of social skills seem to be based on accurate models/predictions of what to do in certain situations in order to bond with people.
When you're suddenly a manager the old tools don't work as well and people try to generate that camaraderie with humor, but for the reasons listed in the article this can be particularly bad if done poorly.
Other jokes I've noticed in addition to the firing thing, are annoying humble brag comments like, "Can you believe X important person wanted to talk to me about this thing?". I think they're trying to signal that they don't think they're important, but the obvious context just comes across as bragging. I think people get more respect when they just recognize the role they're in and are more confident about it (but that probably comes with experience of navigating that social situation).
A good lead will explain these things directly to a new manager because the social bits are not obvious and are uncomfortable. This is even more important in fields where the baseline social skills may be not quite at par anyway.
One advantage is that if you have knowledge of this, and you can model the way others think about it - you can actually be a force to make people more comfortable than they'd otherwise be. Encouraging them to ask questions by asking yourself in front of them when you don't know something. Suggesting they go home early if something is bothering them and that you do it too. Reassuring them if they're doing a good job or if something they're working on is particularly tricky etc.
A good manager can do a lot to make someone feel safe/secure and make them happy, which is often a prerequisite for them to be a strong member of the team and stay for a long time.
This is true even if you're not firing somebody. In my first "real" job, I didn't report directly to the guy who negotiated pay. Maybe that was a little weird, but it could have worked. Except, the way he would discuss raises was to wait until some afternoon I was really busy with actual work, and then sneak into my office and blurt "your-raise-this-year-is-$10-congratulations-it-was-good-to-talk-with-you-I'll-be-pretty-busy-for-the-next-few-weeks-ok-bye!" He was literally gone before I had the presence of mind to greet him. This is the same guy who would insist on all sorts of procedures if anyone (e.g. my manager's manager) wanted to meet with him. Geoff, wow, what a tool.
> If you can't handle sitting there and telling them you're letting them go in person, it's probably not the path for you
I do think this is something you can learn. Having a good mentor/coach helps. I had a hard time with this personally, but after all these years I've seen almost every seat be replaced (more than once, too) and I've gotten used to it. You have to become more consciously aware that a business relationship is a separate thing from a friendly/family relationship.
I have definitely started a job search after a superior joked about us being "replaceable". It wasn't even directed at me particularly, but there was a chance it was in reference to either the departments performance in general or possibly financial constraints of the department. The risk analysis on that from an employee perspective is a no-brainer: start making contingency plans.
Agreed. Long time ago I had a manager, who was using his firing history as a motivational tool. He would walk somewhere behind you and tell someone else a story that was supposed to partially mirror a story about you. Very subtle.
He also loved bad jokes, but he was smart enough not to joke about firing people.
You could call it transparency. It's vastly better to have someone make you aware of what's up than blindside you or gaslight you by giving contradictory information/demands.
"Literally" talking behind someone's back, as you put it, is not talking behind someone's back, in the normal sense. So what's wild about calling it transparent?
The wild part is the part where somebody plays high-school head games, instead of acting like a competent adult does and being forthright about whatever issue there is at hand.
I mean, I don't know what your interpersonal relationships in life have given you to consider a normal and healthy way for people to interact for one another. But I can absolutely tell you that what we're talking about here is neither of those.
Not at all. You're right that there are much worse behaviors than the one under discussion, but there's still a vast qualitative difference between "not as bad as it might be" and good.
It matters a great deal whether someone is doing something to deceive or confuse. So whether it's toxic behavior depends on context.
If someone is reliable and trustworthy in their communication, then calling them "toxic" because you don't like the style is just wrong.
Conversely, someone can tell you all day every day how honest and straightforward they are, but if they aren't consistent or trustworthy, then their communication style is irrelevant.
The point is that there's nothing reliable or trustworthy about passing veiled, pointed comments behind someone's back and expecting them to read your meaning out of context and circumstance, rather than just stating your concerns directly.
Such behavior fails to offer the report a fair chance to know what's expected of them and, presumably, how they're not meeting those expectations. It has much more in common with the kind of dysfunctional communication you see in unhappy marriages, than with anything I require of a manager - or, should I eventually join management myself, with anything I'll provide my own reports.
That's what "toxic" is a shorthand for. Yeah, I'll grant it might be consistent. But to be consistently bad isn't, you know, not bad. Being able to predict the bullshit that is going to happen doesn't make the bullshit not happen. It just means you can see it coming. I'll concede there may be reasons to tolerate it, if the benefits of the job outweigh the bullshit. But that doesn't make it not bullshit.
(And, as a side note, anyone who talks about how honest or straightforward they are - that's a big yikes from me, chief. People who are legitimately honest and straightforward don't need to talk about having those traits, because their behavior reflects them. People who do need to talk about having those traits are, in my experience, very likely to be trying to cover their lack.)
The behavior is toxic. It doesn't matter the intent or context. It is passive aggressive, period.
At best, it is someone who is scared to have difficult conversations. At worst, who knows.. I've slowly learned not to try and rationalize what makes people like that tick. It's their issue, not mine.
As someone who has done hiring and firing, there are absolutely times when I cannot be upfront with people. Like, explicitly, "word from the top is don't talk about how we're hiring X and firing Y."
Doing things like that is kind of shady, but there are often times when you cannot straight up tell people things but still need or want to send signals.
Do you have significant amount of control? Maybe I've been lucky to be part of mostly healthy organizations, but even managers have to justify/explain decisions. Either be for termination, compensation adjustment, reassigning to a different team, etc.
I always had to document and explain why I thought an employee deserved a raise, or should not get a bonus, etc. Even as a director with ~20 reports I don't have unlimited firing power and I still need to regroup with HR when it comes to that.
Yes, of course you have some control, but it's not unchecked.
I always had to document and explain why I thought an employee deserved a raise, or should not get a bonus, etc. Even as a director with ~20 reports I don't have unlimited firing power and I still need to regroup with HR when it comes to that.
Having that system in place isn't enough. You need that system to have teeth, and you need to have someone with as much power as you who will review your decisions and play devil's advocate.
In many teams I've seen with documentation and HR hurdles, they're not real hurdles, they're just there so that there's a paper trail at all. That's because:
1. Most people in the company including the manager's boss and possibly even most teammates of the employee don't see enough of the employee's work, so it's often the manager's word vs. employee's. A bad manager will exploit that, intentionally or unintentionally.
2. When in doubt, the management hierarchy tends to side with the manager on things, because they by default trust the manager more than the employee and their view of the facts of the situation usually comes from the manager. A bad manager will intentionally or unintentionally editorialize the facts on their way up the hierarchy.
3. HR tends to avoid making waves. The only time I've seen HR (excuse the metaphor) plant the flag on the hill they intend to die on, it's because the person being fired or managed out was a protected class of worker. I have never seen HR push back just because the manager had insufficient reasons or suspect reasoning. A bad manager will just shove decisions through HR, intentionally or unintentionally.
In all of those places, there were systems in place where managers had to document those decisions, but there wasn't real accountability, so the systems were nominal at best.
> HR tends to avoid making waves. The only time I've seen HR (excuse the metaphor) plant the flag on the hill they intend to die on, it's because the person being fired or managed out was a protected class of worker. I have never seen HR push back just because the manager had insufficient reasons or suspect reasoning.
Second guessing management hiring/firing decisions that don't expose the company to unacceptable risk of liability for labor law violations generally isn't HR’s function.
Sure, it may not be HR's function. That's my point. Even with the paperwork, HR effectively never acts as a counterbalance to a bad manager. That's why I list it as one of the reasons why the paperwork that the grandparent poster has to do is often part of a system that only keeps honest people honest.
When I think back to some of the most egregious workplace culture issues in recent memory, such as Uber (Susan Fowler) or Riot Games, HR was, by the most charitable interpretation, unable to stop obviously bad things from happening. By a more literal read of the news at the time, HR was complicit.
> I'm aware of 'protected characteristics', but they cut both ways, not something you can be or not be.
The legal term of art is “protected class” and not all of them cut both ways (age over 40, disability, and veteran status are all one-sided protected classes.)
Specifically, I meant that when you're firing someone who falls into those categories, HR will often require you to document extra well why it's not employment discrimination, in case there's a lawsuit.
You must work at a pretty healthy company. Because those checks also exist at unhealthy companies, but there managers just know how to work the system.
E.g., I know somebody whose manager was pushed out for political reasons. Their first meeting with their new boss, the one who did the pushing, was a 90-minute series of accusations and critiques. In the second meeting, they were presented with a letter documenting the critiques and their poor response. Their third meeting was a no-notice, no-severance layoff and a security escort to the door. It turned out the people "laid off" were all the ones hired by the old boss, even though the company was hiring for the same roles at the same time. So the new boss was just cleaning house, making sure the people in key positions were loyal to him.
This is also the experience I've had with PIPs, "performance" reviews and promotions at large companies. Also incompetent but well connected people are some of the most likely to be promoted into management.
And that is why I want a union or professional organization. That level of nonsense needs a mechanism to resist with. How many lives and marriages, families suffered for political moves mostly for nothing by some lunatic.
Then maybe help unionize your workplace and advocate for that. Unions don't have to protect poor performers. They could just as well be stringent about them.
I think a lot of the impression people have of unions is from places with really hostile labor/manager relationships. Under those conditions, it's easy to treat the workplace as a zero-sum battleground. But especially in tech, where we have a culture of shared gain and literal shared ownership, it's possible for workers to advocate for things like improved efficiency.
Is it possible you've been brainwashed? I've never worked at a job that was so important as to make firing so vital. Most corporations are littered with deadwood. If firing "poor performers" is of no importance, how could it be more important than my comfort at my job? In fact, pretty much the only jobs that remain unionized are the ones we all pretend are really extra super important, like police and teachers.
You know that, but your underlings really don't. Yeah you can try telling them you're very constrained, but they'll think you're just passing the buck (which a lot of managers do, "it's out of my hands" etc etc). And I'm sure you can still influence things like who goes on holiday when, and stuff like that.
But your people don't see the checks in action. For all they know, you've passed those already.
The main thing is, there is a power differential, and "firing" jokes are, at their core, saying "I have power over you". It's just not that funny. And for new managers who feel compelled to make them, "why does my power make me giddy" is a good introspective question to ask.
No, that doesn't imply they are bad people. New power does things to everybody's mood. But asking the question helps remind yourself. (For an entire framework to keep that impulse in check, servant leadership works pretty well, IME)
It is sound advice and it is difficult if you're friends with people where you had an easy camaraderie before the promotion.
I have had this bite me a couple of times with people for whom I felt I knew really well and was really comfortable with joking about pretty much anything. Only to find out later that the joke was anything but.
The hard and fast rule has to be both don't joke about firing and don't talk to someone else's direct reports about the performance of their manager.
I should also note. If you're a manager, your job is to do things that make you uncomfortable. If you can't handle sitting there and telling them you're letting them go in person, it's probably not the path for you. Have the decency to look someone in the eye. Don't pass it off to HR, because that's more convenient.