Good, simple and to the point advise
Don’t be spooky
201–210 of 228 posts
Re: Don’t be spooky
#202Earlier quoted context omitted.
You’ve just made me think about memories I’ve surpressed of a job I had, where the boss would hold Monday morning meetings every week to go around the table and get updates from the team. He took the opportunity to pick on someone different each time and rip them to shreds. It was a horrible thing to be part of. Needless to say my Sunday evenings were a write off during that period with the stress of having to go to…
What could compel someone to want to start their Monday morning that way?
Many reasons.
But probably mostly venting out own frustrations, while believing this is a effective managing style to get people motivated in fear.
Re: Don’t be spooky
#203Tons of comments here agreeing that this kind of vague messaging is to be avoided (and I'll toss my comment in there as also being in agreement). But....clearly there are people out there who use this kind of communicaton, some of them doubtlessly reading this thread. So my question is: those who do say vagaries like "let's talk when you have a minute* - why? What is your intention?
> "let's talk when you have a minute* - why? What is your intention? Well - you're busy, they are busy - you need a moment of their time at their convenience and you're asking for it. Although I've learned to add context or just jokingly say "nobody's getting fired" which does relieve the tension.
> jokingly say "nobody's getting fired"
Nobody except you that is, haha! Oh how I crack myself up.
Re: Don’t be spooky
#204Earlier quoted context omitted.
Unfortunately, for people that don't know you, this can be spooky to the other person while reassuring yourself. If you can be specific and provide context, you can prepare the person to engage you much faster and more effectively.
"You'll never guess what happened. Hit me up to find out more" if it works for headlines, why not messages to your co-workers?
"Three things you don't know about your future. yet. see me at 4 for more details"
Re: Don’t be spooky
#205Early in my career I got a Monday morning meeting invite on a Friday afternoon just after I left the office. The meeting was called “The future of “ Entire weekend was a write off. I was so anxious. And yep. They shut down the unit (but I got to keep my job). As a result this is forefront in my mind as a manager. One thing that works great is whenever I ask questions about something, anything, I also say “this is on…
I "over communicate" pretty much everything. I always give context, I provide links to any docs I mention, my meeting invites always have a description, agenda and goals, and I write more documentation than most devs. This is because I hate surprises and mysteries at work. I need to know what's going on to do good work, so I make sure no one has any excuse not to understand what things are about. I really wish more p…
No, this is perfect, as a manager you can hardly "over-communicate". I wish all managers would do that and also reflect about their communication to constantly improve it.
Re: Don’t be spooky
#206Earlier quoted context omitted.
I suppose it depends on how many meetings you have? In our company's culture of few meetings, about 90% of the time I received a Slack message "Can we chat when you have a quick minute?" it was indeed the employee quitting. Eventually I would just respond in Slack to confirm they wanted to quit, so we could skip the dog & pony show that is assumed to be necessary for a "proper resignation," which I don't think employ…
> Eventually I would just respond in Slack to confirm they wanted to quit Has this ever come back with a "no"? I would find it pretty unnerving to have a manager ask if I were quitting out of the blue, although I totally get why most of the time that pattern means a resignation.
To be fair that's quite a stretch. Maybe if the writing is on the wall, or floor talk hinted at it, but a mere 'can we talk if you have a minute' followed by 'you are going to quit aren't you' seems a little too much reading into it.
Re: Don’t be spooky
#207> deliver constructive but critical feedback as close to the “original sin” as possible. Receiving feedback that you did poorly weeks after the fact is disconcerting. It can lead the recipient to wondering what other things they’re doing poorly but won’t hear about until later. This is very true. It happened to me some time ago, that I was performing very poorly - at least according to my team (I think it is at least…
Exactly the same happened to me and now I'm really glad that I got to leave, even it was difficult at the time. They even waited until the last possible day.
Re: Don’t be spooky
#208Earlier quoted context omitted.
Some weird behavior at my employer perhaps. We had several rounds of layoffs during my tenure and they were always announced at an all-hands meeting at 9 AM, announced the same morning. I still get nervous any time there’s a meeting called for 9. At least they had the good sense to not announce them for the next day.
Thursday, 10am: Company All-Hands. Scheduled at short notice. First 10 or 15 minutes is beating around the bush about how well things have been going, buuuuut.... Another 10 minutes of different leaders explaining how difficult the decision was, crocodile tears and all. Everyone, meanwhile, is waiting for leadership to stop wasting time and get to the point. If it wasn't obvious at the start, it would be crystal clea…
One piece of advice I read in some charisma book and repeat constantly at work is to always make the point of any email you send the very first sentence.
It is so tempting to waste a bunch of time "softening" the blow of whatever you're trying to say, but you're never doing the audience any favours, you're just trying to control how they're going to react. You need only think about the last time you got an important email (job interview follow up, redundancy announcement, pay review etc). You immediately scan through the document for the one line that says what you need to know, usually starting with "unfortunately, we..." Or "we're pleased to...". The rest of the document is just fluff getting in the way of what really matters. Anyway, I'm waffling, but it never ceases to amaze me the variant ways management screw up that one simple rule.
Re: Don’t be spooky
#209Earlier quoted context omitted.
6 years later and I definitely regret taking a counter offer.
Once you've announced your intention to leave, even just privately, it changes your relationship. Accepting a counter-offer is just going to leave things awkward.
Very awkward I'd say. A counter offer is just adding insult to injury, e.g. why was is not offered with salary adjustments earlier.
In my experience only two scenarios offer a substantial raise in pay: Switching jobs or Getting a new role/title.
Somehow just doing your job well is not enough.
Re: Don’t be spooky
#210Here's some good advice for the admin here:
> A corollary to “don’t be spooky” — deliver constructive but critical feedback as close to the “original sin” as possible. Receiving feedback that you did poorly weeks after the fact is disconcerting. It can lead the recipient to wondering what other things they’re doing poorly but won’t hear about until later. Which leads to story-crafting, and the whole negative cycle starts a-new.
Specifically, if you're going to penalize people for doing something, tell them that you're doing it, rather than hide behind some cryptic, "technical difficulties"-sounding error message. Treat people like adults, and I suspect you'll have better results most of the time.