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Speak Up or Stay Silent?
I’m really struggling with my new manager. He’s not very good at managing our tight-knit marketing team and we are all suffering. He has instituted new practices to build transparency on team projects, but isn’t transparent about his own work or even the company’s initiatives or goals. He doesn’t involve us in important projects we’ve historically been involved with, and tries to tackle it all on his own (even though we’ve offered ourselves to be involved!). Team morale is the worst it’s ever been and none of us feels empowered to do our jobs. To be clear, I don’t feel this manager is a bad person, but overwhelmed and insecure with his role and working with upper management. There doesn’t seem to be an avenue to escalate the team’s frustrations. Frankly, what’s your opinion on whether H.R. should be notified of the manager’s impact on the team’s morale and productivity? My husband says it would be career suicide. Should I just sit back and watch the team dissolve as my colleagues depart? If so, is this really what corporate America has come to?
— Anonymous
I can’t answer that last question, the one about corporate America, because I haven’t worked in corporate America in some time. (I’d also want you to define what you mean by “corporate America.”) Regardless, it seems to me that your real question regards whether a human resources department — or your company’s human resources department — is a force for good, or ill? The fact that you worry that consulting H.R. about your manager’s failings (and how they’re impacting your entire team) would be “career suicide” suggests that there isn’t much trust between people or departments within your company.
And that, I think, is a lot more damning, and perhaps more demoralizing, than the reality that your manager is falling down on the job. A lack of trust within a company hurts individuals and the company itself, because, as you said, members of a team may leave their jobs.
You appear to have a lot of empathy for your manager. And you diagnose the situation correctly, I suspect, as one that is rooted in his insecurities and feelings of overwhelm. What I don’t know is this: How long has he been in the job? And have you tried talking to him one on one? I think there’s a way to approach him, not from the point of view of a concerned subordinate — he might get defensive — but as a supportive colleague. You might consider telling him (reiterating, actually) how much you and your co-workers want to be involved in the work your team does, and that your offers of assistance might help.
But back to the issue of whether or not to approach H.R. I’ll be honest: I’m torn. I’ve worked for companies with responsive H.R. departments, but I’ve also had one or two jobs in which human resources’ primary mission appeared to be to protect employees in upper management from those further down the ladder. In these situations it wasn’t so much that I thought that going to H.R. about my concerns would be “career suicide” but that it was unlikely that H.R. would, or could, do anything to ameliorate the situation. And that, of course, was enough to make me want to leave.
But maybe I am looking at it all wrong.
I contacted an H.R. expert to get his take. Peter Cappelli is a professor of management at the Wharton School of Business and director for the Center for Human Resources at the University of Pennsylvania. He’s also a co-author of a recent article in the Harvard Business Review titled “HR’s New Role.” In it, Mr. Cappelli and his co-author, Ranya Nehmeh, argue that, thanks to the current tight job market, H.R. departments need to redouble their efforts to support and retain employees. But that doesn’t mean that they need to — or can be expected to — solve an employee’s problem.
Mr. Cappelli explained — and I’m not suggesting this is what you want — that instead of wishing H.R. might solve a problem, employees in tough situations turn to H.R. for help in finding solutions that workers can carry out themselves. In your case, for example, you might want to first ask yourself what it is you want to have happen. Then approach H.R. to explain the situation and ask for advice on what to do. (Most likely the H.R. person is going to turn the question back onto you and ask you whether you’ve approached your boss.) This is always a pretty safe approach, Mr. Cappelli said. “You’re probably not going to get into trouble for that because it looks like you’re being responsible, and you’re trying to do something rather than push it off” onto human resources.
In other words, find ways to empower yourself while also managing expectations. As Mr. Cappelli put it, H.R. professionals are not advocates for individual employees. They work for the organization, and if your complaint is somewhat ambiguous — your manager is not managing a team well, versus, say, your manager is stealing from the company — they’re not necessarily going to take up your position. “They’re working for the company and they’re working in the company’s hierarchy, and your boss is above you,” Mr. Cappelli said. “So if they had to choose who to believe, they’re going to believe your boss.”
Getting a Name Right
I have a co-worker whose name is frequently mispronounced by others. This co-worker has included the correct pronunciation in their Slack bio, and I’ve heard them say their name, so I’m confident I know how it should be pronounced. Despite this, people across various teams — and even on our own team — often get it wrong. What troubles me is that my co-worker never corrects anyone during meetings or calls, and I can’t help but feel upset on their behalf. I want to address the issue because I believe we should strive to call everyone by the correct name/pronunciation, but I’m unsure if it’s my place to intervene or how to approach this without overstepping. Would it be inappropriate for me to privately reach out to those mispronouncing their name to gently correct them? Or should I let my co-worker decide how to handle it?
— Name-Conscious Colleague
This is tough. Names can be hard to pronounce for a variety of reasons. The name sounds “foreign” or is uncommon. The name reads as one thing but sounds like another. The name is ambiguous, or pronunciation could go any number of ways. (“Anna,” which is a name common in a variety of languages, from Spanish to Italian to Russian, falls into this category.)
But continued mispronunciation of someone’s name can say a lot about a person. It suggests a lack of attention to detail. A failure to listen. Faulty memory. Or, at worst, purposeful disrespect. (Remember how Donald Trump and other Republicans insisted on mispronouncing Kamala Harris’s first name during the recent presidential campaign?)
We hear our names spoken aloud so rarely that when we do, we want others to get it right. A guy I dated recently confessed that because he’d never said my name out loud that he didn’t know how to pronounce it. Even though I don’t much care if people refer to me as “AN-na” (the correct pronunciation) or “AH-na,” I thought his self-intervention was charming, and thoughtful.
For some people, though, mispronunciation of their name is a lifelong irritation. I started a job a few years ago where one of the top execs had a name that “read” as one thing but was actually pronounced slightly differently. When I made the mistake of mispronouncing her name during an introductory meeting, she was quick to correct me (somewhat sharply, I might add). But I understood her position. She probably has to issue corrections a lot, and the confident way in which I pronounced — or in this case mispronounced — her name probably rankled.
But back to your colleague and whether you should intervene. I don’t think you should. Instead, I think you can simply educate others by continuing to show, not tell — that is, by pronouncing your colleague’s name correctly in front of others. Just don’t reach out privately to co-workers — that might come across as patronizing or put them on the defensive. Be confident that your co-worker is dealing with it the best way they know how to right now, and let them decide how to deal with it in the future. And that just might be saying nothing.
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