It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go…
1. My coworker constantly fact-checks everyone else
I have a coworker who has a habit of fact-checking other team members. She is not a manager. If a team member mentions information in a meeting, casually discusses a topic in the hallway, or sends an email to the team, this coworker will fact-check the information and reply-all and/or discuss her findings with the group. The fact-checking can range anywhere from verifying incoming rainstorms to confirming/denying the accuracy of information in an article that a team member shares with the group.
If she finds out information is correct, she will share that she checked/confirmed. Typically incorrect information is pointed out a few times a week. Incorrect can mean that a rainstorm will arrive at a different hour, or that she disagrees with the premise of an article, etc.
The behavior raises eyebrows and makes others uncomfortable. Any suggestions for how to approach the issue, or if it’s best to ignore?
She’s fact-checking trivial information from a casual hallway discussion and emailing her findings to your whole group? Oh dear.
If you were her manager, I’d tell you to ask her to cut it out, but as a coworker, I’d just it go and know that everyone else finds this really weird too. I’ve got to think that this kind of know-it-all-ism is a real impediment in her relationships with people.
But if it’s really annoying you, you could say, “Hey, I’m sure you don’t mean it this way, but doing all this fact-checking of other people is coming across kind of oddly — like you don’t trust people and want to correct them, even on inconsequential details.” Or in the moment when she does it, you could just say, “I don’t think we needed that fact-checked” (especially when she’s confirming the info is correct) or “I’m finding the follow-up on such minor stuff kind of distracting — could we save it for things where the substance matters more?”
2. Can I get out of a personality assessment at work?
My employer is rolling out one of those personality/behavior assessments. There was no discussion of whether or not we (the rest of the staff) wanted to do this, or how required it is or how to opt out — it was simply presented as “staff are going to do this.” I’m strongly opposed to any sort of personality assessment because I find them not useful and a massive violation of privacy, crossing the line between professional and personal. Do I have any standing to ask if I can opt out? If so, how would I go about doing this professionally? Note that if they say it’s required or else I’ll get fired, then I’ll suck it up and do it, but I feel like not even asking would be a betrayal to my personality (ironically).
Also, my manager is on leave right now so I wouldn’t be able to discuss this with her. The assessments are being overseen by HR.
You can try to opt out if you want, and it’s useful for employers to hear that not everyone is happy to be asked to do these. That said, there may be a cost to trying to get out of it — in terms of how much political capital you’ll use that then won’t be there if you want to ask for an exception for something else in the future — so you’ll need to factor that into whether you feel strongly enough about it or not.
If you do decide to try to get out of it, I’d say this: “I’d like to excuse myself from participating in this; there are loads of issues with these assessments’ scientific validity, and they’re more personal than I’m comfortable getting at work. So I want to give you a heads-up that I plan to sit this out.”
3. When someone thinks I didn’t answer their email, but I did
I’ve had the same email issue pop up frequently in the past few months: I’ll receive an emailed question from a colleague or customer. I respond immediately with all necessary information. About a week later, I receive a forwarded copy of their initial question with something like “What’s the status here????” on top. Clearly, they did not see or lost my response.
In the most recent incident, my boss and several others were copied the second time around. I responded by forwarding my original date and timed-stamped response with “please let me know if there were additional questions beyond these” and keeping my boss copied.
But I worry about making the questioning person look stupid, especially if they are a higher-up. And it’s a customer, I don’t want them to feel adversarial, even if they are wrong. Thoughts on how to handle this?
Before you forward the original email, I’d first reply to their follow-up and say something like this: “I actually sent you an answer to this on Tuesday of last week, but maybe it got lost somewhere along the way! I’ll forward it to you right now.” That way, you’re helping them save face a bit and you’re allowing for the possibility that it really didn’t make it to them for some reason — and you’re just making it an overall more pleasant interaction.
4. My employees keep socializing with the person who managed them before me
I manage 10 people in my department. Before me, there was a manager who left to work for another company. He left all of our projects somewhat of a mess and did not supervise the group at all. Now I am stuck fixing everything. My employees, however, have met with him socially several times, and are now inviting him to their work anniversary get-together. They also allowed him into the office to look at one of their computers, even though he no longer works there. I know I can’t tell them not to socialize with him on a personal level, even though they’ve all known each other less than a year and I don’t understand why they would want to anyway. I am incredibly bothered by their continued association with him. Should I let it go?
Yep, you definitely shouldn’t try to control who they talk to outside of work. It’ll make you look petty and controlling, and it’s likely to really poison how you’re seen. You shouldn’t refuse to let them invite him to this work event either, if you’d normally allow another non-employee to attend. However, it’s perfectly reasonable not to allow former employees access to your company’s computers (!) and you should put a stop to that and make it known that that’s a security issue.
5. Can I ask current employees what to expect from a company’s interview process?
I studied computer programming during my time at my university. Although I prepared a lot, I was recently kind of blindsided with one of the pre-interview questions I was asked by a small local company in my region. I got the math problems fine, and the code for the programming question worked as well, but apparently they were looking for something else in the little program I wrote, and I was rejected. I don’t want this to happen again.
I might have two interviews coming up, I’m not sure. But would it be proper to, after an interview is scheduled, look up employees at the prospective companies I’m interviewing for and ask them questions about what their interview experience was like and what to expect? I’m not sure if it’s good etiquette or if they’d find it flattering.
Nope! There’s too much of a chance that it’ll come across as trying to get an advantage in their interview process that they don’t intend for candidates to get. They want to know how you do without insider info helping you. And actually, that’s in your best interest too — you want to be screened out of jobs that you aren’t a strong fit for, since you don’t want to end up in a job that isn’t the right match for you.
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can I get out of a personality assessment at work, my coworker constantly fact-checks everything, and more was originally published by Alison Green on Ask a Manager.