Ask a Manager: Update to "My New Manager Loves Ice-Breakers"

[minoanmiss]

3. New manager loves ice-breakers

So I spoke to my manager about being on the spectrum and how hard it is for me doing icebreakers and being called on like that is extremely stressful. She promised to stop and just didn’t. The very next day she called on me again for a “fun fact about you” so I decided to really make myself heard. My fun fact ended up being that I’m autistic and video chats and ice breakers are extremely stressful for me. The meeting ended very quickly and she then insisted on video chatting with me to apologize, still not recognizing my stated desires to communicate via email. She has slowed with the ice breakers and rarely calls on people now but still seems to think that she can change me. Ableism just seems to be her bread and butter, if she just ignores disability it won’t exist.

Comments

[minoanmiss]

AAM is having a lot of followups, mostly good, some amazing.

Go LW go! aNd yet you shouldn't've had to do this because the manager should have the sense God gave a housefly and just stop with her ableism already.

Ugh, icebreakers. The comments include an excellent example of why they don't work, here.

[ioplokon]

oh no not the guess the childhood pictures game. in addition to potentially outing trans people, you better hope your company is actually ethnically diverse bc otherwise it's like, everyone pretending they don't know who the one photo of a Black baby is.

idk just like, let working relationships develop naturally?

[lilysea]

Plus for people who were abused as children, photos of themselves as a child could be very upsetting or even triggering.

[conuly]

Or they might not have/have access to childhood photos, for various reasons.

[joyeuce]

Yes, I discovered when I was about 10 and was told "bring a baby pic into school" that my parents had no individual baby photos of me - family group shots from my christening, but nothing else. I asked why and my mother said they didn't have a camera then, though presumably someone had one at the christening! They'd acquired one by the time my brother came along a couple of years later.

[cereta]

I'll never forget the second-last group session of DBT I had, when we did games, including bingo involving DBT terms (they gave the definition, we had to figure out the terms, and no, I did not roll my eyes. One member protested about halfway through before saying she thought this was really unfair, given that she was dyslexic. She was clearly upset. The leader, a frickin' psychologist, nodded and continued with the came. The session ended with the member in question crying and unable to stop. She had to go down to the walk-in clinic after.

I never entirely trusted that practitioner again, and to this day, I am pissed at myself for not saying anything.

[shirou]

I'm glad LW spoke up. There is no reason they should have to endure endless icebreakers. Why would any manager do this? Worse, in the original letter, LW says that the manager writes down employees' answers to personal icebreaker questions. That's just creepy.

The follow-up video chat is another matter. Discussion (about work-related topics) with peers, managers, and subordinates is required for many jobs. I doubt many employers would consider LW's "stated desires to communicate via email" a reasonable accommodation, at least not in absolute terms.

[lokifan]

I agree that discussion is probably needed overall but I think for this specific thing - apologising to them - it's not unreasonable to be annoyed that the manager didn't apologise by email.

[julian]

I like icebreakers, to a certain extent. No, not the "bring in a picture of yourself as a kid" ones. (For so many reasons...) But in say, *monthly* meetings where they can be part of team building.

But this manager is ex-tra creepy with the writing private info down from both group and one-on-one meetings, which: No.

With an actual manager with boundaries who wanted to work with the LW and yet still have icebreakers, I would suggest emailing the LW the questions/activities ahead of time, to let them prepare for it.

[taimatsu]

Agreed, there are ways to ‘warm up’ groups which avoid triggering any specific sensitivities/meet people’s needs - but you have to put some work into learning what the group’s needs are and then choosing activities which work for everyone. (And an easy change is to have volunteers to participate or to share info, rather than forcing everyone to do it.)

[laurajv]

Just last night I had to pull the "you didn't hear it when I said this before, so now I'm saying it in a situation where you cannot ignore it" routine. Good for LW.