'My Former Employee Is Badmouthing Me to My Staff'

[oursin]

Alison@Ask A Manager at Inc:

By Alison Green, Inc.com columnist@askamanager

A reader asks:

I recently hired an employee in a pinch because we thought he could fill a gap quickly and efficiently, but it turns out he was terrible and either dishonest or in denial about his own skills. He did not listen or follow instructions, and his customer service skills were awful. Many times, even after after coaching, he was unable to complete tasks correctly.

After six months, he decided to resign. He wrote an email saying that he couldn't work for me anymore because I am angry and hostile. He also wrote that after speaking with other employees, he has concluded that I am an unhappy person with anger issues, and that he feels that attempting to change the atmosphere would not be possible as this is just who I am at my core.

It's one thing to raise the issue that our professional interactions were not positive (which is valid--I admittedly lost my patience with this guy), but it's another for him to say that I'm an unhappy person at my core. He doesn't know me.

If I'm honest, I just didn't feel like I had a lot of recourse, and I was angry about it. He frustrated me several times a day and I admittedly stopped putting forth effort to handle his shortcomings in a better way because I was tired of it.

I really want to set the record straight with this guy, that he doesn't know me personally and I'm not an unhappy, angry person. I failed as a manager, but he also failed as an employee. Is that worth it? More important, I want to set the record straight with my staff. How do I move forward with them?

Green responds:

Definitely don't pursue the idea of trying to set the record straight with this guy now that he's gone. He no longer works for you, and it would be odd to contact him now to tell him he's wrong about you. It will look to him -- and more important, to anyone else who hears about it -- like you're inappropriately holding on to a work disagreement that ended with his departure and that you're overly invested in what a former employee thinks of you.

Your staff who are still there are a different story. Even with them, though, I'd be very cautious about attempting to address this. They're going to believe what they know from their own firsthand experience with you. If you've been a generally good manager and not angry or hostile, his words aren't likely to carry a ton of weight (and that goes triple if they saw the shortcomings in his work).

The best thing you can do is to conduct yourself well and trust that the people who work for you will see that. That will garner you far more respect than trying to tell them your side of what should be a private personnel issue.

The exception to this is if it's become truly disruptive on your team. If people are gossiping about the situation and it's become a distraction, you'd need to address that. But even then, you wouldn't get into all the details of what happened. People expect their manager to be the bigger person in a dispute like this and to be discreet about whatever happened with a former employee.

But I'm concerned about how the situation got to the point that it did. Hiring mistakes happen, but once you've realized someone isn't doing the work at the level you need and isn't responding to feedback, you've got to take swift action to resolve it (including letting them go if coaching doesn't work). What you can't do is just stop trying to manage the person -- which is what it sounds like happened here, and then you got angry because you felt you didn't have the tools to resolve the situation. But frustration and anger are not OK for a manager to display at work. A manager displaying anger at work creates a deeply unpleasant environment for other people. It will also make people lose respect for you because you'll look like you don't know how to exercise your authority appropriately.

So while it might be true that you're not a fundamentally angry or unhappy person, which this employee's email accused you of, it sounds like you did bring those emotions into work in a way that wasn't appropriate. You've got to take responsibility for that and figure out how to avoid it in the future.

That complicates my advice above about how if you've been a generally good manager and not angry or hostile, this person's words won't carry much weight with people ... because it sounds like you were angry and hostile toward him. And if people saw that, they may indeed give it some weight. You can't change the past, and you can't argue against what really happened -- but you can resolve to handle this kind of situation differently going forward, double down on managing effectively from now on, and trust that in time people will see that.

Comments

[movingfinger]

If the LW's employees were that miserable, turnover would be telling the tale. LW doesn't mention high turnover.

I picture this as a small business like an auto repair shop or something, where everyone works together in the same space. Seems like LW does need to keep a lid on their emotions and put a little mental distance between themself and the manager role, not to be personal about things.