minoanmiss (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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agonyaunt2025-03-20 04:05 pm
minoanmiss) wrote in agonyaunt2025-03-20 04:05 pm
Entry tags:
Ask a Manager: My new manager is from a country at war with mine
I am living in Europe but I have a lot of family in Ukraine.
My job just hired a new line manager for my team, an external hire. Today was their first day on the job and we had a team meeting where we were all being introduced for the first time. After a round of introductions, they said, “I noticed that there are multiple people from Ukraine on the team. I am from Russia, I wonder how that will go.” My internal reaction was, “Yes, I wonder as well, and I really wish this wasn’t sprung up on me in a team meeting.” Obviously, we should all treat people as individuals, I don’t know what their position is on the war, and good for them for noticing the inherent trickiness of the situation. But they didn’t follow up with any explicit comments about what they believe, and even just that makes me worried about how I’d have to phrase things about them. My job has been happy with my performance so far but there has been periodic impact on my day-to-day work when family and friends had various losses, injuries, and close calls that affected me as well, and I generally gave context to my manager about what was going on without thinking too hard about how to phrase it.
Do you think my company should have done anything differently (other than not hiring a good candidate, which seems unreasonable)? Are there things that I should consider for dealing with this? In the past all my managers checked in with me on how things were going and while I don’t rant about my personal life, I haven’t had to worry about saying something controversial before, I guess I had the good luck of working with people who had similar views on political events that affected me personally.
It would have been odd if your company had done anything differently. People aren’t their countries, and there’s no reason to assume anything either way about the new hire’s stance; the only thing it makes sense to assume is that they’ll behave professionally no matter what political differences they might have with team mates (on anything, not just this). If that turns out not to be the case, that’s something you’d need to escalate, but that would be an aberration, not something anyone should go in expecting will happen.
The new hire’s comment was a little awkward, but it actually doesn’t reveal much and likely was borne out of feeling awkward about things themself.
I think, too, that if you’re affected by something affecting your family’s safety, it’s still fine to share that! It’s likely to go better if everyone proceeds from the assumption that all involved are decent people with empathy for others. If that turns out not to be the case, you’ll find out soon enough (and is something you’d need to escalate, per my first paragraph), but don’t ascribe that to them prematurely.
I hope your family is safe.
My job just hired a new line manager for my team, an external hire. Today was their first day on the job and we had a team meeting where we were all being introduced for the first time. After a round of introductions, they said, “I noticed that there are multiple people from Ukraine on the team. I am from Russia, I wonder how that will go.” My internal reaction was, “Yes, I wonder as well, and I really wish this wasn’t sprung up on me in a team meeting.” Obviously, we should all treat people as individuals, I don’t know what their position is on the war, and good for them for noticing the inherent trickiness of the situation. But they didn’t follow up with any explicit comments about what they believe, and even just that makes me worried about how I’d have to phrase things about them. My job has been happy with my performance so far but there has been periodic impact on my day-to-day work when family and friends had various losses, injuries, and close calls that affected me as well, and I generally gave context to my manager about what was going on without thinking too hard about how to phrase it.
Do you think my company should have done anything differently (other than not hiring a good candidate, which seems unreasonable)? Are there things that I should consider for dealing with this? In the past all my managers checked in with me on how things were going and while I don’t rant about my personal life, I haven’t had to worry about saying something controversial before, I guess I had the good luck of working with people who had similar views on political events that affected me personally.
It would have been odd if your company had done anything differently. People aren’t their countries, and there’s no reason to assume anything either way about the new hire’s stance; the only thing it makes sense to assume is that they’ll behave professionally no matter what political differences they might have with team mates (on anything, not just this). If that turns out not to be the case, that’s something you’d need to escalate, but that would be an aberration, not something anyone should go in expecting will happen.
The new hire’s comment was a little awkward, but it actually doesn’t reveal much and likely was borne out of feeling awkward about things themself.
I think, too, that if you’re affected by something affecting your family’s safety, it’s still fine to share that! It’s likely to go better if everyone proceeds from the assumption that all involved are decent people with empathy for others. If that turns out not to be the case, you’ll find out soon enough (and is something you’d need to escalate, per my first paragraph), but don’t ascribe that to them prematurely.
I hope your family is safe.