Work

I've not been in quite the same situation as I work in a large organisation which has a lot of processes in place for performance management, and sets out what line managers are meant to do. And I'd have struggled a lot more with managing people without this.

Where I work everyone has a set of objectives which are formally reviewed every 6 months, and line managers have 1 to 1 conversations with staff every month to discuss progress with this. I don't like conflict at all, so having a set time scheduled each month with the person I was managing, and set of objectives to refer to I found much easier to address issues with performance. I also tended to approach it indirectly by asking how they thought they had been progressing towards an objective. Work priorities don't change too much from week to week where I work so monthly conversations I found was a good frequency, but once a week or fortnight, or longer periods might work better in your situation. Having team meetings where you review progress towards team objectives is another approach that might  work.

It might be easier to take a lighter touch to managing other people's time and workload. I tended to only set priorities and deadlines for completing A, B, and C, and leave it to individuals to manage their own time/workload - and tell them to ask me if they are unsure what they should be doing next. If I felt someone wasn't on track to complete any of these tasks, I usually ask for a progress update. And if somebody isn't able to complete all the tasks, I usually save that conversation until a scheduled monthly conversation, not least to give me lots of time to work out what I'm going to say to them.

For tasks that people don't like doing, I've found dividing the task up equally between between all team members (usually including myself), at least stops people thinking it's unfair - or having a rota so that a different team member does it each day. And again asking for progress updates, or reviewing in 1 to 1 conversations if I thought they weren't pulling their weight. The "I'm busy" excuse seems really unlogical to me - if somebody is genuinely busy then I'll ask them to treat the new task I'm giving them as a higher priority than whatever else they are doing. The only time I've had somebody refusing to do something, we reached an agreement to remove some lower priority tasks from their workload and that at least removed the excuse of being too busy.

Hello NAS64395

I fully recognise the Hell of managing people that you’ve described! I’ve done it in the past but was totally winging it and definitely relied on the processes to dictate the objectives and priorities. Now that I am older and going through menopause-mania I am even more deskilled at this and hence even more clueless.

I do wonder if having a morning ‘huddle’ might help though. If you have a list of things that need doing everyday you could make the team decide amongst them who’s going to do what and write that up on a whiteboard so basically you are just supervising them making the decisions. If you completely step back from deciding who does what then they have to do all the decision making and sign their names against who’s going to do what. It might even get them to work better as a team.

The other thing to try might be divide and conquer. Give them each a task they have to achieve alongside the day job duties with a deadline so they suddenly have some pressure to do something on their own. With individual objectives they might just have to buckle down and you might find it brings more structure to the team because they’ll have to structure their work to achieve their individual objectives.

I recently had to ‘pull someone up’ on tardiness and had to write down what I needed to say before I did it. I wrote down questions that would be supportive too: is there anything you need from me to help you? Does your work need to be structured in a different way to help you? How do you think you could improve? Is there anything causing you problems that I might be able to help with? If I hadn’t done that I would have come across too aggressive and alienating because actually I just wanted to know what was so difficult about turning up on time, not being on his mobile phone the whole time and disappearing for half an hour 10 times a day???

Before I did this I also asked a friend how they would approach the conversation (I couldn’t even think how to start it). I find I did this more and more these days, often asking my neuro-typical husband how to tackle something or what his take on a situation is.

Setting formal objectives helps and having a structured conversation at regular 1:1s also helps.

Having SMART objectives (Specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, time bound) might help for each staff member and using a basic form to record different parts of the conversation: Review objectives, what did you do this week? What are your next steps? Updates from me. Concerns from you. Anything else you need to raise (annual leave, training, etc)

Echoing advice from others on here: Basically when in doubt put a structure in that works for you - it might never ‘feel’ like you know what you are doing but the structures and processes you put in place could do the management job for you.

I wish you luck my friend. Let us know how it goes. 

Hello 64395, you sound like a considerate, thorough and nice colleague.  So often good workers are promoted to the "first level of incompetence" , meaning the point where they can no longer be as wonderful.   I read your description and I admit i would probably fall apart if I had those responsibilities. So I am not here to offer any practical help. However, you are among friends here so if you want to chat about something else to balance your anxieties or if we can cheer you up, feel free. 

by the way - nothing you wrote sounds remotely silly.  

I’m not diagnosed yet but my manager knows I’m on the waiting list. Nobody else knows. I’m not sure my manager knows what to do with that information and honestly, I’m not even sure what would help and what exactly I could ask for.

There were problems in the past when I trained and signed someone off as competent and later they did something wrong (I don’t know if it was intentional or not) and I was told off as responsible because I signed them off. But they did everything right when I watched them. 

Another issue is telling someone to do something. 

Situation that happened today: one of my technicians complained that she had nothing to do so I told her what she could do (let’s call it thing A) and she agreed. 

Later today I overheard my 2 technicians talking about what to do and one of them asked the other “what would you like to do?” and she picked something, let’s call it thing B, and he decided to do thing C. 

Of course nobody did the thing A and probably I will do it tomorrow. 

I don’t have anything against thing B and C being done but  I can’t get my message through, no matter how I ask. 

I’m not even sure what exactly I’m doing wrong but it wasn’t the first time - I had the same problem before with different people.

I’ve tried writing to do list on a whiteboard but it got pretty much ignored and I ended up writing lists for myself.

But as a senior lab tech it’s me who is responsible for everything that is done or not done in the lab.

Create the matrix, fill it in with them individually in any spare time - that lets you know what skills they need to learn.     That sets a baseline so you know what they *should* be able to do.       Every time you have to teach them something, document it and add it to the matrix.       On quiet days, make it a training day in turns for them - take one member of the team, go through the matrix and teach them new skills.

If you create logical, measurable systems, your job becomes a simple logical process and any deviations get reported upwards automatically.   No guesswork, no favouritism, just simple steps that you follow.     That system will automatically take the stress away because you are working within a rigid framework - no ambiguity.

Are you diagnosed and have you declared at work?    If yes, as a 'reasonable adjustment', explain to your manager that you are having difficulty with the 'soft skills' and get him to take over those rare pinch-points in your day - it would make you feel supported and more effective in the workplace knowing that he had your back and it would enable you to be good at the rest of your job,

Good advice but I got problems with implementing them. 

For example I got the training sheets for each procedure but I have problems with deciding when to train someone. I know it sounds silly but even agreeing on time of the training is somehow stressful (what if I or them will be doing something else at that time?)

It would be easier if the workload would be the same each day or week but where I work some days or weeks are very busy but some days/weeks are really quiet. But I can’t wait and count on quiet days.

Asking for help and delegating is also stressful.

And, somehow, the more I do it the more difficult it gets. I didn’t think that much about first new people I’ve trained but now even the thought about new people and dealing with them, and starting everything all over again with them makes me really stressed.

Another good practice is to create a training matrix for each of the other lab techs so each job skill is listed separately - so when you have trained them, you both date and sign off that skill on the spreadsheet - they can't claim they don't know how to do things after that - no excuses for not doing their job.

It's also useful to use in an appraisal meeting for discussing progress and competence - to make sure they are still current and compliant - they remove all of their own excuses.

If they are not doing their job and it has to go further, you then have all the data for your manager to make the next decision - not you.

If you have experience and understand your job, then you’ve got it licked!

What I suggest you do is write out a flow chart for each job role you supervise, including your own. This will help clear your mind of having to think about what each person has to do next, while also showing them that you know what your doing and saying. It also gives them guidance of what is expected of them.

If you can and feel it’s necessary you can add expected time frames. E.g “job A 1hr-1hr 15mins. I would always cut time off the end though. So if job A can take up 1hr 30mins, saying max 1hr 15mins means that if someone wants to take the piss and push their luck and take an extra 15mins, then it’s still within your expected time frame.

The other benefit to have a work flow is that you can use it to performance manage everyone in a fair and reasonable way. If someone is consistently missing the time frames then you can say “I’ve noticed you are missing the time frames, can I offer some support?” Hopefully they say yes, you provide support, they improve, job done! Alternatively they say no, they don’t improve, you have the same conversation in 2 or 3 weeks, but you take notes of the conversation and provide them with some set time frames for improvement. That doesn’t happen, you invite them to investigation meeting 1. You say to them “ we had a conversation on X date, we had another conversation on Y date, which you received note of and you have failed to improve, Why? Write all this down. Pass the notes to your manager who holds another meeting (Disciplinary Hear) gives them first written. Fails to improve again within times frames set by your manager at disciplinary, same again, resulting in Final written warning, same again, same process, result summary dismissal. Should take around 6 weeks to get someone out.

It’s important that you always stick to process, always offer support and you manager should always do the dirty bits. I guarantee you get rid of 1 or 2 people and suddenly everyone else fall in line because they know you don’t take any ***. 

I’m not going to lie though, sacking people makes you feel like crap, which is why you stick to process and always be Mr Nice Guy.

Hope this helps.