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Do As I Poorly Say, Not As I Poorly Do

Jan 28, 2009
By .
Life

I am not a good boss at all. I am certain of it. I have a pathological need to be liked, and I often give vague and unclear instructions to things I want done. Still, my assistant has performed admirably. No doubt looking at me & my perpetual state of panicked befuddlement and smiling. We are both acutely aware that her job is not a life-long endeavour, and does not involve anything she is really interested in.

Alas, that might have started to creep into her work. I gave her a rather large project determining how many members we had at each of the large firms in our county. I have to say, the results were disappointing. I have now double checked over half of them and see where corners were cut, obvious mistakes made, etc.

Here's the problem, how do I (who has been known to do some pretty shoddy work from time to time) have any have any basis to criticize her work? Heck, I remember my days of clock watching and just trying to get through the day as quickly as possible. I think that describes Yesterday, actually.

My feeling is I'm just going to give them back to her redlined, and ask her to take another pass. I still feel relatively uncomfortable with the whole boss thing.

Last 5 posts by Ezra

11 Comments
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11 Comments

  1. Andrew  •  Jan 28, 2009 @6:13 pm

    Unless you think she's quitting tomorrow, you need to give her stronger feedback. Since she's not interested in the work but you guys seem to have a rapport, you can try appealing to guilt: "I need you to do better than this — I can't re-do your work and still get my job done." Be sure to include a specific action step for her: "From now on, please double-check every project for mistakes and typos before you give it to me." If you want to be accommodating, you can add: "If that means you need more time to complete a project, let me know right away."

    I'm super-uncomfortable with the boss thing, too, so this advice might kind of suck.

  2. Joshua  •  Jan 28, 2009 @8:16 pm

    Why not just tell her the truth? That you, too, have done shoddy work in the past, but that you regret it, because every time you hand in sub-par product, you build a reputation for creating sub-par product.

    "Future employers are going to ask for references, and you'd rather that I could say that you were one of my favorite employees and made the most of your time here, rather than having to half-ass it and say you put in your hours."

  3. Stephen  •  Jan 29, 2009 @7:35 am

    As a Peon, I view Andrew's response to be better than Joshua's. I view Joshua's as a threat while Andrew's is more constructive.

    And I wouldn't admit to shoddy work. You are the Boss. Lay out your requirements clearly and expect performance. When it doesn't meet your standards, clearly state why. It's what I would expect.

    Now if the reason for her misstep is because of unclear instructions, I would admit to that. Something along the lines of

    "I think maybe I wasn't clear when I gave you this project. I need X, Y, and Z to be done and I see some of that missing in your report. Please take another pass at it and let me know if you have any questions."

  4. Mark  •  Jan 29, 2009 @8:28 am

    Why not just completely level with her?

    "Look, I know you hate your job. #$%^, I hate my job. In fact, if you are a human and you like your job and that job doesn't involve the consumption of large quantities of alcohol, I have to question your sanity. But when we don't put our best effort into our jobs, we wind up having to do the $%^& all over again. Which means we have to spend even more time doing the jobs that we hate."

  5. Stacy  •  Jan 29, 2009 @8:30 am

    This reminds me of a post I read yesterday on Defending People: http://bennettandbennett.com/blog/2009/01/from-the-mailbag.html

    Ask her, "is the the best you can do?"

  6. Charles  •  Jan 29, 2009 @8:55 am

    You should probably start with this timely article.

  7. Ezra  •  Jan 29, 2009 @10:28 am

    I love that there is constructive & well meaning advice to my admission that I am a terrible boss. Thanks for the feedback folks. In general, I try to avoid the platitudes that I couldn't stand in my recent life as a peon (and let's be honest, middle management is a peon with business cards..) We are meeting on Friday, and I think my route will go more down the Andrew or Mark route. That has nothing to do with the value of any of the advice, only my own comfort level.

  8. Ezra  •  Jan 29, 2009 @10:29 am

    Oh, and Henry Kissinger is a douche bag.

  9. Bob  •  Jan 29, 2009 @11:28 am

    Tell her that if she expects you to proposition her for sex, she needs to do better work than that.

  10. Joshua  •  Jan 29, 2009 @4:09 pm

    Trying to guilt her is simply going to lead to resentment, and undercut what little authority you might have – you become the supplicant.

    If you can't handle the direct approach, at least avoid the guilt.

    By all means tell her to come to you for clarity if she can't figure out what you want.

    Be sure to let us know what happens afterwards, of course.

  11. Eduardo  •  Jan 30, 2009 @10:54 am

    I'm with Joshua. You can point out the mistake, but no need to guilt her about it.