Frustrated with co-worker

ACG

Your manager has asked you to manage him without having the authority to manage... Sooooo what your saying is your manager is asking you to do what is their job but without the authority.

Personally I would decline the offer.

Takeaway_Addict

Newlyboughthouse wrote: »

My colleague and I work from home. To cut it short, my coworker has no initiative, blocks 4 hours out to do something that should only take 20 minutes, will not offer himself to help anyone out like he should as part of his role, and makes mistakes continuously.

I am therefore the one everyone calls on and the one that is relied upon.

Our boss has now asked me to line manage him directly and coach him. The problem is, I am feeling a lot of negativity towards him, and he hasn't seemed to have learnt from previous critique from others. How the hell do I go about this i.e. how do I re-word what I really want to say to him i.e.

'what the f**k have you been doing all day'
'why haven't you offered to go?'
'why has it taken you so long to do this simple task?'
'please can you stop calling me with stupid questions that you can easily find the answer to yourself'.

I can see what my boss is doing - well it could be one of 2 things. Either he is palming him off on me, or he is trying to coach me by getting me to coach someone else. I am going to take this as the latter as feel it would be good for me but OMG this guy is a joke.

What to do?

Tell your boss to do his work himself!

Candyapple

ACG wrote: »

Your manager has asked you to manage him without having the authority to manage... Sooooo what your saying is your manager is asking you to do what is their job but without the authority.

Personally I would decline the offer.

This^^.

Also, if you are the one everyone calls on and the one that is relied upon, then all you are doing is carrying this person and doing their work for them. You are making a rod for your own back by continuing this way as everyone will continue making excuses for him, whilst you will be the one expected to pick up the slack.

Tell your manager a polite no thanks and carry on as you are. If your colleague is making mistakes/taking too long, refer him to your manager for help, not you.

motorguy

Newlyboughthouse wrote: »

My colleague and I work from home. To cut it short, my coworker has no initiative, blocks 4 hours out to do something that should only take 20 minutes, will not offer himself to help anyone out like he should as part of his role, and makes mistakes continuously.

I am therefore the one everyone calls on and the one that is relied upon.

Our boss has now asked me to line manage him directly and coach him. The problem is, I am feeling a lot of negativity towards him, and he hasn't seemed to have learnt from previous critique from others. How the hell do I go about this i.e. how do I re-word what I really want to say to him i.e.

'what the f**k have you been doing all day'
'why haven't you offered to go?'
'why has it taken you so long to do this simple task?'
'please can you stop calling me with stupid questions that you can easily find the answer to yourself'.

I can see what my boss is doing - well it could be one of 2 things. Either he is palming him off on me, or he is trying to coach me by getting me to coach someone else. I am going to take this as the latter as feel it would be good for me but OMG this guy is a joke.

What to do?

SMART objectives.



You need to be setting him specific tasks with specific times of completion. Agree with him how they should take and when hes going to have them completed for -

"ok i need you to do X, Y, Z, when can you commit to having those done for?"

"that seems a long time you're suggesting to do X. Whats the breakdown of the task as you see it, and where do you see the bottlenecks? What can you do to overcome those?"

Email him the task list "as discussed on our call, please find attached tasks, with agreed completion date and time of 12:00 on XXX."

Have daily "standup" calls with him every morning @ 09:00 taking 15 mins to review what was done the previous day, and what hes doing in the coming day. Check hes on track for the agreed tasks and timescales. If theres slippage, ask him why, and ask what he can do to meet the agreed timescale, as you made commitments to others based on his commitment to you.

A month of that and he'll either be in shape or you'll have a months worth of evidence to start to manage him out via your HR processes.

Newlyboughthouse

motorguy wrote: »

SMART objectives.



You need to be setting him specific tasks with specific times of completion. Agree with him how they should take and when hes going to have them completed for -

"ok i need you to do X, Y, Z, when can you commit to having those done for?"

"that seems a long time you're suggesting to do X. Whats the breakdown of the task as you see it, and where do you see the bottlenecks? What can you do to overcome those?"

Email him the task list "as discussed on our call, please find attached tasks, with agreed completion date and time of 12:00 on XXX."

Have daily "standup" calls with him every morning @ 09:00 taking 15 mins to review what was done the previous day, and what hes doing in the coming day. Check hes on track for the agreed tasks and timescales. If theres slippage, ask him why, and ask what he can do to meet the agreed timescale, as you made commitments to others based on his commitment to you.

A month of that and he'll either be in shape or you'll have a months worth of evidence to start to manage him out via your HR processes.

Yeah this absolutely seems like something our boss should be doing....

motorguy

Newlyboughthouse wrote: »

Yeah this absolutely seems like something our boss should be doing....

Well, if he wont, and hes getting you to do it with this other guy, why not lead from the front?

If he sees it working for you and other bloke he might take it on as an approach.

You need to get the other guy - and yourself by the sounds of it - out of a rut.

I've regularly had a team of just me and some other bloke. I didnt NOT do those things just because my boss didnt.

getmore4less

You could try the "I think they might be onto you if you don't pull your finger out and start working harder and delivering you may be out".

Happytravelling

Or say that your manager has asked you to catch up with him about x, y and z, because it takes you however long to do them, whereas it takes him however long. This way, you can coach him without trying to do it secretly. If he has an issue, say you assumed he'd know you'd been asked and suggest he pick it up with your manager, but that you're happy to go through any training. Just knowing the situation might make him buck his ideas up.

Coaching is effective when there's a recognised coaching relationship and buy in from both parties, you'll get stitched up if you try covert coaching because it'll reflect badly on you.

Timpu

motorguy wrote: »

SMART objectives.



You need to be setting him specific tasks with specific times of completion. Agree with him how they should take and when hes going to have them completed for -

"ok i need you to do X, Y, Z, when can you commit to having those done for?"

"that seems a long time you're suggesting to do X. Whats the breakdown of the task as you see it, and where do you see the bottlenecks? What can you do to overcome those?"

Email him the task list "as discussed on our call, please find attached tasks, with agreed completion date and time of 12:00 on XXX."

Have daily "standup" calls with him every morning @ 09:00 taking 15 mins to review what was done the previous day, and what hes doing in the coming day. Check hes on track for the agreed tasks and timescales. If theres slippage, ask him why, and ask what he can do to meet the agreed timescale, as you made commitments to others based on his commitment to you.

A month of that and he'll either be in shape or you'll have a months worth of evidence to start to manage him out via your HR processes.

^^^This is exactly what I did when my boss asked me to coach someone. I decided it was an opportunity and a statement of trust so accepted. I quickly discovered the person was all talk and zero work. As per the above make sure you put stuff in an email, that's really important in managing slackers and it means there's no room for argument or for things to reflect badly on you.

elsien

If you're both home workers and you don't have the authority to line manage him it's hard to see how this can work unless he's on board with it. Your manager really should be having this conversation with him first and make him aware that he's potentially setting himself up for performance management further down the line.
otherwise all he has to is ignore your coaching phone calls and emails, which it doesn't like he'd have too much difficulty in doing.