Difficult co-worker

Igotgame

I've worked in my current role for 4 years. Ive constantly being having issues with a single co-worker. I'm not the only person having issues with her. Shes renowned for being difficult and I was warned to keep a wide berth from her.

The problem is her poor decisions directly impact my ability to do my job well. We work in different departments but she is constantly making poor decisions which I end up having to fix. I dont report to this person but they have a "senior" role on site which means that people generally have to tread carefully around her.

I've discussed it with my Manager and she says we should just give her what she wants, which think is a cop out as I'm ultimately responsible for the result of going with her poor decisions. My manager knows this, and just doesnt want the hassle which I do get, we both just want to do our jobs.

I've tried to discuss it with the person directly but it ends up with her insulting me personally and her storming off when I try to suggest to her different ways of doing things. Its genuinely like trying to deal with a toddler.

I've flagged it to HR informally just to gauge their response and also to check if ai maybe wasnt the issue but I was basically told not to take it further because this person will make everyone's lives harder if its brought up formally.

Nobody wants to work with this person but its unavoidable for me.

Any ideas what I should do?

krissovo

Tough situation with zero support, it is probably time to brush up on your influencing skills if you want to stay there. You need to influence her in a way that will have a positive outcome, plant enough seeds and make it like she has come up with the idea is a strategy I used in the past.

Another technique is to build a success plan and sit down with everyone in a success workshop to focus on the “Result” you need. It’s different to a project plan in that you define what success looks like and plan the steps needed to get there. Use techniques like the 5 whys to challenge the steps and decisions as a group and it will filter out the bad decisions.

zapper55

Unless theres an impact on company productivity they wont care. Keep an account of the impact on the company (not you). You could bring it to your boss then, maybe seeing it in writing will help.

I suspect though, that nothing will change. If you like the job and want to stay, you'll need to manage your responses to their poor decisions, for the sake of your own mental health.

OMM 0000

If management and HR don't care, you're not going to win this battle.

Is there any way you can stop fixing her mistake and start letting projects fail because of her?

Personally I'd start sending e-mails every time I notice her mistakes and CC her and my boss and possibly another stakeholder who cares.

_Brian

Igotgame wrote: »

I've worked in my current role for 4 years. Ive constantly being having issues with a single co-worker. I'm not the only person having issues with her. Shes renowned for being difficult and I was warned to keep a wide berth from her.

The problem is her poor decisions directly impact my ability to do my job well. We work in different departments but she is constantly making poor decisions which I end up having to fix. I dont report to this person but they have a "senior" role on site which means that people generally have to tread carefully around her.

I've discussed it with my Manager and she says we should just give her what she wants, which think is a cop out as I'm ultimately responsible for the result of going with her poor decisions. My manager knows this, and just doesnt want the hassle which I do get, we both just want to do our jobs.

I've tried to discuss it with the person directly but it ends up with her insulting me personally and her storming off when I try to suggest to her different ways of doing things. Its genuinely like trying to deal with a toddler.

I've flagged it to HR informally just to gauge their response and also to check if ai maybe wasnt the issue but I was basically told not to take it further because this person will make everyone's lives harder if its brought up formally.

Nobody wants to work with this person but its unavoidable for me.

Any ideas what I should do?

You’ve been told directly by both your manager and HR not to broach this problem person who is more senior than you.

I would be taking that advice because it it all blows up you would have nobody of importance to stand behind you.

Learn to live with the situation. Document and keep records of incidents where you think this persons incompetence has impacted your job, keep it for some day things do blow up.

Keep your head down, do your job to the best of your ability and leave it at that.

Augme

A few options

A) do nothing and trucking along. Obviously with doing this you need to accept what's she like and just start managing the situation as best you can for your own mental benefit.

as mentioned, stop fixing her mistakes or stop noticing them until it is too late. As you said yourself your manager doesn't want to deal with her because she doesn't cause her a problem. That's the attitude of everyone else in the place. However, if things going badly wrong in the work because of her then people will have to act.

C) leave and find a new job. If you don't think A and B are options just leave.

D) Go formal with HR. This is the nuclear option. This is also a good option if you have resigned yourself to finding a new job but would really like to stay. Its a bit of last second hail Mary into the end zone as the chances of it succeeding are very slim. Just be prepared for a very unpleasant time if you do this. While HR and your manager will hate you, the rest of your colleagues will love you at least.


Either way, I don't envy you anyway. Best of luck with it.

Strumms

krissovo wrote: »

Tough situation with zero support, it is probably time to brush up on your influencing skills if you want to stay there. You need to influence her in a way that will have a positive outcome, plant enough seeds and make it like she has come up with the idea is a strategy I used in the past.

Another technique is to build a success plan and sit down with everyone in a success workshop to focus on the “Result” you need. It’s different to a project plan in that you define what success looks like and plan the steps needed to get there. Use techniques like the 5 whys to challenge the steps and decisions as a group and it will filter out the bad decisions.

I was in a similar situation where I was having difficulty with a colleague too.

It got to the stage that managers didn’t want to know about his fûck ups.

If he did his job and to the correct and required standard, they’d be sending emails around praising him.. ‘great job’ etc and THANKS... just for doing what all of us are paid to do on a daily basis.

If he fûcked up, the whole team got called in, ‘we succeed and fail as a team, apparently’. Investigation instead of focusing on his inability to do his job were wondering why we were not babysitting him. Or helping him even though we had our own tasks.

If I or anyone else happened to go over and above the requirements and get us out of a hole he’d get credited too, for managing to be there, breathing.

You need to allow the person to fail, getting workshops together is all well and good but that won’t make the person change, it’s just a smokescreen which again puts more onus on the collective rather than individual responsibility and performance being the main driver of the team success. you must allow them to fail.

Mango Joe

Stop fixing this persons problems.

Don't be an enabler for their incompetence.

Your Management are weak ineffectual losers.

beauf

I never found a solution to this other than to move either out of the job, or laterally within the job so you don't have dealings with the problematic person.

machaseh

Have you spoken with this person's manager about it? That would seem more effective than complaining about it with your own manager. People on other teams not doing their job is not your manager's problem. I mean it would be your manager's job to liaise with the other manager to solve hte problem, but clearly she is just licking boots and not standing up for her team so she won't be of any help.

peasant

Are any of her poor decisions time sensitive and mission critical?

If so, you could set her up so that you let her create a mess for you to fix and then be "sick" on the day when the fix is needed, or better still be off on a week's holiday, a long since approved one of course

That will take some planning and cunning, but hopefully letting the sh!t hit the fan in your absence and letting other people (managers) try and fix it without you should give you a better position when you next air your problems to the higher ups.


If her poor decisions effectively only mean more work and wasted time for you, then obviously this aint gonna work