r/askmanagers

Hi,

I would like to know from managers who have dealt with an underperforming employee who, despite receiving coaching, constructive feedback, and assistance, shifts the blame onto their manager instead of addressing their own performance issues.

How do you handle a situation like this, especially when the employee's allegations could affect your own reputation or standing with senior management?

Is this a common experience for managers, and what has helped you navigate it professionally?

I've been thinking about how much communication skills influecne career progression especially in corporate.

You can technically be excellent, consistently deliver good work, and know your subject better than almost anyone on the team. But when it comes to presenting to leadership, explaining something to a client, or answering an unexpected questions in a meeting, sometimes those skills don't always translate to how competent you seem to be.

Some people seem naturally good at explaining complicated things simply and they can get their points across confidently while theres others who struggle to get their ideas across despite already knowing the subject inside out.

It makes me wonder how much career progression depends on the quality of your work versus your ability to communicate that work.

For people who have managed teams or been involved in promos, how much weight do you put on communication skills? And for those who worked on this themselves, what actually helped you improve?

my manager of about a year is what he calls an "ideas guy." The thing is he's not really a "do the work guy" so I'm the one who is trying to push back or execute on these half baked ideas.

like he'll get a grand idea, vaguely give me instructions, and when I ask questions - he can't answer. but if I say maybe it's not a priority then I'm not trying hard enough to make it work.

I try to get him to convey how this aligns with greater strategy and I get the Nike response of "just do it"

Then, when I do it, he is onto the next idea and I feel like I haven't actually contributed anything meaningful.

my go-to line is "I'm not sure the juice is worth the squeeze on that", but any other suggestions on how to refocus my work?

I’m currently on an extended probation/PIP in a technical analyst role and I’m trying to handle it constructively.

The main issues are around accuracy, confidence/independence, and consistency of training/support. I’ve had some useful one-to-one support recently and I’m also trying to get more regular technical catch-ups in place. I’ve asked for clearer expectations and more explicit feedback on what I’m doing well versus what still needs improvement.

I’m documenting work completed, questions asked, support received, feedback, and corrections. I’m also trying to avoid overreacting to every small mistake and just make sure I learn from them.

For anyone who has been in a similar situation:

What kind of documentation was actually useful?

Did regular 1:1 support help?

How did you show improvement without sounding defensive or over-explaining?

Were there any warning signs that the process had become more about managing you out than helping you improve?

Did you involve HR early, or only if the process/support broke down?

I’m especially interested in experiences from technical/data/analyst roles where some mistakes are part of learning but accuracy still matters.

I’m not looking for legal advice — more practical experience from people who’ve been through probation/PIP successfully or unsuccessfully.

I work in a nursing leadership role and recently had a situation with an employee that has left me feeling pretty uneasy. I’m curious how other managers or healthcare leaders would handle this.

About a month ago, I had to mandate a nurse to stay for four hours of overtime to ensure adequate staffing. I asked for volunteers first, but nobody was willing to stay. It was a busy shift, and I understood why people didn’t want the overtime, but we still needed coverage for staffing and patient-safety reasons. I followed the applicable mandate process, and this employee was selected because he hadn’t been mandated in over a year.

He was understandably upset. During the interaction, he made comments about potentially calling in sick the following day to “screw over management.” I tried to give him some grace because I recognized that he was frustrated, and I offered him an adjustment, which he accepted. Another employee then offered to stay in his place, but he declined that offer and said he would take the mandate after all.
At no point during the interaction did he tell me he had childcare issues or other commitments the following day.

During the same shift, I also went to help in the department. I offered to do some triage re-assessments. I took vitals on the patients I was directed to assess and helped with pain medication within my role. I had other responsibilities as the hospital supervisor, so I wasn’t able to stay and work in the department for my entire shift.
Almost a month later, I learned that this employee had gone to the department manager and was apparently very upset about the mandate. He reportedly raised the childcare and other commitments and complained about my involvement in the department. Specifically, he apparently told the manager that I had gone down, joked around with the CRN, and then left without doing any vitals. This is particularly frustrating because I did take vitals on the patients I was asked to assess. (And I was laughing with the CRN and the patient because the nurse I was helping told me to viral a patient the crn was discharging - and the patient made a comment about the discharge vitals being extra good service)

HR subsequently contacted me because he is planning to file a union grievance. I explained what had happened, including the fact that I had sought volunteers, followed the mandate process, offered an adjustment, and that another employee had offered to replace him, which he declined.

I also spoke with the department manager, who said she had suspected that the childcare and other commitments hadn’t been communicated to me. She also mentioned that she felt this employee seemed to have a particular issue with me. I’ve noticed that he often isn’t particularly polite or friendly toward me, so I have wondered the same thing.
I’m not especially worried about the potential grievance because I believe I followed the process and had legitimate staffing and patient-safety reasons for the decision. What bothers me more is that he waited nearly a month to raise the issue and seems to be presenting the situation in a way that leaves out important context. The allegation about me joking around and leaving without helping also feels unfair because it doesn’t reflect what actually happened.

I also regret not documenting some of his comments at the time because I was trying to de-escalate the situation and give him grace. Going forward, I’ll be documenting significant interactions more carefully.
**My question is:** Am I reading too much into this, or is it reasonable to feel like there might be something calculated or retaliatory going on? How do you protect yourself professionally when you start feeling like an employee might be looking for reasons to get you in trouble, without becoming suspicious of everyone or letting it affect how you manage?

I’ve just been feeling a lot of anxiety over this and I don’t know why - I’ve had angry staff before but for some reason this feels different.

I’m relatively new to leadership and currently leading a project with six team members. One of my team members, a senior, recently raised concerns about another team member, a junior, taking frequent breaks.

Naturally, their workloads and responsibilities differ due to their experience levels. The junior is still completing their assigned tasks on time, so I don’t particularly mind how they take their breaks, as long as the work gets done.

I explained this to the senior, but they seem genuinely upset about the situation. I’m not sure if I’m missing something or how seriously I should take their concerns.

As a new leader, I want to be fair without micromanaging how everyone spends their time. How would you handle this situation?

Hi all, I hope you are doing well.

I finished loop/panel interview at a big company 3 weeks ago. I havent heard back yet, so Im assuming its over.

I just wonder if I should message hiring manager directly on Linkedin and ask for feedback.

Usually I dont do this as I understand managers are busy and I should not bother them.

However, he sent connection request first after our initial talk. And before my panel interview, he wished me luck and said him and other team member supporting me. I took that as a positive sign and sent him a thank you note afterward, to which he replied quickly.

Given that, I was wondering as a manager, if you were in his shoe, would you be receptive for a candidate to ask for feedback directly?

I have a team member who is generally good at his work, but I’ve noticed some recurring challenges around his response to feedback, direction, and occasional frustration at work.
I mentioned this during his last review, but only indirectly.

I’m now considering whether I should start documenting specific instances, give more direct feedback, and potentially discuss the pattern with my manager before the next appraisal.
At the same time, I don’t want to overreact or make it feel like I’m building a case against him.

For managers who have faced a similar situation, how would you approach it?

Would you document it formally, have a direct conversation first, or involve your manager/HR early?

Edit : There are a few points I missed mentioning:

1. ⁠I have managed a team of 30+ members team and currently managing a team of 9 members directly at manager level.
2. ⁠I have been managing this person for 2.5 years. Have helped him in his promotion 1.5 years back. Last 6 months I have started to see issues in his attitude.
3. ⁠My manager who happens to be his super boss has also shared similar observations with me about him
4. ⁠By indirect feedback, I meant I have given a professional feedback about him taking his work lightly and should take accountability of this which are supposed to be his areas & I can’t handhold him for minute inconveniences.
5. ⁠Lastly the areas (Our work is more of Operations management) where earlier he always took a step forward to solve issues, he has started to let the issues unresolved saying that these issues are persistent and the management should take calls then only the issues will be resolved without even taking effort to solve the issues

During my PDI discussion, German manager told me that I was a senior engineer but wouldn’t be getting promoted.

At the same time, he wanted me to take on responsibilities left behind by a principal engineer and train other senior engineers. There was no promotion or meaningful salary increase to go along with the additional work.

I understand that mentoring is part of being a senior engineer, and I’m happy to help colleagues. What frustrated me was being asked to take on more responsibility while being told I wouldn’t be moving up.

After that conversation, I started looking elsewhere. Within a few weeks, I found a better job and left. He was kind of frustrated and not talking with me a lot in notice period.

Has anyone else experienced this? What is the point manager doing that? How do you distinguish reasonable expectations for a senior engineer from a company expanding your role without recognizing or compensating you for it?

Long time lurker, first time poster. I have an issue in need of advice.

I have a colleague who is technically above me in the office hierarchy, though I do not report to them. We work together on various projects and have an excellent working relationship. I would consider them a work friend as well. For context, I am tech and this person is comms.

I have increasingly found myself running a bit more cover for this person than I am used to - or really need to - with anyone else. Here are a few examples:

1. This person drafted a widely-distributed externally-facing email that contained a line: "If you have any questions, please respond to <insert email address>." The email went out, but that email address was incorrect (it did not exist), so I quietly created it so we would receive the email responses (which we did). I have had to do this twice and now have two "dummy" emails that have no purpose other than what they were created for (to fix an error). One of these emails is a misspelling of our office name.
2. A very obvious grammatical error was included in another widely-distributed externally-facing email. I quietly corrected it before the email was sent, but now I'm worried I have to check this person's work going forward... which I'm not excited about because, as I mentioned, this person is above me in office hierarchy. This is not my job, but I try to be a good colleague.
3. This person has a growing habit of being slow to respond or unresponsive to inter-office email which causes a domino effect of delaying tasks. This results in an unnecessary last-minute scramble to meet deadlines. I believe that "scramble time" tends to be where errors and mistakes happen, so their increasing regularity makes me anxious.

I have a number of conflicting thoughts...

These things feel small... even petty... to bring to my own manager (this person's co-equal), but they are becoming troublesome.

I worry that an error or deadline will slip through and I will be blamed for the error or missed deadline, and my only defense will be to "finger-point" at this higher-up who actually is responsible.

My office have some politics that I try to stay out of. However, I am "out" of these dynamics while this person is "in" and therefore I feel more vulnerable as a scapegoat for issues that cone up. My manager is great, and would defend me, but I don't want to put my manager in that position if I can help it. I also don't think this person would scapegoat me (as I said, we have a good working relationship and are office friends), but other "in" people of the office might scapegoat me to cover for this person's error(s).

I hate feeling like a tattle-tale, but I'm not sure how else to proceed.

Most roles have a salary range that the manager knows but it's rarely ever posted on job ads. I can say that I've seen some niche roles that I genuinely have no idea what the range would be for the position. How often do applicants throw out a number that is way below the low end of the range? Does that influence your opinion in moving forward with them?