Gave a bad feedback to an employee on an appraisal and my manager has basically demoted me

Question

I'm the marketing manager of a very successful start-up and the social media manager who I have been managing for the past two months and a half is really bad. She's incompetent, she's a bad colleague and completely impossible to work with. I didn't share this with my manager, the CEO, because I didn't want him to think I was complaining and I also thought I could manage her without interference.

Last week, the social media manager basically took a day off without telling me and I caught her, she screamed and cried and said she disliked working with me. I let her do her work but give her tasks which she never completes, so every week I have a day where I ask her the status of things, she usually freaks out and comes up with different excuses why she hasn't done those specific jobs. She said she hates the pressure.

Anyway, this week my manager asked me to write my appraisal of her and send it to him. I sent a very negative appraisal of her, but very honest. He avoided me for a few days and today he actually told me that my appraisal says more about me than about her.

He basically said during the last 2 months I should have complained to him about her so he could sort her out. And that going forward he would manage her and the new member of the team we're hiring, an SEO manager.

So basically (he didn't say this but it's basically it) I'm no longer the team manager. His secretary then proceeded to send an invite to me by mistake, for social media meetings to happen next week where I'm now excluded from.

What did I do wrong? Why am I being penalized for giving a bad appraisal and how will I be able to do my job without having to comunicate with the rest of my team?

Answer 1

What did I do wrong? Why am I being penalized for giving a bad appraisal?

The CEO told you what you did wrong:

He basically said during the last 2 months I should have complained to him about her so he could sort her out. And that going forward he would manage her and the new member of the team we're hiring, an SEO manager.

As a manager, it is your job to manage people. Teach them, train them, hire them, fire them.

If somebody is not performing at the level they need to be then it is your job to fix that.

If you can't fix the problem yourself, and it isn't going away, then you need to escalate it as soon as possible so that it can be fixed.

You knew there was a problem, you let it persist for 3 months, and then dumped it on the CEO.

If your problems are going to become the CEO's problems, just with a 3-month delay, then they may as well cut out the middle man and manage the team directly. Which it seems like they're doing.

Answer 2

Last week, the social media manager basically took a day off without telling me and I caught her, she screamed and cried and said she disliked working with me.

How did you catch her? Why did she scream and cry? There seems to be something missing from this story. Did you lose your temper?

Anyway, this week my manager asked me to write my appraisal of her and send it to him.

Considering the timing of this request, it's likely that she complained to him about you or your management style.

...he actually told me that my appraisal says more about me than about her.

Clearly, he believes her, not you. Or at least, he believes that your management style is not effective.

Do you have a close personal professional friend you can share a copy of that appraisal with?

What did I do wrong?

Not knowing what really happened last week, we really can't answer that question for you.

And that going forward he would manage her and the new member of the team we're hiring, an SEO manager.

But this is actually an interesting experiment. Do not quit right now.

If this employee is as bad as you believe, the CEO should have the same difficulties managing her. In which case, just wait and see what happens.

If on the other hand, things do work out with her. See what you can learn from your CEO's management style. No one becomes a perfect manager overnight.

Then, if you still want to quit, quit, but do not quit before you found a new job first and try not to quit before you've indeed confirmed what you could have done better, otherwise, you're likely to carry that same management style into your next job as a manager.

and how will I be able to do my job without having to comunicate with the rest of my team?

I know the CEO had a meeting with those two without you, but that doesn't necessarily mean you've been excluded from all future marketing discussions.

You should work on your resume and put some feelers out there, but do not assume the worst. If you assume the worst, it's just going to be a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Also, you need to take a look at your contract and employee handbook. If you have any stock options or Restricted Stock Units, you need to take them into your calculations. And if you do quit, you need to realize that you may be forfeiting severance pay and unemployment benefits. So do not jump the gun.

Answer 3

As a manager, you're responsible for the performance of your team. From your description, one of your team wasn't performing, and correctly you attempted to deal with it, without bothering the CEO. But from what you've said that didn't work; she didn't get better and the situation just persisted.

At this point, you should have flagged it, even if it was just to say to the CEO "this is happening, it's not resolved yet, but I'm on it and think I can take care of it". Maybe even it would have reached a point when you could have said "I've tried but it's just not working, can I get your help here?"

Instead, the first he knew of this was the appraisal.

Maybe you could explain to your CEO that you now appreciate you should have flagged it earlier and would like another opportunity to manage again, but there's no guarantee they'll be ready to accept that.

Answer 4

The golden rule is to keep your manager in the loop. Always.

Especially when the problem is with a team member. You knew she is not working as expected. You should have told this to your manager the first day, instead of waiting until the appraisal is rolled out.

Your manager seems he has no clue what this Social Media manager is like and is not sure whether firing her would be wise so he decides to manage her himself.

What did I do wrong?

You didn't communicate. This led to you creating a bad impression of yourself.

You can apologize (not sure if this will fix the problem) or maybe try searching for a new position.

Answer 5

I agree with the others. What you did was create a perception of a very rigid office politics structure that wasn't actually there. And then you acted within the rules of that imaginary system.

So, you sold yourself a bill of goods.

The bigger problem is what you didn't do: act like a normal manager and use gold-standard accountability methods to document the person's performance (or lack thereof). So for instance you should have written a document stating your task expectations for the week:

Per our discussion, your focus this week will be:

• Enable "Pay via PayPal" on the retail checkout page
• Resolve the dispute with Constant Contact over how we subscribe customers to our email list
• Create product listings with photos for 34 of our new products

... and then at intervals either a) asked for written status reports back, or b) taken a verbal point-by-point status report, record that in notes, and share back the notes with the employee asking for corrections.

Thanks for giving me a status update this Wednesday morning. My understanding is:

• For PayPal checkout, there is an additional contract we must sign, and you sent that over to Legal for review and are awaiting a response.
• Constant Contact says no auto-add customer emails, they want opt-in (box unchecked by default), and so you implemented that.
• You took photos of 8 of the 34 products. The other 26 are enroute from China. Of the 8 pages you created 6 and will create 2 today. You wanted clarification on the other 26 and I said get the listings up ASAP without photos, and you thought you could have that done by Thursday.

... and if you got something wrong, they'll push back on you with an email and say something like "no, I meant half of them done by Thursday".

What does that matter?

Without that, the best you can do is a "rag session" in which you complain about the person, because you don't have any facts recorded: not anything on paper. There is no way for that not to sound political.

With it, it's a simple matter of documented facts: here are the expectations, here are the status reports.

The difference is as simple as that.

But there's more... when it's simply documented like that, and you see the facts spread out on paper, *then your conversation with your manager stops being "good person/bad person". and starts being about "what the obstruction is: training, lack of resources, ergonomics, workflow, morale, etc." And then you can (often easily) clear those barriers and get the employee "running on all cylinders". And that's what management is all about.

Without that, you are reduced to politics/gossip... and that makes a manager think two things: #1 you don't have very good management skills... and (possibly because of #1): #2 you are a creator/instigator of destructive office politics.

Politics is not a thing you want in your office (unless you suck), as it is a corrosive force that harms morale, undercuts a merit-based corporate culture, and makes top performers quit because they are good at performing not politics.

Answer 6

The CEO has to deal with the fallout of the social media manager who hasn't been doing her job for God knows how long, which almost certainly means the salary paid to her has essentially been wasted. Not to mention that the work she was supposed to do, but didn't, has cost the company additional money via lost sales. ON top of that monetary pain, the CEO has to find a new social media manager to replace her, and since you've proven that you aren't competent at management, they also need to find a person to do the job you were supposed to be doing.

Oh, and they didn't expect to have to do ANY of this, because you didn't tell them anything, so you've essentially dropped a massive boulder on top of all the other responsibilities and stresses they're dealing with. And you're surprised that they're upset with you?

Your responsibility as a manager is to solve subordinates' problems as best you can, and escalate the problems that you can't. You knew the social media manager was a problem but didn't bother even trying to solve it, nor did you escalate it. You essentially stuck your fingers in your ears and hoped it would go away, and of course it didn't, and of course it came back to bite you.

You didn't do your job - not even poorly, but at all. That may or may not be entirely your fault, depending on the amount of training you were or were not given, but you could have at least made an effort, and you... didn't.

At this point you should be thankful that you weren't fired outright. I hope you're at least good at marketing, because if you aren't, I think you're very quickly going to find yourself being shown the door.

Answer 7

IMHO, you may have not recognized an entitled "employee" that perhaps linked to upper management on a personal level.

I would suggest to start looking for a new position

And, if you really like this company, try to do the end-run to your bosse`s boss, in order to shed some light on the situation in case they are not aware of it

In my experience a futile attempt as management usually stick together in all stuff issues

Update: LoL, Sorry, missed a part where his manager is the CEO.

Then my conviction that the incompetent "colleague" was hired for her out of work performance is strengthened.

Keep it alive and find a new place :)

Answer 8

From my experience, most managers would prefer to hear about serious problems sooner rather than later (which is why the CEO is upset that he's just hearing about this now).

Also, the fact that you've been managing her for months without giving any indication that there was a problem and suddenly gave a very negative feedback "out of the blue" probably undermines your credibility in this area.

Also:

Why am I being penalized for giving a bad appraisal...

You're not being penalized for giving a bad appraisal - you're being penalized for not informing the CEO of a problem that's been persisting for months.