Reply to How to work with Gen Z minority woman employee

Forum Index » Jobs and Careers

Reply to "How to work with Gen Z minority woman employee"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous]I had an entry level employee (white male) about 10 years ago who thought he was the smartest guy in any room. He thought he should be managing the project I was leading.

He was smart and he did have good ideas, but he was idealistic because his experience came from case studies and group projects in college. Here is the gist of the chat I had with him - 
I think you are smart and I appreciate your insights. I will incorporate them when I can, but I also need you to listen when I share the real world constraints of our client, project, budget, etc. I am willing to be open minded and hear you out, but you need to accept that I am the person ultimately responsible for the project and my decisions are final. Sometimes I will have to say “no” or “not now/yet”. If you sow doubt or undermine me with the client, I will remove you from the project. This is a for-profit company and you are an employee. When there are opportunities that align with your interests and aspirations, I will absolutely champion you and support you to take on those tasks. However we also have a client and a contract right now and you need to do the work as assigned - even if you think it’s simple or boring.

Separately I had a client who was a bully and he would give the most junior contractors these menial, repetitive jobs as some form of hazing. He was a former executive at a consulting company and had such distain for all consultants. His mantra was “If you can’t staple papers correctly, why should I trust you with anything more complex?” I don’t agree with his approach, but I have had a gentler version of the same conversation with many new employees over the years. Basically “I know you are capable and ready for more complex tasks, but right now we really need to X,Y, Z.”  How junior employees handle tasks like that tells me a lot about their character. If they do it efficiently and pay attention to detail, I am more likely to trust them to take on more, sooner. The ones that go on to be the most successful are the ones that don’t just use a menial or administrative task to demonstrate their attention to detail or efficiency, but the ones that find a way to make it a learning experience. For example - taking notes in a meeting is a menial task, but it may get you a seat in the room to listen to discussions you otherwise would not be privy to. Coordinating user acceptance testing can be boring and tedious, but the testers are your clients. If you build rapport with your clients it may eventually pay off because today’s client tester may be tomorrow’s client buyer or budget approver. [/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics