Colleague keeps correcting people but is often wrong

I need some tips on how to tactfully deal with an issue at work.

I have a colleague (let’s call her Ann) who is a nice person. She’s a team lead and for the most part, handles her duties well. However, she occasionally causes conflict by engaging in behaviors that her team members perceive as controlling and hyper critical, and they resent it. I’ve also heard it said that she will stubbornly challenge people on things based on flawed reasoning. Even though I’ve had my own history of disagreements with her (sometimes my work involves her team), these disagreements didn’t damage our professional relationship or cause me to seriously question her competency.

But a recent experience is causing me to see the validity in her team member’s complaints, and I’m wondering what the appropriate response should be. In a few months I will be acting as her boss and I’m trying to get a feel for how a good manager would address it.

So I’ve just finished some analysis that I’ve been working on for the past few months and I sent her the results to review. Most of her feedback was fine, but on one point she expressed concern because a particular value was expressed as a rate rather than a percent. Apparently she’s under the false impression that rates always have to be based on time (like a speed rate is). At this point, I don’t think it will be difficult for me to explain to her why this wrong, but it bothers me that someone at her level, who is supposed to have some credibility, would correct someone else (me) on such a matter and be so off the mark. It indicates to me that not only does she have gaps in her knowledge, but she’s unable to see these gaps.

If you were her boss and you discovered she had this pattern, would you give her feedback about it? If so, how would you go about it without causing offense? I don’t think Ann is stupid at all, but I do think she is overly confident in her knowledge.

A percentage IS a rate. x per one hundred of the whole

This indicates to me that not only do you have gaps in your knowledge, but you’re unable to see these gaps. :wink:

You could take a second to address her feedback to clarify the misunderstanding. If you were worried about offending her, you could phrase it from the submissive, and have her help you by explaining your “mistake” to you.

I wouldn’t worry about being someone’s boss in a few months. Many things change in a few months. Cross that bridge when you come to it.

Maybe it’s different in your industry, or I didn’t understand the example, but it sounds like you are making a mountain out of a molehill.

She offered a correction on a document. The correction was not needed. I’m not sure how evolved to “keeps correcting people but is often wrong”. I don’t see a pattern here.

If she was wrong on something, let her know why what you did was correct, and move on. Nothing else needs to be done. When she’s done this 5 times in a row, then you can think about it some more.

This is what I plan to explain to her. Her issue is that she thinks otherwise, as she assumes rates are always an expression based on time and never represent a proportion.

yellowjacketcoder, maybe it’s not clear from my posts, but she has already shown this pattern of wrong-headed nitpickery. It’s been going on for a while but it’s only now that I’m seeing it up close and personal. So my question is how would a good manager address this smoothly? Sure, I can correct this mistake. But the issue is larger than just this mistake (which I agree is small potatoes).

You don’t need to go into a terribly lengthy explanation. A short one will do, and if she insists she’s right have her check a dictionary.

Keep calling her on her mistakes. If you want to be tactful about it, you can do it in private instead of in a large group/team setting.

If the larger issue is that she’s reliably wrong and cocksure about it, then that’s up to her boss to make a note of it during performance reviews and have it be a factor in refusing promotions/raises. Eventually she’ll get the message, and if she doesn’t, she’ll still have a motive for moving on to greener (dumber?) pastures.

OK, wait. A rate is a ratio of two things with different units. A percentage is a way of expressing a number, usually a fraction. They are neither the same thing, nor mutually exclusive. Where exactly is the conflict here?

Can you give a more substantial example of her being consistently wrong other than asking you to change a label due to semantics?

To me, this would just be an eye-roll moment but really water off a duck’s back.

As a sidenote, I’m inclined to side with Ann depending on the industry you’re in. Rate may technically mean any ratio, but connotatively it suggests with respect to a change in time. It may speak more to Ann’s shortcoming of needing to submit a flaw even when there isn’t rather than her lack of knowledge.

edit to add:

A rate doesn’t necessarily have to be different units - just a comparison of 2 quantities. You can think of it as… the rate in which your house drinks milk is milk/time. The rate with which your house drinks milk compared to eggs would be milk/eggs. The rate with which your household drinks milk compared to 100 units of milk would be a percentage.

I might mention something like the unemployment rate, an immediate and obvious use of “rate” to express a ratio that does not involve time, wait for her acknowledgement, and then gently say something like, “You might not want to offer a correction so quickly.”

All of the following examples involve other people. This stuff has been relayed to me by her team mates. Up until now I’ve sort of withheld judgment due to it being hearsay.

She challenged an epidemiologist on their method for testing collinearity. She was wrong, they were right, and a cursory review of the literature apparently bore this out. (The resulting conflict was so bad, mediators were almost brought in.)

Another time she objected to another person’s use of p-values to indicate statistical significance. The reasoning relayed to me didn’t make a lick 'o sense.

She insisted to someone else that outbreaks could not be described in aggregate because this somehow violates some rule that no one in the field of epidemiology (that I’m aware of) knows except her.

These are only the examples that I’m aware of.

We’re in public health. Mortality rates, attack rates, hospitalization rates, case-fatality rates, incidence rates are all measures that represent proportions. Not changes in time. Just trust me on this, pretty please.

See, with a few more examples this makes sense.

I agree with pancakes3 that this is her probably just wanting to offer input on a process whether she understands it or not, combined with a refusal to admit she was ever wrong.

I dunno how much there is to do for a person like that. A good first start is to point out that there’s a diplomatic way of saying things, like “are you sure that’s an X and not a Y?” or “Why did you use method Z at this point?” instead of “You are wrong!”. Phrasing things diplomatically allows people to either correct themselves without accusation, or explain why something is actually right without being confrontational.

But the bigger issue doesn’t seem to be the correcting, it seems to be the lack of understanding of how the industry works. As if she was not trained for her position or was hired without the appropriate background. As a boss, you could send her to some training classes or continuing education to get her up to speed, but nobody likes being sent to training and a lot of training is boring, plus if she’s the only one she’ll see it as punishment and resent it instead of accepting it.

Part of the equation here is how long she has been around, how vital she is to the business, and who is she pissing off? I mean, if she’s been around for a decade, half the company profit/agnecy effect depends directly on her, and she’s pissing off the interns, well, some light “please be kinder and gentler” in your first one on one may be appropriate. If she’s been there for a year, works on something of marginal worth, and is pissing off the big guns, it might be time to give her a warning with notice that the next time she’ll be complaining about her rate of payment from the unemployment office. (or not, if you fire her for cause and need to hire someone to do her job).

You know the situation better than anyone, so you’ll know if the correct response is coaching in diplomacy, retraining, or a warning that the the next time she does this she’s fired. Also, of course, depends on how much authority you have as a manager.

Sure. I was just curious. I didn’t know you were in a scientific field. That swings me back to your side. I would agree that she smacks of incompetence and is bordering on being unqualified for her job. Not accepting p-values for statistical significance? :dubious:

I’m overthinking this because I do think she means well and is just blind to the fact that she’s showing incompetence whenever she makes these blunders while also undermining her own credibility. I don’t think she’s deliberately trying to piss people off. If she would just hold her tongue a little bit, there wouldn’t be a problem.

She’s kind of like the person in the office who occasionally has offensive hygiene problems and is blissfully unaware of how she’s coming across.

Just typing this out has given me some ideas on how to handle this, so thanks for listening, yall.

Per Dictionary.com, that is the 2nd preference.

For the OP, just tell Ann: “Sorry, Ann, that’s one of the definitions, but, not the one that is pertinent. If we were measuring travel, etc…” Leave it at that.

Ann sounds like a smart and proud person who is usually correct but may also be a bit bombastic, perhaps? Maybe, maybe not, or maybe bombastic in a quieter, more reserved way. She sounds like when she’s wrong she has great difficulty reading that from others, from both her team and from her superior (that’d be you, yeah you with the face - sorry, couldn’t resist that one). Does Ann have a streak of arrogance that pushes her pride to the acceptance limits for her coworkers, including you?

The overall impression I’m getting is the need for Ann to develop humility. If humility training could be coupled with leadership or management skills training, perhaps a training seminar to hone her leadership skills with a focus on humble approaches to situational challenges, on listening skills, and on EQ as opposed to IQ. I think there would be a range of management or leadership training seminars out there. Perhaps sending her away for a “live attendance” (not webinar based) external training class would help deliver the needed message(s) for you and instead of being directly from you. For Arrogant Ann, she might be more receptive than if this message came from her boss, because she might think she knows more than you anyway. Dial back on assertiveness training. There’s gotta be leadership training better suited to encourage and empower the meek, and also those better suited to dialing back the arrogant, right?

Unfortunately we’re dealing with character flaws here and not technical skill deficiencies which are easier to address. Correcting character flaws is harder and usually not doable with a one-time training session magic pill. Hopefully, besides a 1-week class, you can find an organization that offers several classes she can attend over the course of several months or even years.

This would be a significant investment on your part. In the long term it might be better to slowly promote someone else up through the ranks to either replace Ann or to complement and contrast with Ann’s flaws. If not another manager, then at least a technical lead, or two. Or, simply, fire Ann’s ass.

Sorry for the lengthy reply and I could be way off base with this approach angle. Good luck, and HTH.

With people like her you should be blunt forget tact.

There is some arrogance at work. If I had to guess, I think she enjoys feeling in control and the easiest way for her to feel in control is to put her 2 cents into things. Which wouldn’t be as much of a problem if her 2 cents consistently had value. But sometimes its bunk and very obviously so. A little humility would mitigate things, like you said, but she has some weakness in this area.

When I take over things, what I’ll probably do is not worry about bringing this up with her unless her behavior leads to another conflict. Then I’ll ask her to explain what she attributes the problem to. After she says her piece and (hopefully) feels as though I’m not necessarily judging or blaming her, that will be the time that I’ll suggest that she scale back her opionated-ness. If she asks why, I will tell her about my observations and will bring up some examples (like the rate thing). It’s too late to train her into her accepting the use of p-values as means of denoting statistical significance, for example. But maybe I can get her to start double-checking herself before she challenges someone else on a concept.

You say she is kind. Maybe she just wants to help? And maybe she is the go-to person for factual stuff in her own not-so-knowledgeable social corner of the world?

In that case, a positive way to correct her should focus on what she can do to help and that it isn’t in correcting co-workers on general facts. A kind way to do this is by learning her how to phrase it better, like yellowjacketcoder said.

You can help her see how often she is wrong, AND give her an example how to deal with pointing out errors in others, by consistently pointing out errors to her the yellowjacketcoder way. That might also give you a feeling or how often, and what kind of wrong she is. Maybe she’s smart in an unusual, autodidact or [del]weird[\del]creative way.

You could also casually mention the Dunning-Kruger effect.
If she starts to see that she is often factually wrong, and it is time for a review, you could try to point out to her that her strong suit isn’t factual knowledge, but…knowledge of procedure, creating a nice work atmosphere, helping out newbies, anything you can genuinely praise in her work and want her to do more of. If you can’t think of anything, either fire her, or think something up and try to convince her she’s good at it. She might believe you, make it part of her self-image, and fake it untill she makes it.

That way, she has a trait to minimize and a trait to develop, and focusing on what she wants to develop may help her minimize that Cliff-Clavin trait.