I do some editing as part of my job, webpages, a newsletter, various other things, some important and some less so. When I did the task for the first time I was grateful to my boss for spelling out exactly where she wanted me to focus (dates, times, contact info, broken links).
Without that specific direction I could have become bogged down in small things like a bad word choice, and might have become annoying without realizing it. Is it possible that this coworker hasn’t been given specific instructions about what to look for when she’s editing? If she’s editing for grammar and style, but you want her to spend her time fact checking and improving readability then it’s her manager’s job to make sure she understands the goals of the task.
I would say this is a failure of leadership by OP. If Jane is not a supervisor, in what way is she a team lead? If she’s the team lead, it sounds like she is doing exactly what she is supposed to be doing. If you don’t want her to do that, you need to be clear about what her role is.
Another point, cosmetic details aren’t usually that important. In widely disseminated e-mails and final reports, they are. Unless we are talking about really nitpicky stuff, it sounds like Jane is doing good.
If the boss doesn’t think it is good and what she is doing is negatively affecting the morale of the staff, then no, it doesn’t sound like she’s doing “good”.
Not when attention to cosmetic details causes more important technical issues to be ignored, causes delays in getting the emails and reports out, and has a disempowering effect on the team members. And not when the cosmetic details are mere niceities, not dealbreakers.
And while I would love to take credit for this mess (because that would be a testament to my omnimpotence), I just came into this position recently.
This happened in order to reduce the number of management levels (and the number of managers.) One manager gets 12 - 16 reports, which is way too many to manage and do the stuff the boss hands him or her. So team leads who do the work level management are a requirement. If you are lucky the team lead has the respect of the team and is a good natural manager - if not, well we see what happens.
Hmm. Is there someone else who could be the team leader who is able to focus on what is important to the company? I’m both a paper writer, a fiction writer, and a columnist, and novel writing and report writing skills are very different. Is she bugging them about craft issues - spelling and grammar - or about more ornate things?
One can’t do management by walking around if walking around requires seven-league boots. How does she micromanage across three locations? Is it possible for you to make frequent visits, or are they too far away? Do you have telephone one on ones with everyone, so that you have a better chance of hearing first hand about things? I appreciate your problem- you can’t give the kind of immediate feedback required from far away.
I think she micromanages largely because her team is out of sight, so that increases her out-of-control feelings. She does it by talking over them in teleconference meetings, telling them to do things without giving them the freedom to say no (even when the commands come dressed up as a request), by making decisions unilaterally without consulting the team first, and by implying she doesn’t trust them to handle certain electronic communications by appointing herself the person who sends out the emails that they’ve prepared.
I’ve been doing one-on-ones by phone (which includes her), which is how I’ve come to know all this is going on. One reason I’m reluctant to jump right in and solve the day is because I’m only acting until the vacancy is filled (which they keep saying is soon). It is not a definite that this person is me. So however I choose to counsel her, it has to be tempered by the fact I’m just a substitute teacher right now. Probably not gonna make this my battle to wage unless that changes.
It sounds like you want her to be better as a team leader, rather than removing her from that role and allowing her teammates to finalize their own reports. I recommend management training. The federal government offers seminars and training galore that she could be sent to. If she can take on a managerial role instead of a copy editor role, that might ease things.
Otherwise, appoint a second team leader, and gradually migrate responsibilities so that she’s not doing all that reviewing.
As a supervisor, your entire job is to protect your good employees from people like this. It’s not about her, it’s about them.
The way She-Boss did it with her team split between Scotland and the Basque Country involved us having to send her reports on “what I did today” every afternoon, and “what I plan on doing today” every morning, which she would then not read (she didn’t have time to read everything, you see, but everything had to go through her desk - she was our biggest bottleneck), but would instead go to the desk of each person to whom she happened to be “local” on that day and make them report verbally, and call those who were in the other location to again get a verbal report.
Note that for every other team member reading would have been a lot faster than having stuff explained verbally. But then, the rest of us were happy to accept “I spoke with Debbie and she said to go ahead with the two-tier purchasing process” as meeting minutes - She-Boss wanted an exact recounting, including facial gestures and what had we been wearing :rolleyes:
She never let us have any vacation that hadn’t been approved before we were assigned to her, but in the 12 months I was in that team she went on long vacations twice. It was amazing how fast work got cleared when she wasn’t around to check it (her boss would take over the checking).
Got it. I didn’t understand that you were just an acting manager - that is tough, kind of like being a babysitter.
For the communication thing, why not ask everyone to send you the email directly - either instead of to her or just a cc. Then you can see yourself if they need help or not. If they don’t - and I get the impression that they don’t - you can become the approver and cut her out - and you don’t have to spend a lot of time at it if you don’t need to.
One really big problem in organizations is the person who takes it upon herself to be the communications gatekeeper. She’ll give all sorts of reasons, but it is usually about power unless there is a real need like legal approvals for publications. Bosses are one thing, since they tend to be held responsible. Nobody else, though.
No doubt she complained that people weren’t getting enough done too.
I was asking about this person without management responsibility. It seems that a good strategy for the other team members is to check with our OP, and then tell her to suck eggs.
