The perils of middle-management: advice needed

In My Humble Opinion
1

I’m a staff person in a library, responsible for supervising one student worker. This is my first time being a supervisor. I am the only staff person in my department and work in the same small office as my own direct supervisor, the department librarian.

I’m having trouble with leadership on both ends – I’m not leading my student worker effectively, and I’m not being led well by my supervisor.

My main question is: which end do I work to repair first – do I go bottom up and straighten out my management of my student before dealing with my boss, or do I go top down and work the other way? Doing both at the same time seems overwhelming to me. I should mention here I’m really, really bad at confrontation and it’s really hard for me both to try to discipline someone under me and to ask for better direction from above.

[Here are the details, if you need them: I have a student worker scheduled to work 10 hours a week, but I don’t have 10 hours worth of work for her to do during the week. These hours are set by my supervisor, who insists that we’re super busy and have loads of stuff for the student to do, but that’s patently untrue. My supervisor is delusional, likes everyone to think we’re busy because that means we’re important and the department won’t be eliminated, but we are not busy. I barely can scrape up enough work for me to do during the day, forget finding an extra 10 hours of work for my student. The work we do have for her is a lot of manual labor and is done alone in an isolated room (i.e., boring and unpleasant). My student is always late when she shows up, and often doesn’t show up at all. I’ve spoken to her twice this semester and asked her to email me if she’s going to be late or absent, but she hasn’t been good about doing this. I haven’t pursued it further because, fuck, if I were her and had to sit in a room alone and rip up books for the recycling bins for 2-3 hours a day, I wouldn’t want to come to work either.

At the same time, I want more direction from my supervisor. She didn’t train me when I started the job last year, she leaves me to my own devices to create projects to work on, but I don’t have the authority to implement the projects and changes that I’d like to do, and she doesn’t understand the work I do or the projects or changes I propose. I do a lot of cataloging work, which she knows nothing about but will not admit that. She’s very insecure, both personally and professionally, and if something goes wrong with the catalog or in some other arena she doesn’t understand, she cannot admit to not knowing what to do. It took me awhile to figure this out – after realizing I had to ask how to fix a problem 4-5 times and never getting a straight answer, and running into this situation involving dozens of problems.]

So I feel very lost in my job, and yet have to supervise another person and be an effective manager while I’m out to sea myself.

Have you ever been in a situation like this? How did you fix it, and what advice would you have for me?

2

Being a good leader is easier when you have a good leader, but it’s not absolutely necessary. Also good managers do more than just ask employees to improve, they provide tools to do so. Start with the student. Create a timesheet, place it by a clock, and have her sign in/out every shift and require that it be initialed by you every day. It may not inspire her to be on time, but it will give you documentation when you ding her for punctuality in the recommendation she’s going to need at the end of the term. If you’re struggling with how to enforce the timesheet just try being bland and no nonsense, say something like “we’ve had several conversations about tardiness and they don’t seem to be helping, we’re going to be using this timesheet from now on, let me show you how it works”. If you have trouble with confrontation then you’ll have to work hard not to end the sentence with “okay?”. Just tell her what’s what and move on.

As for not having any work for her or feeling bad that she’s bored, honestly two or three hours of boring work is not a big deal, give her what you have and let it be. We have student workers who do homework or study when it’s slow, no biggie.

The problems with your own manager sound like issues best raised during your review. Ask for stronger leadership and/or more autonomy and be prepared to explain how those things will improve your work, benefit the library, and make your boss look good to her boss.

And then, you know, go home and have a nice glass of something, you deserve it.

3

With your supervisor, start saying “I’m done with that work you gave me, is there something that I can do to help you out?” Or “I’m done with what I have to get done today, is there a priority task you need me to undertake.” If you are feeling that you aren’t adequately trained to handle what she asks, say “Can you show me what you are looking for?”

Start sending your supervisor status reports, what you got done, what you are working on, and what you have next on your plate. This will let her know what you believe your priorities to be.

4

Sorry, I didn’t mean to abandon the thread, I’ve been away at a conference. Now I’m back!

My student already has a timesheet, but I think I’ll sit down with her (if she comes in today! according to her timesheet, she’s only worked on Tuesday of this week when she should have worked every day) and say we need to review her schedule and figure out what times would work best for her if her current schedule isn’t working. I’ve already done this last month and she said the schedule was fine, but I’ll be more firm this time about not wanting her to work with such haphazard hours.

The more I think about it, the more dysfunction I can see in my supervisor’s management of me. Lots of insecurity, both personal and professional. Status reports would be a fantastic idea, except I’m certain she won’t read them. I’ll do that for myself, though – I’m often at a loss as to what I’m doing. For example, I’ve been away for three days and beyond catching up on emails and writing a conference report for my colleagues, I don’t have any other firm tasks to do today so I’ll have to scrape something up. It would really benefit me to have a plan or a daily schedule of what projects to work on when.

5

Schedule weekly one on ones with her. Do your status report Friday afternoon and schedule the one on one for Monday - half an hour and use the status report as your agenda.

“OK, last week I did this and this - were you satisfied with the output?”
“I’m still working on this and this. Here are the issues - have there been any changes on your end? I understand I need to have this done by X and this done by Y.”
“I plan on starting this and this - this will be my approach”
“Is there anything I should add to my project queue. Yes, Good. What are the requirements, What does the output look like? When do you need it by?” Or “No, well, I’m probably not going to be able to fill all my time with the things I have on my plate, is there something I can help you with or should I talk to one of the other managers and see if they need something.”
Finally, I’m having some issues with Lola not getting in on time. I’m reviewing her schedule with her and emphasizing punctuality, but if it doesn’t improve - well, she is a student worker and I think perhaps next semester it will be a good idea to let someone else have a chance at the job. What do you think?"

Because she herself isn’t functional, you’ll have to hand hold her through this. You won’t get feedback on the output for now, and don’t worry about it, push for that later. You’ll likely get a lot of “that was fine.” and “that sounds good.” What is likely to scare her to action is the “you say we have lots to do, but I can’t fill my time, I’m going to go talk to someone else about filling my time.”

Good luck, I’ve worked for this one in the past - and worse was mine was a magpie that had me off on two dozen stupid make work projects with constantly shifting priorities because she didn’t have a clue what the real needs were.

6

There’s no need to wait for official performance reviews to raise these issues.

I don’t know why managing one student and having some upward management discussions with her boss should seem “overwhelming”. Especially in a job where she doesn’t have a lot of actual work to do.
Really the question from a management standpoint is what are you or your group trying to accomplish? If there is no goal or purpose to your work, then your “management” job just becomes a tedious exercise in hounding some student to show up on time and wait.

From my own experience, having a manager who is disconnected, apathetic and incompetent is a recipe for a shitty work environment. It means you have little visibility as to how your group fits in with the larger picture. Which makes it extremely difficult for you to know how to add value other than creating “make-work” projects.

Honestly, my advice is to look for another job where you have a manager who is more competent and engaged.

7

One final point - this student is walking all over you.

If I’m interpreting this right, the student is actually an employee: getting paid for this, yes?

And she came in ONE day last week, when she was scheduled to work EVERY DAY?

Her ass needs to be fired. Stat.

You will NEVER be able to get this student to do anything for you, because she knows you have no teeth, and your own supervisor is delusional. I’m really sorry, but the best you can do at this point is keep METICULOUS records about how she is literally not working, and hope that is enough to get her fired at the end of the semester or whenever the term of employment comes up for review.
Next time around, you need to set a schedule with your employee. Make an attempt to work around their schedule, but YOU decide when they come in, and YOU are the one who approves if they need to miss work (and you should say NO to that request at least 4 out of 5 times) - they can’t just “not show up” to do their boring job. In fact, NOT SHOWING UP more than twice should be an instantly-fireable offense. “You weren’t here on Wednesday of last week, and you called at noon on Thursday when you were scheduled to be here at 8:30 am. Your position has been filled by someone else.” (Please note the lack of apology or affirmation in that announcement. You are not asking permission to fire her, nor are you apologizing for her being a useless employee.)

On that note, try your best to eliminate the words “ok?” “I’m sorry” and “do you mind” from your vocabulary. She is a worker. She needs to work. She is getting PAID to work. You don’t ask her permission to assign her work. If all you have is tearing up textbooks, then she needs to tear up textbooks. It may suck, but if she doesn’t want to, there’s always a starving student who will.

I also hate confrontation, and it’s taken me about 4 years to get comfortable being a manager (I’ve been doing it for 5, and this is my first comfortable year, and it’s still hard sometimes) so don’t beat yourself up if the process is slow, but try to remember that YOU are in charge, even if you don’t feel like it. They don’t need to know that you feel shaky - they need to know you are in charge.

As for your supervisor, there’s very little you can do other than to be organized yourself and try to need her as little as possible. It’s nearly impossible to change other people’s management styles, and not worth your time and energy. Make yourself better, then look for another position.

8

Student workers are on a whole other playing field from regular workers. You might not agree with that, but from my experience student workers are considered 90% students, 10% employees. Studies and homework come first in the school’s point of view so skipping is usually completely ignored because it’s for their studies.

I’ve never known a student worker to ever have all 10 hours a week filled with work except during a rare crunch or two. The schools are doing this for the student as a form of student-aid, not as a way to add to their workforce. They have enough workforce. They don’t actually need student workers. This is why student worker anything is usually unenforced.

I worked well as a student worker and my department was grateful to have me. However, we all recognized it wasn’t a real job. Nobody berated me for taking an occasional unannounced day. They gave me extra hours all the time, “Eh, just say you were here until 4 and leave at 2, we don’t have anything for you”. Heck, they had stories of the guy who slept in the warehouse every day. I’m not even sure, due to the student aid aspect, that it’s possible to fire a student outside of unlawful conduct such as violence.

May not be true for all schools but I thought it was pretty standard. We once were forced to hire a new upstairs employee that was totally incompetent at her full-time job, definitely sucked someone off to get hired, and tried to rail on the student employees about rules and regs. We all laughed at her. The entire department threw a party when she was fired. So don’t be that person.

I have no advice to give about a dimwitted boss; I’ve dealt with three of them now and not a one has changed their tune.

9

We use student workers; those who don’t show up for the scheduled hours (barring legitimate excuses like sickness) are fired.

Our students are important for staffing our student helpdesk; without them, we could not provide an acceptable level of service. They are treated as employees.

Yes, we’re flexible – students can swap hours, and can do homework at the helpdesk when things are slow. But we won’t accept blowing off work. It does a student no good to treat them differently than any other employee.

If the student is not showing up at her scheduled time, sit down with her and impress its importance on her. Yes, the job may be boring, but life often requires boring jobs. (I would allow her to do homework if things are slow, but evidently your boss wouldn’t like that.) If she can’t do the job, there are other student workers available who would.

10

The student worker comes first. Can you fire her? I’d suspect there are other students lines up to take this job.
You are also doing her no favors. Part of student work is to build good work habits. If she is being trained to think that she can goof off, she is going to be in serious trouble when she gets a real job.
The solution is easy. Sit her down and set expectations. “You will come in all days and all hours unless you get permission from me in advance. Or you will be fired. Any questions?” If you have no work for her and she does her homework while officially working that is okay. But she needs to be there.

Now for your boss. I agree that status reports are a good idea, but it doesn’t sound like you can expect good or consistent management. That can be a plus. If you have run out of things to do, find something that if done will improve the library or your life. If you don’t know how to do it, train yourself in your free hours. You are a librarian, you should be able to find training material better than most people.
Once you are comfortable that you can do it, tell your boss - kind of ask permission, but phrase it so that if she doesn’t respond it is an okay.
I see where she is coming from. In days of tight budgets anyone who says they have extra resources is going to get chopped. Help her demonstrate that you are so busy you are doing 110%.
Bosses in real life are not as stupid as in Dilbert. If they want something that seems crazy, think first what might be motivating them. Then help them meet their goals as well as yours.