My Boss is Burning Out

to the show. Our first question today is from someone who is worried that her boss is burning out. Hi, there, I need some advice. Over the last nine months or so, I have been slowly burning out at my job. But that's not the problem. I am taking steps to combat my own burnout. The problem is that over this time I've been watching my company add more and more work to my boss. It's like the higher ups to have asked them, so what else can we burn thoughs out?

Than they do what they think of find her to tie consuming projects, only to pull her off of them midway through, essentially wasting her time. We've had three other supervisors quit. Instead of factilling their positions, the powers that be just assigned the abandoned teams to my supervisor, increasing her workload again. I am part of her original team of seven and she's up to now direct reports, and each of us on that original team wants to have

her back as much as possible. She's a stellar boss and goes to bat for us time and time again when we need help getting our work done or meet resistance from the other departments. So my question is what can I and the rest of our team do to support her. I have taken on all the little projects, assignments, and tasks she's turped out to me to lighten her load. Is there anything else? None of us want to lose her, and many of us would probably jump ship with her

if it ever came to that. I would really appreciate your input here. Well, first, you're so kind to be thinking about this, because being the US can be a really thankless job, and not everyone would look at the situation and think to have the reaction that you're having.

So your boss is really lucky to have you. I think the thing to know here is that there are some things that you can do that will make your boss's life more pleasant right now, probably and we'll talk about what those are, but you aren't going to be able to solve the big fundamental problem, which is her workload and the way she's being managed from above. For the record, having twenty five direct reports is insane. The number of direct reports that one person can handle effectively

is somewhere around six or seven. In some cases, maybe we're the people being managed or doing very road work or very independent work. It could be more, but twenty five is well beyond anything that is reasonable. So the fact that she is still coming across to you as a stellar boss while managing that many people and stretch that then is really impressive. And then you throw in all the rest of her workload because it sounds like she is doing her own projects on top of all

of that management, and it's pretty exhausting to contemplate. So back to you and how you can help. I think a really important thing to realize here is that the best thing for her to do might be to get out, to leave the situation, and to find a better, more

manageable job for herself. So I don't want you to think of your role as needing to figure out how to keep her or as the best case outcome that you somehow make this just bearable enough that she decides to stay, because it might be best for her if she does leave. So instead, I would focus on making sure that she knows that you appreciate her and that you want to pitch in and help make her life easier.

Right now, however you can so, yeah, if you have room on your own plate, volunteer to take some work off of hers and be easy to work with. You know, have your own house in order, don't let or slip through the cracks, keep her proactively apprised about where things stand and when you need things from her streamline. It make it as fast and as easy as possible for her to give you input or approve something or otherwise get you what you need, because being easy to manage

will make her life easier. And then this is really important. Be explicit with her about appreciating her. You said you think she's a sellar boss and that she's gone to bat for you over and over, that she helps you get what you need when there's problems with other departments, And I wonder does she know that you think that?

From what I have seen, oftentimes, when people like and appreciate their managers, it doesn't always occur to them to tell the manager that they think it's unneeded or that it won't be a big deal to the manager to hear it. But it is always a great thing to hear, and I am onecent sure that your manager would be really happy and really grateful to hear you say that. Based on what you described about her workload, I bet she thinks she's barely holding things together, so hearing the

opposite from you would be really nice. Or maybe she is aware of how much she's doing to hold things together and doesn't know if anyone other than her sees it. So let her know that you do. Basically tell her what you said in your call, that you see how much she does, you love having her for a boss, and you appreciate her. The times I can think of that, employees have told me that it's meant an incredible amount to me. So definitely tell her, but don't get too

attached to hoping that she'll stay. Of course, you don't want to lose a good boss, especially in a situation that sounds pretty difficult to navigate. But if we're talking about what is good for her, it sounds like it might be a good thing. For her if she does decide to leave. And that's okay, Okay, here's the next question. Hi, Alison,

So I have a question for you. I've worked for nonprofit for over four years and during that time it did artwork for a lot of their events, never when I was working on the clock of my day job, but as a freelance artist it was always paid. It was a pre agreed amount, but we never wrote anything down as to who owned the images or the specific use for them. So, after an extremely bad year, I was unfortunately let go by a bad manager. Um And like I re kind, it doesn't still hurt and make

me angry. I really love that job and I put a lot of heart and soul into it. So now it's been almost a year and I discovered that the Halloween illustrations I created for the organization are being used again. I don't want to demand if they stopped using my artwork because they paid they commissioned it. But when I was an employee, it was openly acknowledged that I was the artist and credited for it, and a lot of

people knew um just by talking around the organization. So my question is, do you think it would be unreasonable to ask for credit for any future use of my work, or would it just seem like a retaliation from a bitter ex employee. So the answer here is that unless you had a written agreement that they would give you credit whenever they use the images, they probably do have

the right to use them without crediting you. It is possible to have a written agreement that says they have to credit you whenever those images appear, But if you did not arrange that, what they're doing is likely fine. I know that you said you were doing this as a sort of freelance thing for pay, on top of your regular work for them. It's very likely that this was what's called work for hire, which means that they hired you specifically to create images for them that they

would then own so they can use those. They can probably use them without crediting you. You probably can't demand that they stop, and I know you weren't proposing that you do that, but just to give you some background in that, it is also true that sometimes organizations will give bylines to current employees but not to former ones.

You see this more with writing. If you're working for an organization and you write some thing, they might give you the byline while you're there, but once you leave, they might just credit the work to the organization more generally, so they're not necessarily doing this despite you, or to try to erase your contribution. It might just be standard practice for them to not put people's names on things if they're no longer working there. But that doesn't mean

that you can't still try to make the request. You can definitely ask, and you know, the worst they can do is they know, I don't think you'll sound like a bitter X employee as long as you frame the request in the right way. You don't want to contact them and say, hey, those are my images, so you need to give me credit, because that will just invite them to point out that actually those are their images now because they bought them from you and or you did it as work for higher and they don't need

to credit you. But you could say something like, I saw that you're using the illustrations that I created, and I'm so glad that they're still in use. I had a lot of fun making them. Would it be possible for you to still credit the images to me the way that you used to. I'm proud of the work and it would mean a lot to me to be credited for them. With that approach, you're not demanding anything. You don't sound better, You're explaining what your interest is,

and who knows. Maybe they'll say yes, but it's possible they'll say now, and if they do, it's probably not personal, So just respond graciously if that does happen. One other thing I will say is, before you do this, think

about what is driving it. If it's something like you're working to build a portfolio of illustration work and it would be professionally helpful to have your name on that work, that makes sense, although keep in mind that you can still put that work in your portfolio even though your name doesn't appear on it. It's pretty normal for designers to have work in their portfolio that doesn't carry their name once is published, and you can still claim it

as yours when you're trying to get future jobs. But if your motivation is more emotional than that, if you're hurt by being fired and it stings to see them using your work even though they let you go, and this feels like a way to somehow ease some of that, you know, to vindicate yourself. Like look if I was bad enough to be fired. Why are you still using

my work? If that is more in line with your thinking, I would strongly consider not pursuing this because while it is very emotional to you, to them, it's really just business and whether or not they do credit those images to you, it's not going to change your feelings about what happened, and I worry about you pursuing it in an attempt to soothe that hurt. So just give that some thought before you decide whether or not to get in touch with them. Let's take a quick break here

and come back with more questions. Hi, Alison, I was hoping to get your input on an issue that I encountered at work recently. So. I am a female manager in her late twenties who throughout with ofly new to managing, and one of my reports, who is male and around my age, has since I've been since I was promoted to this position, been having performance issues. So as we went through this, I pointed out instances where I saw

the issues. I had a bigger conversation with him a few months ago where I told him what the expectations were. I told him how he was falling short of those and I told him that if you continued to fall short of them, we would have to put him on a performance improvement plan. So we continued to see those issues, and I followed through and put him on a thirty day PISS and during that time continued having our weekly one on one and throughout all of us my losses

in the loop and supported me. So as the end of the PIP approach, we're having our final one on one, and I told my report that we hadn't seen sufficient improvement yet and that it was very likely, based on what we've seen so far, that we would have to let him go at the end of the plan. So he was of course understandably upset. But after that conversation, I thought it went about as well as these things can.

What I didn't know was that after we had that conversation, he turned around and called my boss and he told my boss that I had a personal vendetta against him and that this plan was not long enough to show improvement, to allow him to show improvement, So my boss told this guy that needed to talk with me about it.

But what he's now telling me is that we need to extend the PIP because this employee is in California, where the employee protections are relatively strong, and my boss is afraid that this guy will file a lawsuit, not even necessarily that held successful, but just that we don't want to deal with the time or expense of this lawsuit.

So my questions are, first of all, is there something that I should have done differently over the course of this particularly should I have tried to give this employee a headset that I didn't think things were working out. Secondly, what should my boss ideally have done in this scenario? And thirdly, how do I handle this situation going forward? Because even if this employee fixes his issues, at this point, I am concerned about his judgment and also just annoyed

that he would go over my head. So I'm not quite sure what to do going forward. So i'd really appreciate your input. Thank you very much. I am frustrated with your boss here because you did everything right in this situation. From what you've said, you had multiple conversations with your employee about the problems in his work. You clearly laid out the expectations for him and where he

was falling short. You gave him a formal improvement plan with benchmarks he would need to meet to show improvement, and a specific period of time to do it in, and you kept your boss in the loop the whole time. This is exactly the way to handle performance problems. You said you're a new manager, so first kudos to you forgetting this so right, because performance problems can be really hard to handle, even for more experienced managers, but especially

for new managers. And it sounds like you nailed it, and he did something that's really important. You kept your boss informed while it was happening, and you made sure that he supported what you were doing. I don't know if your boss has acknowledged to you that he messed up here, but if not, he should. It's one thing for him to realize, oh, we really should give this longer than thirty days. And I will say, I don't

even know if that is right in this case. There are some performance issues that take longer than thirty days to be able to know if the person should remain in the job or not. But for the vast majority of situations, thirty days is a very reasonable amount of time. That doesn't mean that someone will vastly improve their skills in that time, but it is enough time to tell what kind of trajectory the person is on. Are they clearly on the path to getting better or are they not?

For most days, thirty days really is enough time to figure that out, and most performance plans really don't need to be longer, although a lot of organizations right very lengthy ones. But let's say that in this case, your boss actually is right and something like sixty days would have been better. Fine, but he should have thought that

through earlier. And the problem with changing it now is that it is signaling to your employee that he can reverse your decisions by going over your head to your own boss when he doesn't like something that you told him. It's undermining to you and you need him to respect your authority and your decision making. And your boss is actually setting this guy up to think that maybe in another thirty days, if he hasn't passed the extended plan, he can go over your head then too, and maybe

get more time or get the whole thing canceled. It's not great for him to set him up to believe that, and it's definitely not good for you as a manager. Also, for the record, California does not have any law that would prohibit you letting someone go for performance reasons. You can't fire someone in any state because of their race, or their gender, or their religion or disability or so forth. But in every state, including California, you can fire someone

for legitimate performance reasons. And you are on especially safe ground when you have the kind of documentation of those issues that a performance improvement plan provides you with. Now, if your boss is worried about nuisance lawsuits, I get that. And if he just wants to double your documentation to ward that off, I get that as well. But he should at least acknowledge to you that he messed up

by not figuring that out earlier. Are on, and that now he's put you in this difficult position with your employee, and he should be telling you that he will definitely have your back in letting this guy go in thirty days or whatever time period you decide if the problems do continue. Now you asked if you should have tried to give your employee a heads up that things were not working out, but you did. That is what a

performance improvement plan is. Assuming that you did a plan that clearly said you've got thirty days you need to improve in the following ways during that time and if not, we may let you go. That is a heads up. That is a very clear heads up that in fact is a huge part of the point of doing an improvement plan, you know, to make sure that everyone is on the same page about what needs to change and

what will happen if things don't change. As for what your boss should have done, well, he I mean, he should have thought this that earlier so that if he wanted to do a longer plan, you would know that from the outset. Or he should have told this guy when he called him that you and he had spoken and that you were aligned on the situation, and he certainly should be giving you some reassurance now that he's not going to flip flop again at the end of

this extension. As for how to handle the employee going forward, it sounds like you are extending the improvement plan and like another thirty days or something like that. I'm guessing I suspect, just based on watching a lot of these situations, that he is not going to improve, not because people don't improve when they're put on improvement plans, a lot of people do, but based on the fact that he hasn't done it so far. I'm skeptical that giving him

another thirty days will somehow change that. So I suspect that you will have clearcut justification to let him go at the end of the extension. So I would talk to your boss right now and just make absolutely sure that you are both on the same page now that he is on board with that plan, so that there are no surprises when you get to the end of this extension. But if I'm wrong and you do see

the improvement that you need, then great. Then if he's working at the level that you need, then fine, But you would want to make it really clear that the improvement needs to be sustained over time. He can't slip back to old habits and then expect that he'll get a brand new improvement plan and start that process all over again. A condition of taking him off the plan is that everyone agrees that this performance level will be sustained and that if not, you would need to let

him go. And you want to make sure that your boss is on board with that, and that you talk through exactly what that would mean in different scenarios so that he doesn't pull the rug out from under you again. And when I say, talk through what it means in different scenarios. I mean, really spell it out, because he might be thinking, oh, sure, yeah, that sounds fine in theory, but he might think it through more thoroughly and more critically.

If you say, okay, just to make sure if the next thirty days go the same way that these last thirty days go, then on December one or whatever your date is, that means that we would let him go.

Is that is that you're under standing as well? You know, just really spell it out and make sure that he's thinking it all the way through, because sometimes with managers, you'll do that and then they'll think, oh no, I'm not actually comfortable with that, and it's better to find that up now so that you can figure out a plan that he will actually be on board with the

whole way through. About being annoyed with your employee for going over your head, I get it, it is annoying, but I think the way to look at it is to decide, you know, we're talking about his job here, and if he truly believed that he was being treated unfairly, it is okay for him to escalate it. I mean, if he really had been treated unfairly, we would want

him to have recourse in that situation. If you felt like your boss was treating you unfairly, it might seem reasonable to go over his head to his boss, right, So I would just try to remember that. Now, if you get into a situation where he keeps doing it repeatedly, that's a problem and you would need to talk to your boss about redirecting this guy back to you. But if it's just happened the one time, and it was

when his job was on the line, it's understandable. So I try to let that part of it go and move past it. Let's take a quick break here and come back with more questions. Here's our next question. I share my office with two women. Are spaces are a cubicle type area? My issue is I have a coworker who loves to eat nuts or chips while at her desk, which is fine. However, she is an incredibly loud cheer. It sounds like she's always chewing on a handful of rocks.

On top of that, in recent months, she started to answer her phone and speak to our customers while chewing on these treats. I find it so rude. It doesn't really bother my other coworker, but it drives me crazy. I've resorted to wearing headphones all day and listening to music or podcast. In recent weeks, things have gone downhill. She's now started belching out loud without and I'm sorry.

I just don't know what to do anymore. I know in the next year or two we will be moving and all of us will get our own offices, so this is not an issue I'll have to deal with forever, But for the time being, what do I do? Although not ideal, I can deal with it with my headphones. I'm just more concerned with her talking to our customers while eating. I just don't know how to go about

this situation. Please help, well, you have my sympathy. Is I know how aggravating it can be to be trapped next to someone who is making a sound that grates on your nerves all day long. I don't know if it makes you feel any better or not, but my inbox is full of letters from people whose coworker sits nearby and make some kind of annoying noise all day long. Sometimes it's loud chewing, sometimes it's drumming their fingers. Sometimes

it's talking to themselves or having lead phone calls. There are a bunch of different ways that this happens, and it is slowly driving a large portion of office workers crazy from what I can tell from my mail. I know it can sound like a small thing when you're not the one who's dealing with it, and I do think it's true that some people just aren't that bothered

by these types of sounds. But if you're someone who is, it can be so aggravating, especially because you're a captive audience when you're at work and you can't easily get away from it. The thing is, though there might not be a lot that you can do about it, using headphones to block it out is smart, and if you don't feel like having headphones in all day long, you could also try white noise if the coworkers around you

will agree to it. If it were something like humming or drumming her fingers, you could just ask her directly. You know, Hey, you probably don't realize that you're doing this. It's pretty distracting. Could I ask you to stop? But with eating, it's harder to say, hey, you're allowed cheer

and it's gross, please stop. Well, maybe you could actually, with some relationship, if you got along really well and you had good rapport, you actually could kind of joke about it, you know, say, good lord, you're allowed tour. You've got to keep that down, or I'm going to confiscate your chips. If you have that kind of relationship where you like each other and you joke together, maybe you could do that. But it won't go over well with everyone. And some of this may just be realizing

that working around other humans means working around noises. It's just part of the package because we are a loud and gross species, some of us more than others. But there is that thing about her talking to clients with her mouthful, and that one, honestly might not really be your business, even though I get why you're annoyed by it.

If you have a really good relationship with her, it is possible that you could say something like, Hey, I don't know if you realize, but if I were your client, I could probably tell that you were chewing while you were talking to me just now, and I probably would not be thrilled. But if you don't have a close relationship with her, or a relationship that allows for that, then I think you've just got a figure. It's not

your problem to solve. It's something her boss might want to address, but it doesn't really rise to the level of something that you should be tipping her manager off about. Okay, let's do one more. I have a question for you

about a somewhat sensitive work subject. So I began a new job about three weeks ago, and it since comes my attention through two separate conversations with two separate employees that I work with, that there were three people in the office who left around the same time, about three months ago, so this is prior to me starting, and they left rather abruptly, and both of my colleagues at different points have said to me that there is confusion about why they left, but that it is a sensitive

subject and they're not a hundred percent sure what the reason is that they left or why they left abruptly. In fact, one of my colleagues said to me that she was away on vacation and when she returned, there were a lot of meetings behind closed doors and then those employees were gone. So my question is this, is

this something that I should raise to my supervisor. Should I say to her that two of our colleagues have spoken to me about this and that it concerns me, and I'm wondering if she can reveal a little bit about what happened and how it will affect the work culture of our office. Thank you. I would not, especially as a new employee, because the thing is, there are all kinds of reasons that this could have happened. It could have been that they were laid off because of

budget cuts. It could have been that they were fired even for different reasons for each of them, and the timing was a coincidence. Or maybe there had been long running issues with all of them in your office decided to deal with it all at once. Or they could have been fired for the same reason. Who knows. They could have been doing something shady together or all involved in something that was firable, or they could have all

resigned in protest over something to make a point. There's no way to know what it was, but any of these would definitely have resulted in the closed door meetings that your coworkers saw. If you were a long time employee and you had concerns about what had happened, it would be reasonable to talk to your manager and ask if there was anything that she could share with you. She might not be able to because often things like firings are confidential and with good reason, But it wouldn't

be out of line to ask. But as a new employee who has only been there for a few weeks and who wasn't there a few months ago when this happened, it's going to look a little odd to ask about it. You risk it coming across as gossipy or otherwise. It's just not really being clear what your stake is in

finding out now. Certainly, if you had heard specifics that you wanted to ask about because of a concrete concern it raised for you, like if there had been harassment or discrimination, as she is, and you wanted to know how those would be handled going forward, that would be

something you could ask about. Or if it was something like one of the people who left used to do part of your job and now there are questions about how that work will be handled, you could ask about that, Or if there were things that you potentially really did need to know to be able to do your job, like if one of them had worked closely with a client who you now handle and you needed to know if there was any sensitive history for you to be

aware of, that's something that you could ask about. But if it's really just I heard people left under mysterious circumstances and I want to know why, it's not really something that you have a lot of standing to ask about, especially when longer time employees haven't been told either. Now, if you are worried that maybe the says something problematic about the culture, the best thing to do there is to reserve judgment and pay attention to what you are

seeing firsthand. You know, how does your manager manage what is the culture on the team. Are you getting clear expectations for your role and useful feedback and the support that you need to do your job? Is your manager approachable? I put the most weight on that stuff, the stuff that you see happening now, and not get too caught up and worrying about something for before you were there, unless and until you see it playing out in more concrete ways that would make it more relevant to you. Well,

that is our show for today. If you would like to hear your question answered on a future episode, I would love to answer it. You can record it on the show voicemail at eight five five two six work. That's eight five five two six nine six seven five, or you can record it in a sound file on your phone and email it to podcast at Aska manager dot org. That's it for today and I will be back next time with more questions. M