Help Me Hera: My workmates can't handle my honesty

Is it my directness they have a problem with, or the fact that I'm a confident woman?

Want Hera’s help? Email your problem to helpme@thespinoff.co.nz or fill out this form.

Kia ora Hera,

Pātai for you: am I a rude, overly direct, and all around crummy person, or am I just a confident woman?

For context, I am a 30-year-old (Gen Z in my opinion) woman working in the corporate hellscape that is the Wellington public service. Now to add to this horror, I am also quite good at my job, and worst of all, I know it!

A little while ago I received a complaint at work. This complaint was delivered to my boss's boss's boss to tell me that a comment I made in a word document was "too direct". The offending comment was in relation to a piece of work I do (alone by the way) and it said something boring like "I have changed the wording in this paragraph as it was inaccurate, happy to discuss" or something as equally yawn-inspiring.

Sure, it might be direct, but why is that a bad thing? Is it because I am too uppity and it suggests I am on the rag or forgot to take my evening primrose oil, or is truly just that offensive? I believe in my supposedly ice-cold heart that if one of the men I work with wrote this comment, it would not have been an issue.

I let it go, however, a similar issue came up a couple of weeks ago where I tried to deliver constructive criticism to a junior colleague using the tried and true shit sandwich format of "I really like this one thing, this second thing is not suitable for xyz reason, and this last part is truly novel." A man chimed in (along with several others) to agree that it would not work, yet afterward, fingers were only pointed in my direction as if my neighbour's cow suddenly fell ill and we were living in the 1600s.

Don't get me wrong, I know this email sounds fired up, but I am not an absolute stick in the mud and "direct" all the time. I gasbag something chronic and I am an unreformed class clown, yet, I cannot seem to get around the societal expectation that when it comes to work I speak passively, chuck in a few umms and maybes and gas up someone's outrageously loud and heinous Paisley patterned tie before getting down to business.

So, am I too direct? Is being direct a bad thing? Or is it a secret third option, which is perhaps being a woman?

Any advice is much appreciated!

Ngā mihi,

The Fourth Sanderson Sister

Dear Fourth Sanderson Sister,

First, let me acknowledge the legitimacy of your complaint. People hate being corrected at work, and I think it’s anecdotally fair to say they especially resent being corrected by women. That doesn’t necessarily make your problem a gender issue. But trying to command authority as a young woman in the workplace isn’t a walk in the park, especially if you weren’t born with whatever gene it is that makes you end any professional email with five kisses and several yeti emojis (guilty as charged).

It’s completely unfair that women have to put on a campy, rhetorical burlesque in order to soothe corporate sensibilities, but in the workplace, as in life, there are all kinds of double, triple, and higher-dimensional non-Euclidean standards that are impossible to satisfactorily dissect. 

Race, class, sexuality, age, neurotypicality, attractiveness and general personal charisma are all factors that have a huge impact on how people interpret your behaviour, and whether you’re praised as a no-nonsense straight-talking creative visionary vs the curmudgeonly office nitpicker. They influence everything from how much you get paid to whether you’re expected to unload the communal dishwasher. 

It’s difficult to tell from a written summary whether there’s a genuine problem with your delivery, or whether your colleagues are being outlandishly sensitive, but it doesn’t sound to me like there was anything objectionable in your phrasing.

Perhaps there’s something in your affect that’s unintentionally serving “ice queen”, but considering you’re doing your best to moderate your tone and be kind, unless you’re a customer care representative for Lush, being sycophantically nice probably isn’t in your job description.

I would argue that your responsibility to address these complaints depends a lot on several factors.

The first is your job description. Are you in a position of mentorship, or managing a team of people? Do you aspire to have that kind of responsibility? Or do you work more independently?

If you were hired in a position of leadership or to provide mentorship to more junior colleagues, you have a responsibility to genuinely reflect on this kind of feedback, without getting too defensive, because part of your work requires building trust, cooperation and goodwill, and people will often refuse to take feedback from someone if they reflexively interpret it as a criticism.

That’s not to say your colleagues aren’t acting like cretins, but part of being a manager is learning to nurture said cretins and bend them to a shared purpose. Sometimes mollycoddling is an important part of a manager’s job description.

The second factor is whether it’s actually your job to give feedback. I’m specifically talking about the constructive criticism of a junior colleague portion of your letter, rather than the complaint about the written annotation (which remains oversensitive prima-donna behaviour on the part of the complainer).

If you’re working collaboratively as part of a team and there's an issue that needs to be addressed, your compliment sandwich seems appropriate. However, it may be that it’s not actually your responsibility to be giving feedback, no matter how well-intentioned, in which case, I’d suggest leaving these kinds of comments to someone else in future simply because it honestly isn’t worth the headache, even if what you were saying was broadly true and helpful.

The third and perhaps most relevant question is: what did your bosses actually say? Did they ask you to adjust your tone, or have any specific feedback? Or did you simply hear a complaint had been made? If they’ve asked you to change your approach, perhaps you could ask them what specifically was offensive, and how they’d prefer such feedback to be phrased in future. It’s their obligation to be more explicit about what they actually need from you.

If your bosses didn’t have a problem, and you’re simply stewing over the injustice of it all, you’re going to have to learn to let this kind of thing go. People complain about everything, all the time, and there’s no point hoarding grievances if you want to get anything done.

In my opinion, there’s nothing wrong with being a little blunt and straightforward, especially since you sound like you have the tools to soften a necessary criticism. But it does mean that you may have to develop a slightly thicker skin. If you’re the kind of person who likes to (politely and respectfully) dish it out, you have to become the kind of person who can (politely and respectfully) take it, even if there’s nothing of legitimate substance to take.

In most careers, you’ll encounter a few petty grievances and vague interpersonal antipathies. Learning when to listen and when to shrug it off will be one of the most empowering and useful things you can do if you value your sanity.

If this kind of feedback becomes a recurring problem in your life, it might be worth seeking out some genuine advice from someone who has your best interests at heart, to see if there’s perhaps something you’re missing which could improve the way you relate to others.

Otherwise, I can only suggest actively working on trying to give less of a shit.

Blunt and remorseless women, please give your advice in the comments.

xxxxx 🏰🛝🎀🏰🛝🎀