Longtime Employee Refuses to Make Decisions, Impacting Team Culture

Good Job is Slate’s advice column on work. Have a workplace problem big or small? Send it to Laura Helmuth and Doree Shafrir here. (It’s anonymous!) I’ve been with my current job for a year now. I supervise a director who has been with the organization for 32 years and reminds everyone of it. But she consistently refuses to make decisions. While she rarely says this to me directly, I’ve learned (through multiple staff) that she tells others I have to make all decisions “in case something goes wrong,” so she won’t be blamed. I’ve addressed decision-making expectations with her directly, emphasizing that leadership includes making imperfect decisions and adjusting as needed. I’ve also offered to partner through work sessions to build confidence. She agrees in the moment, but nothing changes. Recently, instead of making a call or escalating appropriately, she went outside the chain to get a decision from a different leader who doesn’t oversee her area. On top of that, her persistent negativity is impacting team culture. When I try to address it, she deflects and later weaponizes those conversations when something doesn’t go her way. How do I get her to fall in line with the direction I am trying to take the company in, or is it time to move on from her? —Decisions Are Not Contagious Dear Decisions Are Not Contagious, Many workplaces have that one person who makes life difficult for everybody else. You’ve been in this new role for a year now (happy anniversary, by the way) and have enough evidence that this director is your troublemaker. You set expectations for decision-making, assured her that imperfect decisions are acceptable, provided clear feedback, and offered exercises to improve her skills. Now it’s time to move to the next stage, which might well be “managing her out.” (For those who don’t speak corporate-ese, that means firing someone.) It should help guide your efforts if you learn more about this director’s performance during her first 31 years with the organization. Does human resources have a record of complaints from before you arrived? Has she scored poorly on her past annual reviews? If you have a peer you trust, ask whether this director has always been decision-avoidant and negative. It’s possible the two of you just clash, which happens. If she has always been trouble but your predecessor just tolerated her, that makes the next steps a bit easier. Enlist HR to help you with any procedures the organization has for documenting problems. You may opt to put your director on a performance improvement plan, which lays out expectations and deadlines for meeting them. You could use your organization’s annual review system, with more frequent check-ins, to quantify her performance. If there’s no formal system that lends itself to recording problems, document everything yourself. Put your concerns in writing where possible, and share recap memos with your director after any in-person performance conversations. If you haven’t yet, record what happened when she went around you to seek a decision from an outside leader, and give her a written warning that doing so is unacceptable. Keep repeating a clear, core message: Avoiding decisions means she is not doing director-level work. It’s possible your predecessor had lower expectations for this director than you do, and she’s still adjusting. In any case, keep providing opportunities for the director to improve. She might not feel comfortable partnering with you on confidence-building exercises, so ask HR to identify targeted trainings or workshops. Make sure you understand her job responsibilities thoroughly and are not overlooking her contributions because her negativity is so frustrating. (While you’re at it, make sure you have documentation of any procedures she manages so any future handover will be as smooth as possible.) If this director is unwilling to do director-level work, you could potentially demote her to a role with fewer leadership responsibilities. If she’s close enough to retirement after 32 years, you could, with HR’s approval, offer to call her “separation” (another euphemism for firing) a retirement. If you do fire her, be respectful and clear throughout the process and provide a generous severance package. I am terrified of ending up with someone who hides their debt from me. My father did that to my mother and it ruined her. She wasn’t able to get any relief even after she divorced him. I’ve been dating “Tod” for about six months and I honestly think he could be the one. I don’t have any reason to believe he’s hiding any debt from me, but I do notice that he spends much more on things that I consider luxuries…