I work with a person that went presented with a problem, works through it and arrives at the wrong solution. When I have them show me the steps they took, it seems like they interpret things incorrectly. This isn’t a language barrier, and it’s not like they aren’t reading what someone wrote.
For example, they are working on a product, and needed to wait until the intended recipients of the product were notified by an email that they were going to get it. the person that sent the email to the recipients then forwarded that notification email to this person and said “go ahead and send this to them.”
Most people would understand that they are being asked to send the product out. It’s a regular process for them.
So he resent the email. He also sent the product, but I’m having a hard time understanding why he thought he was supposed to re-send the email.
I’ve tried breaking tasks down into smaller steps, writing out the tasks, post-mortem discussion when something doesn’t go as planned. What other training or management tasks can I take? Or have I arrived at the “herding kittens” meme?
From the way this post is written, I think you don’t realize how vague your communication style is. Too many possible interpretations of what you said makes it hard to even follow the story you laid out.
Who emailed who about what?
How did someone resend an email that someone else sent?
Re-sending would mean the same coworker sent the email twice.
On rereading, I think you meant that one coworker sent an email to the client, then another coworker that you are having trouble with also sent the same email to the same client.
So, to answer your question, I think they arrive at a different conclusion because they see things differently. Anything that can be interpreted differently will be interpreted differently. The other co workers think they’re giving this person set values when in fact they’re handing them a set of variables and expecting only one result.
Have you considered events from their perspective? From what you’ve described, they were told to wait until a notification was sent, then they were given a notification with the instruction “send this”. If it was me my first thought would absolutely be that that’s the notification to be sent, the only reason I’d hesitate is because those sort of communications are well outside my job description.
The reason they sent the product afterwards is obvious; they were told to send them after the notification was sent, and they had sent the notification.
From what you’ve described, you are communicating incredibly poorly then blaming your workers for misunderstanding.
Yes, it was too vague. OP may have set a tone that doesn’t allow for clarifying questions, or the coworker honestly thought they were carrying out every step exactly as it was told to them and didn’t see the need for clarification.
I wasn’t directly involved in this example, so if the problem was with how I communicate it didn’t affect this situation.
I agree that the request was worded poorly but you correctly hesitated.
Unfortunately they seem to be the only one that has difficulty in asking questions when the instructions are unclear or outside the norm.
Removed by mod
Ok I’m glad I’m not the only one who is confused. Idk if I’m just stupid, but I read the OP three times and cannot for the life of me understand what was supposed to happen with the emails and products. Can someone explain it to me?
Edit: Ok, I get it now after taking a few minutes, but the instructions are still vague. “This” is not a specific indication. Sounds like the employee sent both the product and the email just to be safe because the instruction was ambiguous. It sounds like the employee was uncertain what was meant, but for whatever reason didn’t ask for clarification.
So why didn’t they ask? Does this employee get pushback for asking for clarification? Were they being lazy? Are they an anxious person? There are many possibilities here.
Summary is that OP sucks at communicating and blames other people for their incompetence. Now they are in this forum seeking affirmation that they are not incompetent.
Agreed. I didn’t proof what I wrote very well.
This example didn’t involve me though, so my poorly written post and writing style shouldn’t have impacted this situation.
They are being difficult, it’s quite clear what happened.
Anyways, no matter how vague you are, it isn’t normal to think the email is the thing that needs sending when the email chain itself is about sending out a product.
Sounds like he has some form of dyslexia. Best thing to do is be as clear as you can with him and expect him to take things very literally. Its a tough line to walk though since it’s easy to come off as patronizing and have him feel insulted.
I think you mean autism more so than dyslexia. But they do go hand in hand.
please translate it them, cause idk wtf I would be expected of me with all those variables.
What part don’t you understand?
care to explain?
What part needs translating? What is it that you find hard to understand?
every single bit. if you’re not going to translate it to someone a normal person can understand, then fuck off and stop replying to me
I’ll join the others here saying that it’s very unclear what you’re requesting, what your colleagues did, what they were supposed to do, and what actually happened.
It may serve you well to look inwards for a solution to your problem.
Vagueness was intentional.
In this case I was an observer, so my writing style didn’t affect the situation I had described. I’m also not the first to recognize this type of problem with the employee.
You don’t think your writing style affects your workplace? If you are indeed the manager, you are tasked, among other things, with establishing the culture of the team.
If the writing in the post is any indication of the level of writing and communication at work, OP needs to work on their communication skills.
Is he maybe just a really literal person and took the forwarded email with instructions “send THIS to them” as “send this email to them”, but then he knows his work responsibility is to send the product, hence why he sent both the product and the email?
Do you have an SOP or exact steps to follow written down in a very clear, concise manner (yes, even something as simple as “after employee A sends the email, employee A will notify employee B to send out the product by forwarding the customer email to employee B”; I’m talking reaaaallly literal steps here)?
Can you give other examples of times he’s messed up in a similar way?
Does he have poor reading comprehension? ADHD?
I train employees a lot in my current job and jobs prior and I’ve learned that everyone interprets things differently and learns at their own pace. Most times you can adapt to their style, but sometimes people are just mentally out to lunch 24/7 and not fit for the job.
Another example:
The product they were sending is only relevant to remote workers.
The product group they were to send it to consists of remote workers and in-office workers.
They are aware that the product they are sending is only for remote workers.
This isn’t the first time they have had to send something to only remote workers.
They sent it to all of them instead of only the remote workers.
While I concede that the instruction could have been worded better, they should have either known to send the product to the appropriate people or asked questions.
Others have said in this post that I need to improve my comms skills, but this person regularly mis-interprets things from everyone, including documentation and guides, and then executes without hesitation. So how do we fix the individual?
It sounds like this person isn’t remembering the procedures then, even when you’ve explained it to them and they’ve already done the task before (Or they’re just a lazy fuck that doesn’t care one way or the other and maybe never will). There is no “fixing” the individual, you need to correct their behavior while also giving them plenty of opportunity to get it right and with all the tools and guides they need readily available. How long have they been working in that position? Maybe they just need more time.
As others have stated, if the directions aren’t already in writing, you should either write them down for the employee or, better yet, make the employee write them down, then review it for accuracy. This should in theory help them commit the process to memory, plus now they have their own guide to refer to.
Another bonus (for you, not the employee) of getting the process in writing is that if/when this person messes up again, now you have something to point back to and say “Remember when we went over this and you wrote it down and I verified that your notes were correct? Did you follow those notes this time? If yes, why did (mess up) happen anyway? If no, why didn’t you follow the notes?” Make this person explain themselves, don’t just sit there and be mad and say nothing to them.
This could also be a case of weaponized incompetence/ learned helplessness. If they fuck up a lot, you stop giving them work, but they’re still there getting paid anyway, right? Now you’re just paying them to either stand around or do menial tasks and not what you actually hired them for.
Start documenting their fuck ups, and tell them you’re doing so. You’re better off having a paper trail to point to when you have to fire them.
Most helpful, thanks.
It may be that your comms skills are good enough for most people but not for this person. One option you have is to improve them even further so that it goes beyond being sufficient for the normal people, and also becomes sufficient for this person.
For example, I have never had my instructions misinterpreted. I am autistic. In my experience, both autistics and neurotypicals tend to interpret my instructions with zero difficulty.
I am saying this to indicate that it is possible to use language in a way that works even for the people who need extra precision.
In the scenario you described, the use of the word “this” in the “send this to them” instruction was a predictable failure point in the communication.
Eliminating that word from that communication would have prevented this issue.
If you want to change the individual, have them do significant working memory training. If you want to solve the problem, consider establishing and enforcing a higher level of disambiguity in office communications.
No SOP because no one else has trouble understanding this process. At the level they are at they shouldn’t need written steps for this and every other aspect of their job.
I’ve been suspecting adhd for a while but I’m not sure how to approach that topic.
Some people need structure. It’s not unreasonable to provide it to them.
Any company with reasonably involved processes (read: more than three steps) should have clearly documented SOPs, policies and process documentation. This has nothing to do with the level people are at. I’m at senior level and sure as shit don’t remember every detail of something that was verbally communicated to me months ago unless I do it every single day, and even that’s error-prone. I write step by step instructions on processes for myself and everyone else.
Benefits of this approach:
- It’s not stuck in my or anyone else’s head, but clearly spelled out
- people can follow the process again and again, no matter how much time passes between each time - you’d be surprised how much people forget if they don’t do something on a daily basis
- clear documentation removes doubt
- clear documentation is beneficial to newly onboarded staff. Nobody gives them a half-baked version scraped together from memory fragments
- people can point out potential issues with the process, and the documentation can be amended/updated
- I myself can go back to it if I have even the slightest amount of doubt on a detail.
Drawbacks of this approach:
- someone has to write the document
- someone has to maintain it
Do not approach a coworker and suggest they may have a health condition. That is not your place.
My wife told me, “please go to the store and buy a carton of milk and if they have eggs, get six.”
When I came back with 6 cartons of milk she said, “why in the hell did you buy six cartons of milk?”
I said “they had eggs.”
Sometimes being extremely specific helps some people understand. Anything that could have multiple meanings is always open to some interpretation. And while it would be nice if they asked for clarification, they may not because they think they fully understand the instructions.
being extremely specific
More like being eggstreamly specific
Great example/joke. A rational person would either understand that six eggs were wanted, or that six cartons of milk is an odd request and ask for confirmation that they understood the request correctly.
My problem to solve is how do I fix this? While clear instruction should be given, I can’t be there to translate every request this person receives, nor should I have to approve every action they want to take.
You claim you’ve tried and done things to assist this employee but it sounds like you are just looking for advice on justifying them being the problem.
A realist would get to the store and see they only sold eggs by the dozen and get 6 cartons of milk. 6 eggs isn’t an available option so they must have been referring to the milk.
It’s also possible they could have meant 6 dozen eggs.The answer is that a more precise request gets a more precise result. If you want six eggs, clarify that it’s eggs you want six of.
It can be tedious for both sidesto think about all interactions in this way, but it’s much more troublesome to have to deal with the fallout of a misunderstanding.
In the OP, the message could have been “Go ahead and send out this order” and nobody would have questioned what it was that had to go out.
I’ve taken to writing my notes on a ticket at work as a thought per line. All lead with a -
-writing lines of notes
-each line is capable to be its own
-visibly separate for each thought.
Then you get people. Who try to. Do stuff like this. Where the info is hidden in a paragraph and it’s just a mess to try and process quickly.
I think you try having someone else explain it to them. Clearly you and they don’t understand each other.
Sounds like the instructions were unclear so the person implemented all possible interpretations in order to avoid any misinterpretation causing problems. If they were forwarded an email and told to send “this” to someone, I can easily see that being interpreted as the email itself. Especially if this wasn’t the first time your instructions were unclear and they got in trouble for not guessing the right interpretation. Being more clear and saying “the product” instead of just “this” might help or even saying the name of the product. Good communication is about being precise, but brief.
If people are always having to guess your intentions, then some are going to get it right and some won’t. Some will learn how you think and how to interpret your vague instructions and some won’t. But if you learn better communication skills to be more direct in your instructions and leave fewer things open to interpretation, then there won’t be any need for people to guess your intentions. Remember, no one else has the information in your head, only the information in your communication.
As an autistic person, I will say that the word “this” is one of my biggest stumbling blocks in communication.
I agree, but here is some more info:
Employee seems to misunderstand requests from most people and published documentation at a rate much higher than others.
Employee has had years to figure out how people communicate with them.
In this case I wasn’t the one that worded the request poorly, it was someone else. I have adapted to using lists when making requests, and avoiding vague statements, but I can’t expect everyone to adapt to this person and I can’t be there to translate everything for them.
Is that employee autistic? One of the things that management requires is learning to communicate with all types of people and help others communicate. After all, your job isn’t producing something, it’s making sure your employees that do the actual work are able to do their job effectively.
I’m just using autism as an example because I happen to be on the spectrum, though I’ve learned to mask well over the years. Autism has tons of advantages in the way we think. Great at analysis, great at handling emergencies, etc., but our communication style is a little different. We tend to need communication to be direct and precise because we analyze things too much sometimes. Problem is that because we’re so used to being misunderstood or misunderstanding people and getting into trouble for it and being scolded for asking clarifying questions because we “should just know what they meant”, that we often don’t ask the questions and try to interpret things in all the possible ways.
And maybe it’s not even at this job that they were scolded, they just are used to neurotypical people scolding them for the way they think, that they no longer even try to ask questions. So my advice is to make sure the person is not only able to ask questions, but is encouraged to do so if they need to. Make sure to be very positive when they do and make sure the other people they interact with are positive as well. It’s a very small accommodation that could help them thrive and end up being one of your best employees if given the right atmosphere.
Again, I’m using autism as an example because it’s a commonly misunderstood condition that is not a disease and not curable, nor should anyone try to cure it, it is just a different way of thinking and is a spectrum of various types of ways of thinking that people are often forced to mask and so is commonly undiagnosed or misdiagnosed. Heck, I didn’t figure it out until a few years ago and I’m in my mid-40s. But it took me decades to learn to effectively communicate without knowing why some people just couldn’t get me. Even now I tend to over-communicate as you can see from this wall of text.
But as a manager you should try to get to know your employees’ strengths and weaknesses, communication styles, etc., and help them to communicate more effectively with each other. It has helped me to be effective at coordinating people.
If they are it’s not something that’s been told to me.
I’m very aware that people have different skills and limitations and adjust accordingly. I have done a lot, including helping organize tasks, reviewing issues when they come up, setting goals, positive reinforcement, asking how they want me to change to help them further, suggesting learning opportunities, suggesting social interaction opportunities…
Let’s not assume I came to post this without first trying different techniques, researching topics on how to manage people like this, and reaching out to management peers for possible solutions. I’ve had a few upper management people that knew this person tell me “some people just don’t get it” and “they have possibly hit their peak”
I’m very aware that people have different skills and limitations and adjust accordingly. I have done a lot, including helping organize tasks, reviewing issues when they come up, setting goals, positive reinforcement, asking how they want me to change to help them further, suggesting learning opportunities, suggesting social interaction opportunities…
One thing you have not mentioned trying is encouraging others in the organization to replace the words “this” and “that” with the actual referent in their communications.
For example the email that said “send this to them”, could say “send the product to them”.
Disambiguating the words “this” and “that” in communication seem like a much more direct path to avoiding this problem than the steps you described.
Thanks, I will do that. Keep in mind that I presented a single situation. It also applies to things like following documentation steps, and coming up with steps on their own to reach a defined goal.
Ok, I was just assuming you were looking for advice, but if it’s just a vent post, that’s my bad.
I probably should have included that these were all great responses; just that I’ve tried them.
Employee has had years to figure out how people communicate with them.
Maybe your employee does have more difficulty understanding than the average person, but this is such a bullshit excuse.
Everyone communicates differently. What is obvious to someone may not be obvious to others. Some people need a little more precision in the instructions you give to them. I don’t see why it would be unreasonable to provide that.
I’m reminded of an interaction with my supervisor the other day…
Me: Hello. This case has <issue>. Am I ok to proceed with <issue> or does it need to be corrected first?
Supervisor: Have <Company name> figure it out.
<Company name> has literally thousands of employees so I have no idea why she said it like that.
Me: Uhh…do you want me to ask <Name of specific higher up person>?
Supervisor: No, have them figure it out.
Me: Who is them?
Supervisor: <Lower level assistant>.
For context, <Lower level assistant> usually asks us if they are ok to proceed, not the other way around.
Me: I don’t think they will know the answer. Who should I have them ask?
Supervisor: <Company name>
Me: ???
Supervisor: Have them ask <Name of a specific manager>
Me: Ok.
In this whole interaction, she was getting increasingly rude and irate with me for not being able to read her mind. If she would have just said she wanted <Name of a specific manager> to figure it out, she could have just told me to begin with instead of getting huffy and curt with me and unnecessarily prolonging the interaction.
Here’s another example…
Supervisor: Hey, do you want me to move X out of the way somewhere?
Me: Nah, I don’t mind it being there!
Supervisor: I don’t want X there.
Me: <Supervisor>, I am not a mind reader. If you want something, you have to tell me.
Sometimes what is obvious in your brain is not obvious to those around you.
I don’t think your supervisor is mis-communicating, I think they just don’t know what they want. But they want you to still choose correctly even though there is no correct answer. It’s like when my husband asks what I want for dinner and I tell him “I don’t know, you pick”, there’s definitely a right and wrong answer for his decision but I don’t know it until he chooses it! Yes I know how messed up that is. Anywho, god speed to you
Your employee is autistic, and suffers from low working memory.
Increasing the employee’s working memory through targeted working memory training will help with this.
Unfortunately, you probably cannot order them to do this training, or even mention the deficit while staying within HR rules.
Might be a high functioning autist? If he got sent the notification email, he could interpret “go and send this” as what he is supposed to send, and thus the logic of shipping the product afterwards kicks in and he also sends that. Just my two cents as a fellow high functioning autist…
But then why did he also send the product?
Because the product was supposed to wait until the email was sent. Email sent -> no problem, send the product next.
Ah, so he was just following his set of the instructions. This situation is exactly why I teach students to always put some kind of noun after a “this,” so that it is clear what “this” refers to.
Thank you for pushing your students to do that.
It is awesome when they get there. My favorite thing is to see light bulbs go off in their heads. I thank you for the feedback: wish I could use these comments to prove to students why to listen to me.
This is simple, practical advice that I can use when instructing coworkers. Thank you!
Thank you for validating my method! I am so grateful for my own English teachers that I’ve over a decade spreading their knowledge.
Thank you! As an autistic person, I am serious in saying that your practice with your students is honestly the most helpful thing I’ve ever heard of a person doing for autistic people.
That is precisely what we most need: clear communication from others. With that, we can earn our own way. But we do need that.
Ahhh… You have no idea how awesome it feels to hear it’s helpful. Only some teenagers are ready to hear it.
Clear, precise written communication helps everyone, and I love that I get to spend my time helping the next generation share their ideas in effective ways.
I had an English teacher who made us write a 500 word essay every single day for the entire semester. My wrist still crackles when I rotate it, because of how bad the writer’s cramp was.
That was one of the best things any teacher ever did for me. I wish more people had pushed me that hard when I was young.
I love these stories so much! I had an English teacher who would take 10 points off for every “to be” verb you used in any assignment. Most people thought it was ridiculous, but I saw it as a challenge. I learned so much that year, I still refer to her as my Yoda. She actually convinced me to get back into the teaching game after a terrible first job that made me slip into the legal field for awhile.
ETA: Apologies, I feel my lack of reading comprehension on this one deeply.
Most people would understand
…and some people would not understand.
If you want that the other party understands, then you need to be specific.
if others were regularly coming to me with questions about my direction I would agree with you. In this case I was an outside observer to how the situation transpired, and the individual seems to run into this problem with me and others.
the individual seems to run into this problem with me and others
Of course he does. People are people. Some are this, others are that.
What is your question? Do you want to change the other person? It never works. You can only change your own part.
intended recipients of the product
Do you mean “the customer”?
The way you communicate (at least in English) is needlessly convoluted.
You already know they interpret your instructions incorrectly. You admitted yourself that, that is the problem. The solution in my world would be to give better instructions.
Intended recipient of the product doesn’t have to mean customer. Could simply be sending something to a coworker or any number of options. The provided information seems completely understandable. It’s possible that what we are getting vs the person being told could be very different though.
Yeah, it’s vague on purpose. No, not customers.
Have we started to get reddit style bait on lemmy now? There’s no way someone can communicate so poorly in this and multiple responses while blaming someone else for not understanding.
It’s pretty funny, I’ll give you that.
I wish I knew. I have a coworker who flat out doesn’t understand anything about his job and causes others to do all his work for him. He has been employed with us for a year and has barely improved. I personally would never give him a task because I know he’d fuck it up royally, causing a day task to be become a 5 day task while wasting hours of other people’s time.
I have tried talking to managers about him and they won’t listen. I cannot understand how he’s not been fired. The motherfucker clearly is not working 90% of the time. His slack status shows him offline almost always, he doesn’t respond to emails or GitHub notifications. He opens about 1 pull request per two weeks, and most of them have 50 or more comments from other developers pointing out the same mistakes he always makes. I think every single task he’s successfully completed has been via pair programming, and when I’ve been involved it’s been painful how little he gets. Baffling shit.
I think I work with this guy.
Are you saying you’re clueless or you work with the clueless guy?
Definitely the latter! 😁
Haha gotcha. I feel for you. It is so painful… I don’t get how no one above him sees it.
Not sure why so many people here comment that your communication style is vague.
Both instructions and issue are clear. Send product after notification was sent via mail. Colleague did that and aso sent the mail again, which had already been sent.
Why people are talking about the product being sent as the issue in thus scenario is beyond me.
As for a solution: Let them repeat back to you what they’re supposed to do in their own words to verify you’re both on the same page, before the do what they need to do.
If you have tried this unsuccessfully, I have no further suggestions without a whole lot more detail except for: ask theco worker in question how they would have phrased the task if they had given it to someone else. Try and learn what their style of communication is and adjust for that particular colleague.
some people hate legalese, but after reading the situation, I think legalese is made for this sort of problems.
some people learn by example better than following instructions.
also context plays a lot when it comes to instructions. try to see things ahead if played in different contexts.
