[mangomelon]

This isn't directly WLS related, but then again it is, in the sense that dealing with realtionships in general effects our overall stress levels and stress affects our eating habits.

I was talking in another thread how I have been handling life setbacks recently - I'm really happy with how calm I am these days. But how I handle people, on the other hand, I am not always happy with.

I think I am in a better place for relationships, but only time will tell. I'm not in one right now, and I won't know until I face it.

The one thing I am not handling well right now is dealings with a co-worker. Background: She is a few years older than me, but entered this career later than me, so she is years behind me in career. When she was in college, she was my intern at my previous job. I am a very patient and encouraging supervisor. I always focused on her positives, gave her feedback about her negatives (which for an intern were not significant) and gave advice. She always hung on my every word as if it were the gospel. (I did not like that and I often encouraged her to think for herself and be haerself) She always seemed super happy, which I was leary of at first, but because it never changed the entire 9 school year of her internship, I figured it was just her personality.
Right after her internship was over, I left that job and came to my current job. Both were in social work. Pervious was in child guidance, now in hospitals. Her first job was in an Alzheimer's facility, but not as a social worker, it was in customer service because she could not find a social work job. After a year, she was really wanting a social work job and asked for my advice. I knew she was a good worker so I recommended her to my boss. She got the job and is actually my counterpart (We both work 12 hour shifts, I cover the ER Sun, Mon, Tue and she does it Wed, Thu, Fri (the entire staff has to take Saturday shifts on a rotating basis) I was also assigned to be her clinical supervisor (all staff are required to be working towards their license and must meet with a licensed social worker once a week to discuss their cases until they complete 3600 hours) So, while I was supervising her she was the same as when she was interning for me; she came to me with all kinds of questions and acted like I was a genius with my responses. (again, please know I didn't like it). Then, she completed her hours and I signed off on them (next step was for her to send it to the state for the go ahead to take the licensing exam). As soon as her hours were done, things changed. She would get upset with me for all kinds of things. I'm sure she got upset with me in the past, but never mentioned it. When I told her how I thought something should be in the ER, she said "I disagree" and walked away! Last week, every word I said was genius!? Since then she has shown to be very extreme in her emotions. When she sees someone, she acts as if she is over the top ecxited to see that person. When she doesn't like what they do, she is very rude and snippy about it. She picked a fight with me in a training meeting where I was the instructor and when I told her that she was wrong about something, she continued to provide different arguements to prove her point. I continued to provide explaination as to why this was not correct. She left the room in tears and someone else in the room went to my boss and told him that I ganged up on her and he got mad at me because the complaint came from a 3rd party, so he decided it was impartial. Plus, he has never seen her be anything but happy and bubbly. I have figured out that she keeps it on for supervisors and lets her rollercoaster emotions fly for everyone else. I now have a reputation for being to hard on her. But I also have first hand knowlege of her work because we are in the same department. I have more knowlege of her work because our boss rarely actually sees us working. She is not good at her job. She makes a lot of mistakes that at best are just embarasing to me (because I feel that the work of each social worker reflects on our entire department) and at worst dangerous to patients. I went to my boss with the dangerous incidents, but I keep the other stuff to myself, because I llok like a tattle tale and like I am picking on her if I tell everything.

To top it all off, she still acts over the top happy whenever she sees me and it is so fake it makes me sick. She keeps commenting on my weight loss in a way that she presents as support, encouragement and compliments, but I see as condescending. Its over the top, and I do not consider her to be a friend, so I wish she would just leave me alone! I respond to her freakishly excited greetings with cordial and polite responses, so as to set my boundary.

My main problem is that I think that my irritation with her takes up too much of my energy. Usually when there is someone I don't like, I just stay away from them and don't think about them. But I hear about and see her work so often that I can't ignore it. And honestly, although its a little ugly, I am ticked at her lack of respect for my expertise.

I don't want to even give her a second thought. I want to know that the ER is in good hands Sun-Tue and not worry about it the rest of the week. I want to *not* feel like I have to brace myself each time I have interaction with her. Ugh.

If you are still reading - wow, thanks!

<---- this is how I feel about myself around her - angelic because my intentions are good in terms of the job, but she brings out evil thoughts in me.

[Perfesser]

Wow - I have no idea what kind of advise to offer because women process their relationships so much differently from guys. But hang in there. This person can't fool everyone all the time. Sooner or later, your whole unit will know the truth.



CT

[DocSanae]

Aw (((HUGS)))
Yes, there are people like that. I suppose there's one or two at least, in every work place. In most cases, I think you can see through them after a few encounters. And yes, those types will get on your nerves if you have to work in tandem with them.

CT, in this case, I don't think it's a matter of how women process relationships. It's a matter of the particular person process her relationship as a female in the wrong place. What I mean is, there's no place in the work place, especially in the medical environment, for processing relationships emotionally in the way that women often are thought to. Working in a medical environment means that the lives of the patients are at stake then and there. There is no place for emotions in expending the professional expertise you are trained and licensed to dispense. The team has to do the job they are assigned to do, calmly, cooly, and objectively, and coordinate their moves with other team members so everything is covered thoroughly, and is airtight. We each have to deal rationally with whatever comes up.

Mangomelon, your coworker is being very unprofessional her behavior. Plus, I think she has a lot of self esteem and security issues deep down inside. This type of person can be very difficult for coworkers. It's the job of the person responsible for the section/department to keep eyes and ears open for hints of trouble. Even if the person controls her behavior in front of superiors (these people often do), the supervisors usually see through the behavior. If they don't seem to, then the supervisor is even more inept than the person in question, or is turning a blind eye because the supervisor doesn't want to deal with it for one reason or another.

I hope this gets straightened out soon.

[bela]

You're welcome, I read it all.

Oh, girl. I am so in the same spot as you are! I have this annoying co-worker, I so hate him!

I'll try to keep my story short (not sure if I will succeed though ). This guy has been working a long time in the company. He was part of the group that was supposed to stay 6 months in Taiwan at one of our clients but things went wrong (I don't know the details) and he stayed and was moved to our group (that is always understaffed btw). This was around September last year. At first I was glad he came to our group as we needed more people (we just had in August one guy leaving and another one moving to another group). Boy, did my happiness end quickly. Because he has a lot of experience he acts like he knows everything and other people are just useless, especially with me I also feel some sort of condescending behavior as me being a woman (=inferior), damn one needs a lot of guts to be a woman in the engineering world! I am often caught by surprise by his observations and how rude he puts them that I am most of the time speechless. Later I blame myself for not being able to give him a proper answer. He has been also very rude towards the other guy in our group that is old but the expert in the area. My boss has over 50 people to take care of so no need to say he doesn't see these things at all! In February I thought I needed more money if I was supposed to cope with this guy, I talked to my boss and a month or so later he came saying that my salary was in the average and he couldn't give me a raise. So now I am looking for another job, I've got an interview on Wednesday, very excited!

I hope you can solve the issues with your co-worker. I will follow the topic to get more advice for myself too. Hang in there!

[bluedelight]

I have hired, trained and fired hundreds in my life (or maybe dozens, I never counted). For those who work with me (as my subordinates) and follow my lead, they are life-time loyal employees who cherish my leadership and will follow me anywhere.

The first thing about managing people is that not everyone can or will like you. That is not what supervision is all about. It is about getting the most and best out of people that you are able to. It is about creating opportunities for people to excel in what they do in their jobs, providing them with the tools, the guidance and leadership to be successful, proud and take ownership for their accomplishments and responsibility for their failures.

Regardless of all the skills you employ to create a workforce of great people who are happy in their jobs and productive not everyone will be able to follow your leadership the way you would like them to. It could be because of the job, how you lead compared to what they expect, personal issues they have at home or a host of other things in their lives including an inability to take direction or proper skills and desire to do the job and learn from you.

If the way she is working with you affects her performance in the position then you need to sit down and speak with her directly about it. Don't reflect on assumptions about how she may be feeling rather concentrate on her performance.

CT this is where as a supervisor mangomellon must leave the 'female' perspective out of the conversation and just deal with the performance issues
I agree CT that women may prefer to discuss all the issues more than men (that's why men get in trouble with their wives. Women want to talk about the problems, men just want to solve the problem and move on).

As a supervisor your first responsibility is to your employer. From my personal experience early in my career, crossing that fine line in developing friendship with employees and then having to deal with an employment problem can cause problems in maintaining a friendship and then having to discipline the employee so extreme caution in trying to bond your leadership and emotional ties to an employee at the same time should be exercised, but preferably avoided.

Never feel bad about letting someone go if that is the conclusion you must come to. It is hard because of the uncertainties of what may happen to that person but if someone is not suited for their job then it is a better decision for all concerned.

Put the age difference and common sex on the back burner and deal with this strictly in your capacity as her supervisor. If she is making comments about your weight loss, simply thank her for her interest but ask her to stop. If she continues, then bring it up as an employment issue, in fact a potential harassment matter which you would have to discuss with her whether the continued personal remarks were being made to you or another employee who complained to you.

In re-reading your post, it is clear that you are dealing with this as a woman in being concerned about your 'relationship' with her and how much energy this is taking from you. Instead of dealing with it, you want to avoid it and her.

This is the worst decision as a supervisor you can make, The problems will only grow and her performance will get worse, or appear to get worse.
She must either improve to follow your direction or you need to get someone else in there who will.

In management there are generally 3 types of leaders. catalytic, autocratic and diplomatic. Do a Google search and learn the traits and short and long term successes of each and try to become a catalytic manager. I suspect that right now you tend to have more of a diplomatic style in leadership, perhaps because of working in social service industry but you are not getting the most out of this employee so you need to make a change to how you are handling her and not simply avoid the situation.

If she is a good worker, gets the job done and seems to be happy, then don't strive for her to like you as part of your mission. Supervision is not about liking the supervisor and many times you must do things that the employee will not agree with or like. That's why the job is not an easy one.

One thing I GUARANTY, you will feel 100% better after you deal with this directly, even though that may take a month or so afterwards to feel good about handling it head on.

Best of luck, be proactive!

[BreeChick]

Wow, hang in there with this one. As you are her clinical supervisor, right? You are in your rights to say "thank you for the compliments on my weight loss but I would prefer if you would not remark upon my appearance" Body commenting is quickly becoming a form of harrassment equal to the levels of sexual harrassment, religious harrassment, etc. A lot of the HR depts for hospitals here are starting to really come down on this issue.

I came from a field that was dominated by men so I really don't 'get it' for the most part the whole nonsense that goes on between women on the work job always crying and cr**...She obviously feels threatened by you and is trying to push a lot of 'fences' and for all you know, even though you thought you were being positively reinforcing as a supervisor..SHE may have interpreted it all as criticism?..who knows.

Hang in there and definitely stop the 'body appearance comments' in its tracks NOW instead of later.

[mangomelon]

Thanks for all of the advise! Sorry for any confusion, but I am not her supervisor and I have not been in the supervisor = boss position since she was a college intern. After social workers receive their Master's degree the next step is to get licensed (this is not a requirement at all jobs, but it opens many more doors and is a requirment at many jobs) Becoming licensed consists of extra coursework and 3200 hours of working under the supervision of a Licensed Clinical Social Worker who has taken continuing education in supervising. After that, they have to take 2 seperate exams (and give the state some $$$) and then they are licensed = LCSW. I was her clinical supervisor, meaning I would meet with her once a week, dicuss her cases, answer her questions and monitor her work. More like a mentor. At this job, I have never had any "boss" type role over her. She passed her licensing exams - which I take as a sign that 1. I did my job well. and 2. She does know what to do, she just doesn't always do it.

So, it is because she is not actually my responsibility that it becomes my problem as I am responsible for my own emotions. I should be doing my job to the best of my ability and leaving it up to the powers that be to figure out the rest.

Doc - you hit the nail on the head with her insecurity and low-self esteem and multiple issues outside work. I tend to have very low tolerence for social workers having these types of issues because I believe it is our professional responsibility to seek therapy, deal with our issues effectively so that we can mitigate their negative effect on our patients. I have all the empathy in the world for my patients - drug addicts, criminals, you name it. But when it comes to social workers, my empathy generally goes out the window. I have very high standards and expectations of social workers.