my employee is rude to colleagues -- but some of them are rude to her too (2024)

my employee is rude to colleagues — but some of them are rude to her too

A reader writes:

I started at a new company a few months ago and, in getting acquainted with other staff, several people mentioned that they find one of my reports, Linda, a little abrasive. Basically, there was a lot of coded talk that she can be difficult/rude. Since we have started working together, I do find that sometimes she phrases things in a way that I never would to a supervisor, but overall I think we work together very well and some other staff members have actually mentioned to me that Linda seems happier at work.

In the past two weeks, I received two complaints about Linda’s tone, and I also received an email her from her that felt overly aggressive considering the circ*mstances. I would like to discuss the issue with her in our next 1:1, but in preparation for that discussion I checked in with her two former supervisors, who are now the highest level staff at our company, and even though both of them have spoken to me quite a bit about “how Linda can be,” I learned she has never received feedback during her 15+ years here about this seemingly well-acknowledged issue among other staff.

The problem that I am having in considering how to phrase it is that both complaints about her tone have come from people who were ALSO rude to her and apparently that has not been discussed with them, either. One of those people is our HR director. Both complaints were sent to me via email, with the chains in question forwarded to me, and I feel that the other people were rude to Linda first, and she basically responded in-kind. Is that what I would have done? No, but if I had received similar emails outside of a work setting, I probably would have taken a similar tone to Linda’s. I did let the other supervisor know that I thought her report was also rude in the interaction, but I have no idea what came of that.

Everyone involved with this issue has been here at least as long as Linda. I want to do better than her previous supervisors, but this feels like a difficult message to present. I have already spoken with the CEO about other issues regarding the HR director, and to be honest he seems afraid of her, so I can’t exactly promise she will start being more cordial. I am wondering if I should ignore the other complaints for now and just focus on the email she sent me, but that doesn’t seem totally right either since I was clearly asked to speak to her about it by both the HR director and other supervisor.

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The framing you want is: “You can’t talk to colleagues this way regardless of the provocation.”

But it’s essential to pair that with, “It’s not acceptable for anyone to talk to you this way, either. If that’s happening, please loop me in so I can address it. But the solution can’t be that you snap back at them.”

It sounds like you should also talk with Linda about the reputation she’s developed for being difficult and rude. No one has done her any favors in hiding from her! But here, too, it’s essential to pair it with an acknowledgement that, from what you’ve seen, others are part of the problem. And again, the message should be, “I don’t want our team speaking to people this way even if we’re provoked.”

First, though, make sure that Linda isn’t being held to different standards than others. “Abrasive” in particular is often leveled against women when men saying the exact same things don’t get characterized that way, and Black people can get characterized as “angry” when others saying the same things don’t. It sounds like you’ve seen plenty of evidence that Linda genuinely is off-base in a lot of her communications, and I’m going to assume for the rest of my answer that that’s the case — but keep an eye out for a more problematic dynamic and address it head-on if you do see it.

Assuming that the issues are legitimate ones, though, the fact that you’re coming in as a new player might make you better-positioned to address them. If you’d managed her for years and ignored the way she spoke to people that whole time, it would be harder to address it now. (You’d still need to! But it would be harder and she’d have the right to be irritated that you waited years to speak up.) As a new person without the history her previous managers apparently have with her, you might find it easier to say, “Hey, we can’t talk to people like this” — and also “I don’t want them talking to you this way either.” Plus, the fact that Linda seems to mesh better with you than with previous managers is likely to help; you sound like you might have built up some credibility and good will with her.

I’m glad you point out to that other manager that her employee had been rude in her dealings with Linda. Keep doing that. It’s possible that people have fallen into bad habits with Linda over the years — if she has a history of being difficult, they might start off interactions with her already on the defensive — but just as it’s not okay for Linda to respond to provocation rudely, it’s not okay for people to do it to her either. And for you to maintain credibility with Linda, she needs to see that you’re not holding her to a different standard than other people are held to, and that you’ll go to bat for her when she has a legitimate beef with how someone speaks to her.