If your manager is deprioritizing you and your work, that puts your performance in jeopardy. You will also lose out on the visibility and influence you will need to move up.Getty Images
Ask Women and Work
Question: My manager doesn’t pay attention to me or respect my time as much as the others on my team. I find myself really frustrated at times. It’s not necessarily affecting my work, but it can affect my deadlines. Should I let it be and stick to my tasks or address it?
We asked Sarah Stockdale, founder and CEO, Growclass, to tackle this one:
I feel the frustration in the question. This is clearly something that is causing you to doubt your capabilities, your relationship with your manager and your relationship with your workplace. You will have to address it. The silence is not helping anyone. If your manager is unintentionally or intentionally deprioritizing you and your work, that puts your performance in jeopardy. You are also losing the visibility and influence you will need to move up in that workplace.
So, you can’t just ride it out, but I think it’s about how you decide to approach it. Sometimes when you are feeling frustrated or resentful at work, you can place intentions onto someone that maybe aren’t there, and then that discussion becomes much more fraught than it needed to be. Have the conversation in a way that is not assuming malintent. It could be that this person is just busy. It could be that they don’t pay as much attention to you because they aren’t worried about your performance.
Don’t try to imagine what’s in their head. Focus on the facts. You could try something like, ‘I’ve noticed I’m not getting direction or one-on-one check-ins as often as others on the team. I want to make sure that I have full context and that I hit my deadlines, and I also want to make sure I’m supporting you. What’s the best way to make sure we are synced up earlier in the process?’ Approach it like, ‘us versus the problem.’
Your manager may ask you for more information: ‘When have you noticed this?’ You should be prepared to answer those questions. If you have a good leader, they should come back with curiosity and questions and not take it in an adversarial way.
How your manager responds to that conversation will give you a lot of information. Do they change their behaviour? Do they start prioritizing you? If not, I would keep receipts of what that looks like. Then, you can bring that information to a second conversation. There might be something going on where this person is not going to advocate for you.
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