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Subject:Re: Re: What to do about a recommendation? From:"Gene Kim-Eng" <techwr -at- genek -dot- com> To:<techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com> Date:Wed, 25 Oct 2006 08:27:58 -0700
This being the case, the management failure is the same, but the
responsibility may not be yours. Presumably, you and the
contractor both report to someone at a higher level. If said
person dumped the problem on you when you lacked the position
and experience to handle it, add another item to the list of manager
failures.
Without having been there to witness the incidents described and
not being able to hear the contractor's perception of them, it is
still not possible to draw conclusions about the contractor. In
many organizations the kind of push-back and hard-nosed
interaction described is part of the dynamic of getting things
done (i.e., sometimes you have to break eggs to make an omelet),
and your decision to not address them as performance issues
rather than individual incidents may have conributed to that
perception.
If the contractor is truely as clueless as you seem to think, the
"no explanation" response will probably not result in an "awkward
silence," but will launch a long and tiresome exchange in which
the contractor presses you for a reason. Your best bets continue
to be to either fall back on "company policy" and say that dates
of employment will be verified and no more or just look the
person in the face, explain that you had issues with the person's
performance overall that prevent you from being able to give a
good reference, accept your responsibility for "letting them
slide" during the contract and offer to discuss them now if the
person wishes to.
And while you're at it, unless the decision to not address the
contractor issues was a group one made by the entire team,
whoever did make the decision should apologize to the rest
of the team for all the extra work they had to do that they
shouldn't have had to.
Gene Kim-Eng
----- Original Message -----
From: "Administrator at TECHWR-L" <admin -at- techwr-l -dot- com>
Thank you to everyone for their feedback. After reading people’s
comments,
I’m going to decline to give a reference. I’m going to try the
end-of-contract review, but based on past experience with providing
feedback to this person, I’m not sure it will be taken.
Also, just to be clear, I didn’t “take a management position.” I was
cruising along happily as a sole writer. We had a blip and needed a
contactor, so I got handed the responsibility for taking care of the
contractor. I hope to very soon go back to cruising along happily as a
sole
writer.
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