Roxane Gay, the former columnist behind the New York Times' 'Work Friend' advice column, shares tips on navigating workplace issues.
On today's episode of WNYC's new popup advice show, Tiffany Hanssen leads a conversation about navigating challenging circumstances at work, alongside writer Roxane Gay, the former columnist behind the New York Times' 'Work Friend' advice column. Listeners share the most helpful advice they've received about the workplace, including how to deal with micromanagers, the insecurity of joining a new workplace, and having diplomatic conversations with your boss.
Note: You are listening to the podcast version of a live radio show. The call-in number only works between 1 and 2 PM Eastern, while the show is live.
If you'd like to submit questions or topic suggestions outside of the live show, please use the form on our showpage at wnyc.org/advise
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Tiffany Hanssen: Welcome to Please Advise, a pop-up advice show from WNYC. I'm Tiffany Hanssen. During this hour on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays, and by the way, Thursday this week as well, we will talk with experts, authors, advocates, and others to get their advice on all sorts of topics. Today's topic is work. We have a big question for you today: What workplace advice has paid off for you? Maybe this was advice from a mentor or a colleague or a supervisor. Maybe it was advice from a spouse or a partner. Whatever it was, it helped you work better, smarter, with more compassion for your colleagues, maybe with more of an eye on work-life balance. Whatever it was, it paid off. What workplace advice paid off for you? You can call us. You can text us at 212-433-9692.
If you are looking for workplace advice, we absolutely want to hear from you because we have invited Roxane Gay to join us today. For several years, Roxane was the person behind the Work Friend column at The New York Times. She's a prolific bestselling author, educator, and podcast host. She's also the subject of a new Lifetime movie, Surviving the Silence, the Roxane Gay Story. For our purposes today, we have asked Roxane to put her work friend hat back on. Hi, Roxane.
Roxane Gay: Hi, Tiffany. Thank you for having me.
Tiffany Hanssen: Absolutely. Let's talk about that column. You started in 2020?
Roxane Gay: Yes.
Tiffany Hanssen: I can imagine all of your questions were pandemic work-related.
Roxane Gay: Not all of them, but at the time, many of them were because a lot of people were trying to manage work-life balance while working from home. "What do I do with my children? How do I get my husband to stop speaking loudly on his Zoom meetings when I also have concurrent Zoom meetings, and we live in a one-bedroom apartment in New York? What do I do if one of my coworkers won't get vaccinated? What do I do if one of my colleagues won't wear a mask?" Then, as time went on, there were a lot of questions about how people had become pleasantly accustomed to working from home and were being called back into the office.
They wanted advice on how to negotiate to be able to work from home or to have a hybrid schedule and things like that. It was interesting to start the column in 2020 and then see the questions evolve as life continued to change in a pandemic era.
Tiffany Hanssen: I remember logging onto my first Zoom meeting. First of all, I was like, "What is Zoom? We're all Zooming now? I don't know what that means." I can imagine, and I know just from my own experience, there were so many questions about, like, "Am I supposed to have my camera on or off?" There were all of these etiquette questions, almost around Zoom and around how we were communicating with one another in this new way for a lot of us. Do you think it stressed people out? Is that what you were hearing?
Roxane Gay: People were pretty accustomed to Zoom fairly quickly because the particular software was new, or the program was new, but Skype had been in existence. FaceTime for Apple users, video conferencing, Google Meet, was in existence at the time. It just wasn't as prolific, I guess. Most of the time, people were fine. The questions they had were not about their own etiquette, but the etiquette of others, like "My manager zooms in from his bathtub," things like that.
Tiffany Hanssen: No way. You made that up.
Roxane Gay: No.
[laughs]
Tiffany Hanssen: Come on.
Roxane Gay: One of the key things that doing Work Friend for four years showed me is that there are some people who work in really unfortunate circumstances.
Tiffany Hanssen: Also, that being a writer and being at home and working by yourself is not such a bad gig.
Roxane Gay: Oh no, it's a great gig. It is a great gig. I have worked in offices. I have worked in corporate environments in my 20s and 30s. I don't miss it at all. I really, really don't. I have a dream job now. I get to write, and I get to teach and evangelize about the beauty of the written word. It is a great gig, and I don't take it for granted because, in part, I've never taken it for granted, but Work Friend really helped me appreciate it all the more.
Tiffany Hanssen: We are talking about workplace etiquette, workplace advice with Roxane Gay. We've asked her here today to put on her Work Friend hat again for us one more time. It is a new show. If you're just joining us, it's Please Advise. This is a pop-up advice show here from WNYC, and we absolutely want to hear from you. We did throw out a big question: What workplace advice has paid off for you? Of course, if you're looking for workplace advice, we got the gal here for you. 212-433-9692, 212-433-WNYC, you can call us. You can text us at that number. Matthew in Harlem. You have some advice that you received that paid off for you.
Matthew: Yes, and then I've passed on to others. I have found that the most important thing in taking a new job is the relationship that you'll have with your new boss. I'm sorry. I have a chest cold.
Tiffany Hanssen: It's okay.
Matthew: Anyway, what will most likely determine your success or failure in your new job will be how well you do or do not get along with your boss. That's it.
Tiffany Hanssen: Oh, great. Thank you, Matthew. Really appreciate that. I think, Roxane, that dealing with supervisors as a broad umbrella, I can imagine you have heard stories come through, because, correct me if I'm wrong, when you were doing the column, you would get like, "Here's a stack for you to choose from," so you were able to see a little bit of trends, right? Some trends?
Roxane Gay: Yes. It was actually even less formal, not formal. Basically, I had control of the inbox, and so I saw all of the questions coming in, and then I got to choose which questions I wanted to answer. It was surprisingly hard sometimes to actually get people to write in with questions. At least twice, I had written someone back to say, "I'm actually going to be answering your question," and they begged me to not run their question because they were worried that someone would figure out their identity and that there would be negative repercussions.
In one instance, I was able to pull the column and just pick another question to answer, but in the other instance, the paper had already gone to print. It was a done deal. We did everything possible, and nothing came of it, thankfully, but we would anonymize most of the questions and remove any identifying features so that people truly could be comfortable. Yes, I had direct access to the inbox, and that part was great to just see the general shape of the questions coming in. There were absolutely trends.
Tiffany Hanssen: To Matthew's point about having a good relationship with your manager, I'm assuming that among those trends was one that repeatedly came to you about how to deal with a manager who does X, Y-- name 1,000 things that can go wrong. Go ahead.
Roxane Gay: There were lots and lots of questions about managers who didn't necessarily know how to manage and managers who overstepped in certain ways, managers who didn't manage, managers who foisted their work on their employees and then took credit for the fruits of that labor, and, of course, sexual harassment, things like that. It's one of those reminders that very few managers have actually been taught to manage.
Tiffany Hanssen: We have a text here, "Hey, please advise. Why do superiors only mention when you do something incorrectly and never offer praise when you've gone above and beyond to satisfy a client's request?" This gets at a point, Roxane, that one of our callers made yesterday, which was, "Never say 'always' and 'never,'" but to the texter's point, what have you heard, and what advice would you give to somebody who says, "I don't get any praise from my manager"?
Roxane Gay: It's not a tricky question per se, but it's so much easier to criticize than to compliment. I don't know why, but we see this in most realms. I notice it quite a lot on social media. People just constantly lead with something that's wrong, even when they're talking about something that's great. It seems like a lot of people have decided that intellectual engagement is about criticism rather than a more holistic conversation. In the workplace, when a manager never offers praise, it could be that that's something that they learned from their own management, that they never received praise, and so it's just a cycle that's perpetuating. It could also be that that manager simply doesn't think that you need to be praised because--
Tiffany Hanssen: It's work.
Roxane Gay: Yes. It's work. I'm Gen X. I think that generation, a lot of us were like, "Walk it off. What do you mean 'praise'? It's your job; do it, and I'm not here to make you feel better." I do think younger people expect some more positive reinforcement, expect praise, and I don't think they're wrong. I think that there should be a good balance of constructive criticism and praise for work well done because that helps people stay invested and motivated. It helps them to know that they are appreciated for what they're doing. That goes a long way, and I wish that more people understood how important that kind of feedback can be for someone.
Tiffany Hanssen: You are listening to Please Advise. We're talking with Roxane Gay about the workplace today, workplace advice specifically. You can call us, text us at 212-433-9692 with your questions for Roxane. You can also let us know if you had some advice that paid off for you. Edward in Freeport, you have some advice that paid off. You have a question for us. How's it going, Edward?
Edward: It's going good. My uncle told me years ago, he said, "Leave the job at the job," which was very difficult at times to do, but I found it to be very good advice because I would bring the job home, and obsess over it. Then the other thing was, they used to say that "The customer is always right," or "The boss is always right." [chuckles] I know he's not always right, but when you come down to the attitude of "The boss is always right," it works out better for me. Then the last thing I'll say is praise. Somebody told me, "Praise is your paycheck." That's it. Thanks.
Tiffany Hanssen: Thank you for the perspective and the three points there, Edward. I was going to raise that with you, Roxane. His point about your "praise is your paycheck." Part of why we're here is because ostensibly we like what we do. We like the people we work with, and it's a huge part of our life.
Roxane Gay: It is.
Tiffany Hanssen: To have it just come down to some biweekly.
[laughs]
Roxane Gay: A biweekly love letter in the form of inadequate pay. "Thank you. I feel so, so appreciated."
Tiffany Hanssen: Is there some validity to what Edward suggests?
Roxane Gay: In some ways, yes, but the reality is that a great many people are underpaid and overworked, so if the praise is in the paycheck, then show that praise in the paycheck. We live in a country where the minimum wage has not changed for decades. It's still $7.25 an hour, the federal minimum wage, and so we cannot be looking to compensation for gratification. That's simply not how it works. Money is provided in exchange for labor, but that doesn't make a good or robust or healthy working environment. That's just table stakes.
For some reason, life has gone awry, and I actually have four full-time employees, and I never would have guessed that, but I want them to want to come to work and to enjoy themselves, to feel valued and seen and respected. I have no management skills whatsoever, so it has been a journey to learn how to manage people and realize, "Okay, I find them to be delightful, but we're not actually friends." There is a power imbalance here, and I do want to praise them when they do well, which is literally most of the time, and I do think it matters. A lot of us who have not received praise in a professional context can get bitter about it. Again, I don't think it behooves us to further that negative cycle. At the same time, it's also not my job to walk around following people and constantly praising them.
Tiffany Hanssen: Right. Throwing flowers at their pathway.
Roxane Gay: Yes. We're not doing that. There's not enough time in the day to do all that, but I think we owe the people we work with more than a paycheck.
Tiffany Hanssen: We have a texter who says, "Praise is not just to make Gen Y feel good. It also helps employees learn how to do the work." Agree?
Roxane Gay: Yes, in part. I do think that praise lets people know they're on the right track and that they should continue doing that thing that got them praise, and I think it helps with confidence. A lot of people come into the workplace without a lot of confidence for a range of reasons. Again, the workplace is not therapy, and you can't fix those reasons, but you can also not exacerbate them. I do think it can help for people to work more effectively. Again, it just makes for a convivial workplace. Work is not meant to be a party, but it is also not meant to be a gulag.
Tiffany Hanssen: Right. That is a goal. That's the goal.
Roxane Gay: Always the goal.
Tiffany Hanssen: Always the goal.
Roxane Gay: You want people to look forward to going to work.
Tiffany Hanssen: Yes. Holly in Brooklyn joining the conversation with me and Roxane Gay. Hi, Holly.
Holly: Hi. Hi.
Tiffany Hanssen: You had a question or some advice that you received?
Holly: An observation, maybe.
Tiffany Hanssen: All right.
Holly: I was telling the screener that "No news is good news." When you're doing a job, and they're not telling you you did it wrong, then you go, "Okay." You just keep going. Then, also, I do a thing at work, I work in the film industry, that they're not doing anything extraordinary, and maybe they're not doing anything at all because their job is to just wait until we have to execute a task. I say, "You are nailing it. You're killing it. You're doing a great job just existing and being present."
Both things are really great, and I've gotten positive reinforcement from both by never asking if I'm doing it wrong and then also by complimenting people for doing nothing because they are not disrupting the system. Does that make sense?
Tiffany Hanssen: It does. Thanks, Holly. Appreciate that. I don't know, Roxane. If we praise someone who is doing the bare minimum. Not the bare minimum, but do you know what I mean? Aren't we saying to them, "I'm giving you this, and now I'm going to expect a little bit more out of you and a little bit better out of you"? If I'm just praising you for, I don't know, sitting in the chair, what does the contract turn into at that point?
Roxane Gay: The contract turns into expecting less because you received praise for the bare minimum, and that's a slippery slope into someone feeling like, "Oh, I must be doing great. I don't need to exert myself additionally here." I do think that praise should be given to the people that we work with, but it has to be given for things that are praiseworthy. That means work that's well done, work that is done on time, work that is done where someone goes above and beyond, and I'm not talking about above and beyond in the way of sacrifice or working 20 hours a day.
That's nonsense, and that should be left well behind as we continue to move forward, but I do think above and beyond, where they do something unexpected and something that makes your life a little easier, that makes the project run a little smoother. I'm always going to call out that sort of thing and say, "I noticed that you did it. I really appreciate it. Thank you. I do want more of this. Yes, continue to think outside the box, continue to anticipate things that I may not even anticipate." For me, that lets me know I can give this person more responsibility.
I can help them level up to the next position that they might be interested in because I love to work with ambitious people who want more than the job that they're in, but are also willing to do the job that they're in.
Tiffany Hanssen: Not that I want to spend all of our time on praise, so let's pivot a little bit. A texter says, "How do I explain away subsequent lower titles as time went on with my career path? A lot I left for personal reasons, and once I changed industries, and so I'm actually looking to do that again now, which is why I'm asking." In other words, you're looking at a resume, and it goes, "bing, bam, bam, bam." In this texter's mind, it's something that needs to be explained.
Roxane Gay: Yes. When you have either gaps or something different in your resume than what an employer might expect, I do think that you need to have a reason prepared that is within your boundaries for what you want to disclose, but if it's for personal reasons rather than professional conduct, then you should absolutely share that within whatever boundaries you have so that they understand that you needed to take a step back because your life circumstances changed, whether it was caring for an elderly parent, caring for a spouse, caring for yourself because of illness, or taking care of children, having children, especially for women. Oftentimes, the things that pull us out of the workplace are not performance-related.
They are familial responsibility-related, and so I do think that most employers are going to absolutely understand that. They may, of course, have questions about, "What are you going to do in the future if you receive this position and more personal circumstances come up?" Do you have a plan for that? I think any decent employer will understand that and recognize that now you're back and you're ready to hit the ground running.
Tiffany Hanssen: We were talking a little bit ago about managers and the complicated relationships we have with our management and our direct managers, and Betsy in Brooklyn has a question for us about managers. Hi, Betsy.
Betsy: Hi. Hi, Roxane. I love your work so much, so this is really exciting to run this by you.
Roxane Gay: Oh, thank you.
Betsy: I work in hospitality, and without giving too much away, we've got a pretty classic traditional micromanager on the floor. There's a solid relationship between them and the owners, so going that route, I don't think, is feasible, but it's become such a problem. We've had at least a dozen people probably quit because they just can't tolerate that intense, nitpicky style of managing. For a while, I've just been trying to figure out, "Is there a way to communicate that upwards or circumvent it somehow?" I just keep arriving at some pretty ridiculous conclusions. I thought about Googling and leaving an article up for her to come across.
Roxane Gay: Oh my God.
Betsy: I thought about buying a book and leaving it on the desk, so I'm wondering if you have any advice, as how to navigate that. Ideally, she's not a bad person. I'd like her to be better.
Roxane Gay: You need to manage your manager.
Betsy: Yes.
Roxane Gay: That's challenging because how do you let her know, "Hey, you're micromanaging a bit too much"? If you feel secure enough in your position, you might just have a frank conversation with her and not say, "You're micromanaging," but just say, "The team, we would love for you to trust us more," because really, the micromanager is having a problem with trust. She doesn't know how to trust that things are going to get done, and that's probably because at some point in her career, she couldn't trust the people that she worked with, but it's a different time, and so she has to move past that. There are no easy ways, but leaving an article up on her computer, I think, is hilarious. It couldn't hurt.
Tiffany Hanssen: It couldn't hurt.
Roxane Gay: I really don't think it could hurt, but I do think that finding a way to have an indirect conversation where you put it on you and say, "We would love to support you in whatever ways we can. One of the key ways you could do that is by trusting us a little more," and maybe give one or two examples of ways in which she could trust you and your colleagues a little bit more, and just say, "Could we try this for two weeks?" so that she knows that there is a time limit on this. It's a test run to see how things go and then see what comes of it.
A lot of times, when we have a critique, especially for our managers, we don't necessarily have a plan. Now, it should not be your responsibility to develop a plan here, but given that this is an ongoing problem that has driven 15 people out of the workplace, the fact that she hasn't realized what's going on yet is alarming, but that's why I think perhaps a slightly more direct approach would work.
Tiffany Hanssen: That is the voice of Roxane Gay, who has agreed to join us today for Please Advise. Roxane is putting back on her Work Friend hat for us because we are taking up the workplace today, here on Please Advise. It's a pop-up advice show. If you're just joining us, we're doing this Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and this week, Thursday also, and we're looking for you to be part of this conversation. We had thrown out a question earlier: What workplace advice paid off for you? Of course, Roxane is here. Take advantage. Ask a question. 212-433-9692.
We're going to get back to it. Roxane, we're going to just take a quick break here, but when we come back, I want to talk a little bit about this generational divide in the workplace. 212-433-9692, call us. Workplace advice is the topic. You're listening to WNYC. This is Please Advise. I'm Tiffany Hanssen. Stay with us.
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Tiffany Hanssen: You're listening to Please Advise, a pop-up advice show here on WNYC. I'm Tiffany Hanssen, and this hour we're talking with Roxane Gay about workplace advice, workplace dynamics, workplace issues, workplace I don't know. Roxane, let's just talk about all of it. 212-433-9692. You can call us. You can text us at that number. Roxane, I threatened to talk about generational differences here when we came back, so let's do it. Again, not that we can judge the world by what we see on social media, but I see a lot on social media about generational work differences in the way people work, in how they show up at work, in how they communicate at work.
You'll see the memes that are like, "The boomer shows up like this, and the Gen Xer shows up like this, and the Gen Z person, millennial, and then the Gen Y, we go on." If there is a central issue that employees can address to better communicate with someone who is not of their generation and is in their workplace, what would you suggest?
Roxane Gay: I think the two biggest challenges in terms of demographics in the workplace are the generational gaps and also gender issues. In terms of generational gaps, the key thing is mutual respect, and that goes in every direction. It's fun to make boomer jokes, et cetera.
Tiffany Hanssen: It's fun unless you're a boomer.
Roxane Gay: Right. I also will say, at times, that generation has certainly earned their reputation. Of course, outside of work, do what you want, but in work, maybe they do have something to teach you. Maybe their analog ways are effective. They work because they work. At the same time, we also have to recognize that these Gen Zers, these millennials-- These millennials, you can tell I'm old, but Gen Zers, millennials, Gen Y, and soon Gen Alpha, we have to recognize that their lives are different. We're talking about people who grew up with computers, who grew up with internet in the home.
I'm a Gen Xer, and my family, I think, got our first computer when I was 14 or so, maybe earlier, but it was in my lifetime, and certainly access to the internet I got in high school. Things are different. When you're not born into a native digital world, you approach the world differently. Cultural norms change. I work with millennials and Gen Zers, and at times, I will admit they stress me out because they're so carefree about certain things. I don't want to say lackadaisical because they're not lackadaisical, but they just have a different sense of urgency at times.
Tiffany Hanssen: I like how you put that.
Roxane Gay: I have to respect that while also making clear that, "Your timeline is your own, but here is the actual deadline by which time this project needs to be done or handled or whatever." You have to respect in both directions. I see on social media, too, oftentimes people who are posting the messages that their Gen Z employees send them. I find them to be hilarious. I love it. Whenever someone talks to me in slang, I have two teenage nieces, fortunately, so I am generally up to date. I do understand the speech.
Tiffany Hanssen: You're hip with the kids.
Roxane Gay: I am hip with the kids. "Hello, young folks." [laughs] I won't embarrass myself 90% of the time, but it's interesting, and I just try to learn from them, and I hope that they can learn from me.
Tiffany Hanssen: We have a texter who says, "Thank you for having a Gen X guest, especially Roxane Gay. Hopefully you'll have some more." Hey, by the way, your host here is Gen X, so you're very welcome for that. Another texter says, "Everybody brings their family trauma to their workplace. When your boss says, 'We're a family,' it's a dysfunctional family." Let's see another one here. A texter says, "A funny solution for an angry or difficult manager that my friends and I have discussed is anonymously sending them a free trial for the meditation app Headspace." It's like the other caller was saying about leaving the Google search up on there or a book around, like, "Oops, it fell out of my bag."
Roxane Gay: "Oh, would you look at that? Oh, a book on meditation and having a calmer, quieter workplace? Wow."
Tiffany Hanssen: "How to be a decent human being." All right, let's bring Tracy in Staten Island into this conversation before we go too far here, Roxane. Tracy, hi.
Tracy: Hi. I work in book publishing, and I had a wonderful, amazing boss. I screwed up. I did something wrong. It's book publishing, so no one died. We weren't losing billions of dollars, but I did something wrong. I sent a draft email to my boss, rambling about everything I'd done wrong and every error in this chain of events. My boss wrote back, and she said, "Oh no, no, no, no. You are going to write to the publisher, 'A mistake was made, this is what happened, and here's what we're doing next.'"
She was 100% right. I sent that email to the publisher, "A mistake was made," and he wrote back, and he said, "Thank you very much." That was absolutely it, and it was the best advice I'd ever received. I just say to everyone, "Just own up to your mistake. A mistake was made. We're humans. We all do it." Thank you.
Tiffany Hanssen: Thanks, Tracy. Appreciate that. Roxane, yesterday we were talking with Carolyn Hax, who does the advice column for The Washington Post. One of the things that we talked about with her and our other guest, Josh Gondelman, was that some of it, and she realized, looking back at her answers, that some of it boils down to the old adages, the Ben Franklin adages. What I hear from Tracy here is "honesty is the best policy," which sounds like one of those. Do you think that a lot of the advice that you give or that resonates with people really does come down to those old, I don't know, I can't think of any right now, other than "honesty is the best policy," but you know what I mean?
Roxane Gay: I do. There's always something to the old adages, and I do think we have to modernize them at times. I, too, am drawing a complete blank when I need the words the most.
Tiffany Hanssen: Call us, help us. [laughs]
Roxane Gay: Those adages come from somewhere, and they generally are sturdy. They hold up across time, across generations, et cetera. I thought that that caller offered a really great example that mistakes happen. They happen all the time, and everyone makes them. Whenever someone I'm working with makes a mistake, they oftentimes, especially the women, start to flagellate themselves. As I often tell my team, "There is no such thing as a writing emergency." There is nothing that we could ever do that would have grave consequences in terms of making a mistake.
It's just not possible. I try to tell them, "You don't have to flagellate yourself and humiliate yourself because you made a mistake. Just tell me what the mistake was, then what your suggested plan of action is." The caller is right that that is really great advice, and I wish more people understood that all you have to do is be honest. Now, of course, there are always going to be managers who don't have grace in the face of their team members making mistakes, and so there's no one-size-fits-all, but I really would like to believe that more people recognize that we are all human than not.
Tiffany Hanssen: Here's a good one for you, Roxane. "I work at a wonderful company." This is a text that came in. "The director who hired me resigned, and his replacement has no real experience as a manager. When she gives instructions, they're actually coming from a VP that she reports to. How do I communicate my concerns if my boss is essentially a puppet?"
Roxane Gay: To what end do you need to communicate your concerns? A lot of times in that kind of situation, there's really not much you can do. I wish we had a little more information with regard to that question: "What are the concerns about, and why do you want to tell someone?" Most middle managers are, in fact, conduits for what the executive team wants. That's a very normal hierarchy. While she doesn't have management experience, she's certainly going to get some.
She was elevated to that position for a reason, and so I would really ask you to rethink your question and, really, ask yourself, "What am I really trying to do here, and to what end now?" Why does it matter that the directives are coming from someone above your middle manager? I think that's my primary question to you. Then I could give you better advice.
Tiffany Hanssen: Kind of drill down on it. We're talking workplace advice with Roxane Gay. You can call us. You can text us at 212-433-9692. Zeke in Park Slope. Welcome.
Zeke: Thank you. Can you hear me?
Tiffany Hanssen: We can.
Zeke: Very well?
Tiffany Hanssen: Yes.
Zeke: Great. This is an interesting conversation because this is the world I live in. To me, there's various levels of management: you've got front managers, you've got middle line managers, you've got C-suite managers, and you've got consultative managers who are coming to the environment. I've been in a variety of spaces, and what I have found that the most common denominator is: one, learning what your team is composed of or how they're composed, giving each team member a sense of value because at the end of the day I always joke that, "A team is like a bicycle and each member is a spoke of a wheel and I am the center here." Each person has a project, deliverables, and you have to reward them, make them feel in charge and in control of what they're doing.
Equally, at the end of the day, if they're not doing the job, you have to say, "Listen, at the end of the day, I'm the boss. I've got to make a decision, but when it comes to complimenting work you've done, I want to make sure upper management compliments you. If you fail, it's my job to help you get to the higher level." I believe people genuinely want to grow.
Tiffany Hanssen: Zeke, we appreciate that perspective. Roxane, I think we hit on something here with this compliment business. People are adamant about how, when, where to receive compliments and who's receiving them and when we're not receiving them. We had a texter that said, "We bring all of our family trauma with us." How much of that, and you alluded to it before, comes from all the baggage? Did you see the baggage I got sitting by the door here?
Roxane Gay: Yes.
Tiffany Hanssen: It comes from that.
Roxane Gay: I think a lot of it. We do bring our whole selves to the workplace, even if most workplaces don't want to embrace our whole selves. I also believe that there's a time and a place for revealing some of that baggage, and we cannot expect our bosses, our colleagues at work, to address our emotional wounds. At the same time, they shouldn't ignore them necessarily. I think a lot of times people are looking for praise because they've never received it, because they grew up in households where there were really high expectations of them, or unreasonable expectations, more accurately, where they came from emotionally abusive environments.
Now, that's the kind of thing where we hope that everyone has robust medical benefits and can avail themselves of the mental healthcare that they need, because these things are very real, but the workplace cannot solve these problems. One of the through lines through a lot of my advice when I was writing Work Friend was that, "The job is never going to love you." The job is a job. It is a capitalism-based affair, and if you are going to work looking for emotional sustenance, you are setting yourself up for disappointment.
Tiffany Hanssen: You love your job?
Roxane Gay: I do.
Tiffany Hanssen: I love my job. I think for people who don't necessarily love their jobs, a lot of what we say in terms of advice can ring hollow.
Roxane Gay: Absolutely. We are the exception rather than the rule. The economy is doing terribly right now, and this is not new. A lot of people work jobs they hate. I have worked jobs that I hate-
Tiffany Hanssen: Oh, yes, me, too.
Roxane Gay: -that were just absolutely miserable, and then there are people who are working in genuinely abusive and abhorrent workplaces and work environments. It's very easy for us to offer advice from places of immense privilege, and so I totally understand why that would feel hollow and where people might think, "That's not realistic. That's not how the real world functions." At the same time, I do think that we still have perspectives to offer.
That's why whenever people come to me seeking advice, which is alarmingly often, I always tell them, "Yes, I'm happy to give you some advice, but you should ask multiple people from multiple walks of life or experiences because you're going to get different answers, and then you can decide what pieces to put together."
Tiffany Hanssen: I'm going to follow up on that because I have thoughts on advice shopping, but first, we're going to bring in Beth, who is in Randolph, New Jersey, into the conversation. Hi, Beth.
Beth: Hi. Good afternoon. Thank you for taking this call. I work in wealth management, and I've worked in this area for 20 years, but about 15 years into it, I was always striving for a front-facing position, client-facing, working with that, but I was never given the training I needed to do the best job I could. The company gave a work assessment to all our employees across the board called DISC. I was identified as having a "C" personality as conscientious.
When I got that, my heart sank a little that it was a less-than-important type within the company, and this and that, but the trainer at the training emphasized quite strongly that each of the four personality types was needed in the organization in order to be most effective. I finally heard that message and took it and said, "You know what? I'm very good at behind-the-scenes work, and I'm good at process."
Tiffany Hanssen: Beth, can I interrupt for a second? You said conscientious?
Beth: Yes.
Tiffany Hanssen: Interesting. Beth, thank you for that and for sharing your experiences with that. We could probably do a whole show on those assessments, Roxane.
Roxane Gay: We could.
Tiffany Hanssen: First of all, I'm going to say, why is it that Beth is being told that "conscientious" is a less than? Beth, are you still there? Maybe we lost Beth.
Beth: I took it upon myself that I felt that was a "less than."
Tiffany Hanssen: Oh, I see. You weren't told that?
Beth: No, but then when the trainer explained that each dimension was important, I really embraced it at that time.
Tiffany Hanssen: That's great. I'm wondering, Roxane, how much stock should somebody put in when they-- This affected Beth. How much stock should somebody put in?
Roxane Gay: Those assessments definitely have their merits. They can definitely provide guidance, at least give you a general sense of what you're better suited to, but we have to consider when those assessments were designed, by whom, and for whom they were designed. I don't think those assessments can be used universally. I don't think they're effective universally. A lot of times, especially in workplaces that are deeply invested in metrics and things like that, they believe that they can quantify humanity, and humanity is a qualitative experience.
Tiffany Hanssen: That is Roxane Gay you're listening to Please Advise. It's a pop-up advice show here on WNYC. My name is Tiffany Hanssen. We are both Gen Xers, and boy, we are glad you're here with us. You can call us at 212-433-9692. You can also text us at that number. We're talking workplace advice, and we're going to get back to it. I'm going to ask Roxane about opinion shopping when we get back.
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Tiffany Hanssen: You're listening to Please Advise, a pop-up advice show here on WNYC. I'm Tiffany Hanssen. Glad you're with us. We're talking about workplace advice with Roxane Gay. Roxane, opinion shopping. I find myself doing this when I want validation.
Roxane Gay: Of course. I think everyone opinion shops, because what they're really doing is looking for the answer they want to hear. It's very human. When I say, "Get multiple perspectives," it's not opinion shop until you get the perspective you want to hear that will validate your feelings or that will empower you to do the thing you want to do. It's more about getting different perspectives and looking at who's offering the advice, and why they might be offering the advice, because the advice I offer is going to be different from the advice you offer, which is going to be different from the advice that Anna down the street is going to offer.
It's not about shopping so much as it is getting multiple perspectives, but at some point, you have to stop. I think that the scope of how many opinions you should seek out should be parallel to the problem that you're asking. Sometimes you only need one person to tell you, and maybe that person isn't telling you what you want to hear, but they are telling you what you need to hear.
Tiffany Hanssen: How much of our seeking advice is us not being able or willing to follow our gut?
Roxane Gay: Oh, so much. I think that most of the time, we know what the right answer is. We know what the right course of action is, and we don't trust ourselves. Really, just we don't trust ourselves.
Tiffany Hanssen: We have a text here. "My boss has been promoted because he was good at his job. He was not a good manager. We all want him to step up and manage rather than let everyone do what they want. How do we communicate this?" We're back to another communication issue.
Roxane Gay: Yes, so many communication issues. In this instance, what you really want to do is find a way to communicate to your manager that we are looking for more structure and guidance. I think a lot of times managers don't expect to hear that, and they are deliberately trying to be open and loose.
Tiffany Hanssen: "Hands-off."
Roxane Gay: Hands-off, and the opposite. I think so many of us are afraid of micromanaging that we err in the other direction. I know that I'm guilty of this, where sometimes I tell someone I need something done, I don't give them any parameters or guideline, and then I get irritated when it's not done in what I expected that timeline to be. I'm actively working on this right now. From the moment I assign a project, I am trying to actively make clear when I expect it to be done and how. Again, few people go into management knowing how to manage, and it's really challenging for the people that work with you to have to be patient with you learning on the job.
Sometimes you do need to manage upward, and this is definitely one of those instances where I feel like you could find a way to nicely ask for more structure and more hands-on management and see what comes of it.
Tiffany Hanssen: The follow-up would be, "What if that's not received well?"
Roxane Gay: That's a good question, too. If it's not received well, now you know that this is not someone that you can take feedback to, and this is not someone that you can expect things of, which actually means that they're not a good manager. That's a bigger problem that you won't, unfortunately, be able to solve, but you have to go into any sort of communication like that with the understanding that you may not hear what you want to hear, and it may not go over well. I would like to believe that if you are diplomatic, the message will be heard, especially if you frame it as something you need rather than something this manager is lacking.
Tiffany Hanssen: You should do.
Roxane Gay: It should be like, "We could benefit from more structure and guidance." Even though this is just like, "Why do we have to finesse things like this? Why do we have to hold grown adults' hands in this way?" but we do sometimes. If you put the onus on yourself as something you need, then as a manager, hopefully, they can rise to the occasion and satisfy that need.
Tiffany Hanssen: A good text here for us to end on, Roxane. Mary from Brooklyn. "The best advice I got was from a dear colleague who said that, 'It's best to advocate for yourself.' I started at my job at a very low salary, and for three years in a row, in my performance review, I made a case for a promotion all successfully. In my last review, I included a specific salary range I wanted, and it was an empowering act I never thought I would have the courage to do without that advice. The advice being to 'advocate for yourself.' I don't have any plans to leave my job, but I do know that I will never accept a low-ball salary offer ever again." I feel like that just deserves a round of applause.
Roxane Gay: Absolutely. It's so important to know what you're worth, and it's so rare that we are able to articulate that we know what we're worth.
Tiffany Hanssen: I have 1,000 stories I could tell you on that, but I won't. I'll just say thank you. We've been talking with Roxane Gay. Roxane was kind enough to put back on her Work Friend hat. She was, of course, behind the Work Friend column at The New York Times for several years. She's a prolific bestselling author, educator, and podcast host. You also have a new Lifetime movie, Surviving the Silence: The Roxane Gay Story. Roxane, it's been a delight, actually.
Roxane Gay: It's been a delight for me, too. Also, I didn't come up with the movie title.
Tiffany Hanssen: Oh, okay. All right. Sidebar. That's for the next show. We'll talk about it. Anyway, Roxane, thank you.
Roxane Gay: Thank you.
Tiffany Hanssen: We should note, listeners, this is a new show, Please Advise. It's a pop-up advice show here from WNYC. If you have topics that you would like us to cover on the show, you can submit those at wnyc.org, and we do hope you'll tune in tomorrow because we're going to get style advice from Avery Trufelman. She hosts the podcast Articles of Interest. We're going to talk about creating your personal style, getting a language for fashion that makes you feel confident and comfortable. What does it mean to be stylish? Advice on style tomorrow. This is Please Advise here on WNYC. I'm Tiffany Hanssen, so glad you joined us. Talk to you tomorrow.
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