Dear Boss,
I’ve been in my job for about two years, and I’m just going to say it: I don’t have a great manager. The biggest sticking point has been his overemphasis on the team hanging out and “getting to know each other.” He never bothers to schedule work time for us to do that, but when we have mandatory work events outside of normal hours, he wants the team to continue hanging out after the event ends, often late into the night.
We recently came back from a huge work event that had long days, mandatory team dinners, and other required events. Some of these events went on until late at night (10 or 11 p.m.). When they ended, I’d say my good-byes to everyone then go back to my room to recharge or go meet a local friend for a dessert or cocktail before going back to the hotel to sleep.
When we got back to the office, my manager asked for a meeting to debrief the event, but the first question he asked was how much time I was able to spend with the team while we were there. I was confused since this was a weeklong event and I was with the team the entire time, so I reiterated that I was at all work events and receptions with everyone else. He replied that it seems like the team doesn’t really know me very well and I should spend more time getting to know them. All I could figure out was that he was upset that I hadn’t continued to hang out with my colleagues after the work agenda ended each night.
This is not the first time that he has brought this up to me, and it has always seemed like he is the only one who cares. My other colleagues and our senior leadership have never raised this, and in fact I have great relationships with many of them — to the point where, when they’re in my town, we’ll go out to dinner with our families or grab breakfast in the morning before they head to the airport.
And yet for two years now, I’ve received pretty constant feedback from my manager (and only my manager) that “the perception is that people don’t know you.” When I ask him to explain exactly what that means and how I can get to know them better, he never has any answers. In this latest conversation, when I asked what he thought I should do to get to know my colleagues better, all he said was, “I don’t know.”
I’ve always held firm that although I’m happy to attend a happy hour or networking event, once my work hours are done and I’m not required to be somewhere, I can do what I please (especially if it’s late at night!).
I’m frustrated that he keeps bringing this up when it doesn’t impact my actual work. Am I right to be upset about his not-so-subtle suggestions that we all need to keep hanging out even after the workday’s done? I feel strongly that I should not have to constantly hang out with my colleagues, but I don’t know where to go from here.
There’s a certain brand of manager who is Very! Gung! Ho! about their team socializing together as much as possible. Often these managers center their own social lives around their colleagues and expect others to do the same.
For the record, this is a problem. Managers shouldn’t lean on the people they supervise to fulfill their personal social needs — first and foremost because the power dynamics inherent in the relationship mean that the people they manage will worry the socializing isn’t optional or that their careers will suffer in some way, even if only subtly, if they opt out. Moreover, managers need to have some professional distance from the people they supervise in order to manage them effectively.
But I strongly suspect that when your boss says it seems like the team doesn’t know you well enough, what he means is that he doesn’t know you well enough and he doesn’t think you socialize enough. Clearly you have warm relationships with your co-workers — you’re having dinner with each other’s families, FFS! And it’s telling that he’s the only one of your colleagues who seems to feel that you’re at an uncomfortable remove, and that he can’t give you any specifics on what you should do differently.
His critique is particularly ridiculous since it comes after you just spent a week immersed in what sounds like pretty intensive togetherness.
So yes, you are right to be frustrated that this keeps coming up.
That said, do you see any signs that it’s impacting you professionally, aside from having to repeatedly discuss it with him? Sometimes there can be real professional consequences to pushing back against expectations to socialize more with your team: You can find yourself left out of important conversations, not assigned the projects you want, or even not promoted because you “haven’t built strong relationships.” If you are seeing signs of that, you might not have a ton of options if you want to advance other than going elsewhere and finding a manager who assesses you on your work, not on how long you stay at happy hour. But if you’re not seeing any repercussions aside from having to periodically fend off your boss’s dismay that the team doesn’t get to socialize with you more … well, I’d just brush it off. It’s annoying, yes, but if there are no professional ramifications, simply ignoring it is the path of least resistance.
You could have a more direct conversation with your boss where you say something like, “I’ve thought a lot about your feedback that the team needs to get to know me better. It’s true that I prefer not to stay out late once work events are over, and I feel strongly about continuing to maintain that boundary, but I do put a lot of effort into having warm and collegial relationships with colleagues, which I think has paid off in ways like (details).” And who knows, maybe that would put a rest to, or at least cut down on, how many times you need to discuss your boss’s disappointment that you didn’t hang around for hours after a work dinner. But it’s also fine to skip that conversation and just continue enforcing your boundaries.
All that said, for the sake of being thorough, it might be interesting to run your manager’s feedback by a colleague or two whose opinions you trust and who have a good sense of the politics on your team and in your company, just to make sure you’re really not coming across as chilly or distant to anyone else. I very much doubt you are — again, you’re having breakfasts and dinners with people — but it could be interesting to confirm that with someone whose opinion you trust. Assuming you get that confirmation, which I think you will, you can then comfortably ignore your boss’s distress over your social boundaries without giving it much more thought.
Find even more career advice from Alison Green on her website, Ask a Manager. Got a question for her? Email [email protected] (and read our submission terms here).
