Remote workers - long winded boss wwyd

amother

Fri, Sep 30 2022, 11:10 am

I've been working remotely for about a year now for a nonprofit. I was taken on part time on an hourly basis to help with a specific project which had until that point been handled by one person, but which had grown too big for her.
Unfortunately, a few issues cropped up: the position would have been better handled by a full time employee; my supervisor has been dealing with a major life transition and has been less involved with the project; and my supervisor has no experience with managing an employee, least of all remotely.
So my question: for those of you who collaborate with a supervisor remotely, what does your collaboration look like?
We have scheduled calls twice weekly. I am finding these calls incredibly long winded and emotionally draining, and I feel that they detract from my ability to do my work. I usually come to the calls with a list of specific questions that have come up in my work that week, but we don't often get to them. Instead, the calls usually start with my supervisor reviewing the tracker to see what has been done, then questioning why I didn't do xyz instead of abc, hyperventilating about how much more still needs to be done, and then asking me to collaborate with her to devise more and more elaborate tracking and note taking systems in hair splitting detail. Once she gets going, she loses all track of time and can easily continue with a monologue for 2 hours unless some outside interruption intervenes. By the end of the call, I'm practically tearing my hair out and I usually need a good break afterwards to decompress. I recently suggested that we reduce calls to once a week as I pointed out that calls were consuming 20-25% of my work hours. Her response was "but you need the training"!! How would you handle this situation?

amother

Tan

Fri, Sep 30 2022, 11:41 am

Welcome to the world of incompetent bosses. If you like your job, you keep to the schedule.

You can, however, deploy strategies to minimize her emotional angst. Acting confident is one. Reassurance is another.

“I can’t believe how much we have to do!”
“We will get it done. I’ve got this.”

It also sounds like the way she works is by micromanaging your tasks. It’s stupid but yield. By fighting it you make these meetings longer. Note take everything so that the meeting is less about her reading notes and more about moving forward.

Also, start your meeting by steering the topic. “Before we get into the notes, I have several pressing questions that need answers. I can’t do my job without it, can we deal with this first?”

Believe me I’ve been in your shoes. You can swim upstream and insist that your way is the better way, and it probably is, but it’s a losing battle.

beacon ridge

Mon, Sep 25 2023, 9:06 am

I faced a similar situation when I first started working remotely. Those inexhaustible calls can be pretty exhausting! It helped when I introduced a structured agenda for each meeting and sharing it with my boss before the call. This way, we both knew what we needed to discuss, making the calls more focused and time-bound.

cutebaby

Tue, Sep 26 2023, 4:28 am

Been there, done that! One strategy that I found useful was implementing a tool to help with monitoring and time tracking - I use this spam removed , and it's worked wonders for me. It provides clear records of how I'm spending my work hours, which I shared with my boss. Seeing my productivity and time commitment physically documented helped to convince her that longer calls were reducing my efficiency and not exactly "training" me.