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Ask Judy Question #20
Dear Judy: As a new (and younger) employee hired to proofread
all material before it leaves the office, the "older" members
resist my grammar rules, as they are different from the ones
they learned. One consistently snaps at my "incorrect" grammar,
and others refuse to make the necessary changes.
When I see professional publications with grammar mistakes like
ours, I usually don't use the companies, as they seem to pay no
attention to detail.
What is a proper and discreet way to explain to the older employees
that my grammar changes are correct? I tried showing them the
grammar rules found in grammar resources, but they just yelled at me.
Signed...Ready to quit and let them look like morons
Dear Ready: No! Don't quit yet. It sounds like you're in an office that's so small you may not have a Human Resources department. And you clearly have found no one else in which to confide. Let me run this by Adventive's I-HR (Human Resources) list and see what the professionals recommend, given the above.
From Steve Rothberg
[Response from I-HR Digest #135] employee appears to be a member of Generation X or Y and her older co-workers are probably Boomers.
My guess is that the conflict wasn't really about grammar but about control: the older workers probably resent the younger worker's confidence and desire to be treated as an equal because the older workers are from a generation where you pay your dues for years before you're allowed to offer an opinion.
My advice to the younger worker? First, find a job with a company that values her opinion and treats her as an equal. Second, be sure that you understand that the world and its various rules, including grammatical rules, are not black and white. There can be different correct answers to
the same question. If your answer is different from that of your superior's, be sure to express your opinion politely and respectfully but realize that at the end of the day your superior is superior to you and their opinion does and should carry more weight due to their greater experience.
Steven Rothberg, mailto:Steven@CollegeRecruiter.com
http://www.CollegeRecruiter.com
(952) 848-2211; (800) 835-4989; Fax: (952) 915-1102
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From Michael A. Chwastiak
[Response from I-HR Digest #136]I worked as a Communications Specialist for a major corporation with 5,000+ employees in Canada alone, and 100,000's more worldwide. It was a great experience; I wasn't in the management chain, but I had contact with the top decision makers on a day-to-day basis in the company, as they would "sign-off" on our work. They all believed in the Communications Department.
I agree with Steven Rothberg's quote that "the older workers probably resent the younger worker's confidence and desire to be treated as an equal because the older workers are from a generation where you pay your dues for years before you're allowed to offer an opinion."
Nonetheless, IF your job is to improve their writing and communications, and to bring the company together with one voice, then that's what you have to do. It's not for the faint-of-heart. And it's NOT a task you can do by yourself. You've already experienced the worst of it: managers who "jump you" when you're alone, and not only disregard your advice but hold disdain for it.
With respect to Steven, who suggested that "...at the end of the day your superior is superior to you and their opinion does and should carry more weight due to their greater experience." If you're talking about the company communicating with one voice, "I know the best way to do it,
'cause we've done it this way for 50 years" simply does not apply.
If you're there to "improve" and "change" the way the entire company sounds, you'll need three things:
- A Corporate Style Manual. You need some kind of rulebook, or even a fact sheet for a smaller company, for managers and other employees to refer to when composing their communications. Then any changes in their grammar aren't your problem, or your doing, but are the "fault of the guide, darn gummit." This will make your life much easier. You always want to work not to put "the blame" on the employee, but to try to "help them be better".
If you're a small company, and you don't have a style guide or style sheet, get the Top Brass to buy into the idea, and write one! Then have them distribute it, and make every manager "sign off" on its use.
- A Boss that will actively defend you. I did the edits, I re-wrote the text, I checked the facts. But my manager dealt directly with the other managers who's work I was revising, thus "shielding me from the blows" if they came. When push came to shove, managers in this company
treated other managers as equals. That wasn't always the case in manager/employee relationships.
- Total Buy-in From the Top. I can think of several different occasions where a Manager waited to catch me alone, and then tried to intimidate me into changing things to suit their beliefs. In two circumstances (when my Boss was out-of-the-office and there were no other Managers on their level around), the Managers-in-question were going to release incorrect information company-wide, and even defended that incorrect information with great anger towards me, because "other upper level managers had signed off on it", mistakes and all!
Let me repeat that to be clear: it was OK with them to release information that was blatantly wrong, as someone else had given approval for it. I heard arguments like, "Who are you to even be questioning this fact?" (Uhm, that's why they hired me?) I always calmly pointed out how and
where I found the corrected information. It simply didn't matter whether the information was wrong or not, because it wasn't "their fault". To them, I was the "lowly employee", and I would do as I was told.
Fortunately for me, and very unfortunately for the managers in question, our office was right beside the #2 HR Director in the company. We were a part of HR, and the "Top Brass" believed in our work. Though it wasn't perhaps the most "political" method of dealing with the situation, in both cases I marched right up to the Director (even though he was 3 layers up from my Manager!) and laid the problem out for him.
One of my favorite memories is the sound of surprise from a Financial Services Manager who had just been yelling at me for trying to *fix* one of his mistakes before it went out company-wide, as he received a call on the speakerphone from "HR #2" while I listened in. "Mike says there's a
mistake with the information in this memo, and I agree. Do you want this to go out wrong? What's the hold-up on your end?" You wouldn't believe how fast the Financial Services Manager's tune changed. Yes, the correct copy went out. And no, I didn't make a "new enemy" with this manager.
Quite the opposite: He treated me with great respect the next time we worked together.
The point of this story is simple: People who use the "I've been here more years than you" or "I'm your superior, do it" arguments aren't automatically right by virtue of their seniority. Respect them, but use your common sense. Get clarification on what your goal is, and make sure
that goal is being supported by Upper Management.
Michael A. Chwastiak
mailto:creative@mediacollision.com
mediaCollision.com
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