Styjun

As long as you kept your feedback limited to the things she did, what the effect of those things were and what she could do to get a better outcome I don't see how anything you have said could be construed as being related in any way to her gender.

She has tried to make it about gender, not you because she has taken it personally and to be fair as you are not her manager you should have probably not tried to act like one (I know you tried to give friendly advice but this is not how she seems to have taken it).

In future, you'd be better off directing anybody who has any questions about her to her reporting manager "XXX doesn't report to me sorry, you're better off raising it with her personally or her manager.".

I responded to your post but I'll go ahead and answer:

I felt like I owed this colleague to share the feedback that I was seeing a pattern that could be detrimental to their career and shared it, specifically pointing at instances and offering suggestions.

This, generally speaking, is not as helpful as people imagine it to be. Unsolicited criticism is rarely taken well. Forbes covers this, and it's kind of interesting.

Some key points:

• When you give advice, in essence, you’re telling somebody else what to do. This implies you have all the answers about what works and what doesn’t. But how could you? Chances are you don’t have all the background information on the situation, nor do you understand the other person’s emotions and what makes them tick.




• When you give advice, you offer the other party only two choices: take the advice or ignore the advice. And in either case, there’s the possibility of a “gotcha.” If your advice is taken, that means the other person must tacitly admit you’re right and he or she is wrong. This automatically gives you credit for being smarter. That’s Gotcha #1 and it’s a dangerous scenario, one that’s almost guaranteed to create defensiveness.




• Most advice is unsolicited. This means the other party didn’t ask to be judged, corrected, or directed. When you catch someone off guard and hit them upside the head with advice; there’s virtually no chance they’ll be in an open emotional state to hear what you say. Listen, there are many ways to give feedback. Giving advice, though, often makes people defensive, comes off as arrogance or can just seem like a suggestion rather than a command. Constructive feedback can push good employees toward great performance, but advice generally just doesn’t work. And remember, while advice may be fun to give, it’s generally not that much fun to get.

All of these things played out in your description from her side. People will frame it as a "her being defensive and using gender to deflect" when in reality, unsolicited advice is the REAL issue here.

Then with the current political climate you get: Mansplaining

is a pejorative term meaning "(of a man) to comment on or explain something to a woman in a condescending, overconfident, and often inaccurate or oversimplified manner"

This is what you wrote:

"in this case, you did this, and the outcome was that, here's how it could become a problem for you in the long term, and here's a couple things you can consider doing in the future"

Depending on tone... and the unsolicited nature of the advice, it could absolutely be Mansplaining.

Good Intentions, poorly thought out, can lead to a lot of trouble.

To be clear, I'm not saying it is a gender issue, but observing this from the perspective of a woman, who is new at her job and potentially struggling; to have a man just step in and start telling you what your faults are and how you can do better, feels... awkward? Something about it, to me, doesn't feel right.

What I did notice in your description, was interesting. There was a lot of effort put into avoiding looking bad, avoiding being blamed. There was also a lot of effort put into explaining what was wrong with what she has done.

But I didn't sense much empathy... There's no clarification of how much effort was made to understand her perspective in the organization? Gender might have zero to do with any of it, but it's clear this is a colleague who is struggling, but in turn is getting unsolicited advice rather than guidance...

Like this:

I was very conscious that my feedback could come off as sexist, so if anything, I held back...

I pointed out that I had seen a pattern not a single instance, that I had "checked my biases", that in fact a few of the people complaining were women too, and that she could do whatever she wanted with that feedback.

This isn't empathy... this is building a body of evidence... like an indictment... against a fellow colleague, which you then just came at her with, on your terms, not hers...

My response: Practice more empathy in your assessment. It's about more than clarity. It's about understanding the other person's perspective and understanding they experience the world in a different way.

UPDATE:

Just an afterthought...

where a colleague (not my report, but junior to me by 5~10 years) was pushing people so strongly to work on a project

Does anyone know why? Why she was pushing people? Because from the description, it looks like zero effort was put into understanding the "why", what is motivating her? Someone else in the company? Is it her own directive?

To me, you did good. You had some people complain, and being a senior, you thought to give advice to your junior colleague about it. She did not see it as such.

There are many reasons why that would be the case, from defense mechanism, her own bias, etc.

The question is what to do from now on, and my advice there would be: do nothing more on that topic. You are not her report, and thus aren't responsible for her. If people complain about it, and want to make it a formal complain, you can redirect them to her report and/or HR. If they just want to vent, it might be acceptable to hear it out. So long as you, yourself do not waste too much time on it.

And specifically, to your colleague, you could answer something along the lines of

I am sorry you feel that way. I can only assure you that was not my aim, and thought you might profit from some feedback. However if that feedback is unwelcome, then I won't bring it up anymore.

Try to keep to the point, but also show that you went beyond your job to try to be helpful. But that you had no interest, and will drop it, since she obviously did not want the advice you offered.

What more can I do to give feedback to someone and completely avoid giving the false impression that my feedback comes from prejudice?

You can't. By definition: If you have (unconscious) prejudice, you won't be conscious of it. And she may see it. So it's not a false impression.

You (we all) need more humility. Accept you may have prejudice without realizing it, despite your very best efforts.

I had "checked my biases"

You're telling yourself (and her) you checked your biases. What if you didn't?

You've done well. You stuck to specifics, for example. You may be in the top percentile in terms of prejudice awareness. But your attitude needs to be (more) humble. After all this time, maybe you're prejudiced and don't realize it.

Ask questions that assume you're wrong. Listen. A lot. Try to understand. Learn. When you're done take some time to ponder before replying, especially before defending yourself.

What did I do to tell you to shut up?

What could I have said differently?

If you're rooting for her, you'll explore her accusation and perspective.

Also thank her:

Thank you for telling me this. I want to foster an environment where you feel comfortable sharing this sort of feedback.

Finally, forgive her. Some people experience prejudice. Some people experience false accusations of prejudice. Both are injustice. Maybe you've experiencing some of the latter from her. If so, forgive her. She's trying her best, just like you.

Consider approaching the original feedback conversation from a stance of humbleness and seeking to understand.

...a colleague was pushing people so strongly to work on a project
that it caused a few of those people and their managers to come to me
and either complain outright about it or just express confusion about
it, because they hadn't heard about who this junior person was.

This strikes me as someone who is ambitious, and feels strongly about the success of the company. Who in turn is being repeatedly rejected. If this is something you wish to better understand, consider facilitating the conversation with variants of the following questions:

I notice you’ve been pushing for project X. Why do you see such value
in it? How do you feel it will benefit the company? <allow & listen to
answer, drawing out as needed>

Its been a few (weeks, months) since you first suggested project X, but
you’re still bringing it up. What reasons have you been given for us
not taking on project X? < allow answering; if she hasn’t had any reasons, why not? this is
something to discuss with your colleagues about> Why do you still feel project X
should be done despite these reasons?

At this stage, suggesting future approaches for proposing and getting projects accepted at your company would be valueable.

She has demonstrated a desire to be proactive, and I imagine is frustrated at being shut down. As a junior employee, consider offering mentorship, or discuss with your colleagues about having a mentorship system for new employees. She has likely demonstrated the technical expertise for her position, but as a junior its hardly fair to expect her to master or understand factors at play in your firm for project decisions.

Edit: I'm unclear whether she wanted to be added to an existing project, or was proposing the company work on a specific project. Written in the context of the latter, but could be equally answered for the former - with the addendum of her exploring what skills would be required to move to the existing project if that is something she wants in her career - again, mentorship regarding the process is of value here.

From the situation you described, it sounds as if you already made every effort possible to avoid accidentally giving the impression that there were prejudices in your remarks. Unfortunately, if the person you are speaking to is in a minority gender, age, religion etc. for your particular workplace, there is always that risk.

• You waited to see if a pattern emerged. If, in an office with an even mix of men and women, that the comments were (for example) only coming from the men, then there would have been cause for further concern. You emphasised that the feedback came from male AND female colleagues.


• You avoided describing the colleague personally, avoiding even a passing reference to subjects that may show bias. If you had said something like "a woman like you shouldn't be nagging people to work on extra projects", then your colleague would have genuine reason to suspect a bias.

If issues with the colleague persist and they must be addressed at a formal level, some companies I have worked with offer the option of setting up a meeting with someone as HR attending as a 'witness', to further ensure that the situation is resolved with no prejudices. If this colleague is indeed at the same level as you however, it may be worthwhile just forwarding the concerns to their manager. They will - more likely than you - be trained to handle these situations, and there is a good chance they may have heard the same remarks you have.

In rare cases, some colleagues may simply fall back on the argument that "you are targeting me specifically with criticism, it must be an unrelated prejudice taking hold". In these extreme cases (and of course, you're confident there are no prejudices clouding your judgement), the manager or HR approach can still help put you and the colleague at ease.

I felt like I owed this colleague to share the feedback

OK, nice you want to improve things.

I said things like "in this case, ...", nothing at all like "you're being too aggressive.

Let us assume the ideas were civil and not biased.

Yet as a colleague, it is not your role to provide unsolicited significant negative feedback.

Instead, consider before presenting such ideas to a colleague, ask if she wanted some ideas concerning the situations.

If yes, proceed as you did. If not a terse explanation, seeking affirmation before continuing.

Without a clear yes, move on.

Giving feedback is distinct from giving advice: feedback is information about events (concrete information, not opinion), while advice is a suggestion of what to do.

If you are careful to strictly give feedback - e.g. "apparently you had a conversation about xxx with a colleague, who has reported to me yyy about how they feel about you as a result of that conversation" - your feedback is pure information and, in principle, should not sound prejudiced. I say 'should' because it is easy to accidentally introduce your own opinion about the incident, often unconsciously, and that opinion can make your feedback sound prejudiced, judgemental, etc.

When you give advice it may seem wise to you - but that is because it arises from your own mental construct of the situation. Every person's perspective on things is, of course, different; your advice can and most likely will, therefore, be received as not taking into account reality as the recipient sees things. It can fail as not making sense, not addressing the real problem ... or as being sexist, prejudiced, etc.

My advice, therefore, is "don't give advice" :).

OK, I couldn't resist that one, even if it doesn't help at all.

The approach I prefer is "feedback with enquiry", not giving advice. The feedback, I've addressed; the enquiry is a tool that can help the other person explore their reality - illuminated by the topic of your question(s). When you choose your questions with the strong intent that they are to help the other person (a) discover their own blind spots, (invalid) assumptions, prejudices, etc. and (b) gain freedom from them, then the questions will make a difference.

Now, it can take a great deal of carefulness (and, when necessary, compassion) to ask questions that are useful and that don't push the other person into a corner. But, if you have another colleague, or friend, with whom you can explore the questions you think would make a difference without being offensive - you can get feedback that may prove useful.

One aspect of the carefulness is to be clear with yourself that you are not trying to fix or change anything and you are not trying to prove a point: what you need to be committed to do is empowering the other person to discover (not 'receive from you', but discovered in their own thinking ... by exploring your questions) ideas that, when they take them into account, will have an improved result in their interactions with other people.

Elephant in the room: If you are not this person's manager, why are people coming to you to discuss her performance? This speaks somewhat to her manager's deficiencies as a manager, if her colleagues go to you, rather than to her manager, to complain about her performance. You should probably raise this as a concern with her manager's manager, that her manager is not managing to properly manage. Following this, you should, in a way that doesn't come off as cold and uncaring, but urge the people complaining to you to complain to her manager instead, because you have no authority to do anything about it.

Or perhaps these are not formal "complaints", as it were, but just office gossip. In which case, I think perhaps you should have shared it in a less formal way. If you have a friendly repartee with this colleague, simply mention to her over lunch one day about some of the things you've heard. From the way it may have come off, it may have sounded to her like you were trying to do her boss's work when you had no such authority, and to be frank she's probably right.

Alright, now that we've addressed the elephant in the room, let's assume for whatever reason that you are the correct person to report to. Now, the issue seems to be that you told her about these issues others are having with her, and you asked her to rectify her behaviour, and you gave her particular, well-detailed action items to follow to try to repair her reputation. As far as I'm concerned, that's all you can do. Don't pursue the issue any further. If she wants to gossip about how you're sexist or whatever, then let her do so. One of two things are going to happen:

1) She will not change her ways and her reputation will continue to decline and diminish, and she will eventually professionally implode. You did what you could to prevent this, the rest is not your problem. As the saying goes, you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink.

The other option is a bit more involved. The problem is that as a majority (male, I presume white), it is a very serious issue to be labelled an "-ist" by a minority in a professional (work) environment). Basically, if a woman calls you a sexist, in the current environment, if you don't believe the woman's accusation even without proof, then you risk being labelled as a sexist as well (see also racist if the person is POC, homophobic if the person is LGBT, islamophobic if the person is Muslim, etc), and, most importantly, the legal implications of this as a legal entity. To which I am referring not to you, but to your company. If she lodges a formal complaint with HR against your good-natured attempt to put her back on track and calls you a sexist, it's in the company's best legal interest to take corrective action against you, even if she is completely fabricating the story. To mitigate this, I would stay away from her completely. Do not talk to her, do not associate with her. If you have the need to work together, insist that all communication be done over a written medium (email, Slack, etc) or via communication by an impartial third party (e.g. her/your manager). If you are friends outside of work, I'm sorry to say but your friendship is over. If she asks why, feel free to explain to her that you do not feel comfortable being labelled as a sexist, and you would like all communication preserved for posterity just in case.

If other colleagues continue to come to you with complaints, I would simply write down the names and brief descriptions of the complaints, and when you have enough of them, dump them on the desk of some HR person, or her manager, and let come what may. Since you have no authority over her, you can't do anything except come to her as a friend and ask her to shape up, which you have done and she has rejected. In which case, imo she has forfeited her privilege to a warning, and the next step is to report your findings to the people who do have such authority, and if this ends up in her being fired, it's neither your concern nor your problem.

I held back until I saw more of a pattern. [...] I said things like "in this case, you did this, and the outcome was that, here's how it could become a problem for you in the long term, and here's a couple things you can consider doing in the future"

Don't. The likely problem here is she might have interpreted this as you mansplaining her what she ought to be doing.

Try something more like this instead, and do so shortly after you notice the problematic behavior:

If I may point something out, when you [behavior], then [outcome].

Or even more ideally:

May I point something out? [wait for yes; and iff yes:] When you [behavior], then [outcome].

Don't make it personal; if she goes defensive, keep the focus on the behavior, and let go if she takes it personally to the point of growing restless.

If you were her boss, you'd likely add something like: "Can you try something different in the future?" But you're not her boss, so let her decide whether to do so or not; and if she says you may not point it out, keep your cool and let her fall on her face.

And then leave it at that. Let her figure out what she could do instead. In particular, don't do anything she might think of as mansplaining. However welcome you think the shortcut you gave her is, she'll likely resist it; whereas if she's the one figuring it out she'll eventually change.

Aside: this isn't sex-specific. The same also applies for male colleagues.

Also: her boss should have delivered this feedback himself, but that's a separate problem.

"I had discussed the situation with this person's manager, who had encouraged me to share feedback and help coach her rather than he having to do it with secondhand information."

This is unacceptable on the part of the manager. Having the three of you in the room would have been iffy to begin with, but just you and her without management at all is indefensible.

Of course she feels like a man is trying to shut her up. That is literally what just happened! You, a random man who is organizationally at the same level as her, is telling her she is wrong and needs to stop. You are not this person's manager and your conversation with her was highly inappropriate.