I overheard my employee tell our intern that I’m “clueless”

A reader writes:

I was on a Zoom call today with my direct report and an intern. I momentarily took off my headphones to blow my nose and put myself on mute. However, through the headphones I heard my direct report say to the intern, “He’s so clueless!”

I am struggling with the best way to respond. Not only is this unprofessional behavior, but I have spent a lot of time training the direct report and have praised her to the higher-ups, as well as recently encouraged the leadership team to give her greater responsibility. So it feels a bit as a betrayal as well. She’s a millennial and I’m the youngest of the boomers if that matters, which it shouldn’t.

What would be the best way to handle this?

First and foremost, are you absolutely sure that she was talking about you? Could it have been a reference to someone who had just been discussed on the call, or they were looking at something silly someone posted on Slack, or … anything?

But if the context made it absolutely clear that it was about you … ugh. She’s allowed to have whatever private thoughts she wants — and most people do blow off steam about their bosses at some point, even when the boss is generally a good one — but badmouthing you to an intern is terrible judgment and bad for your team, and doing it on a call you were on at the time is even worse judgment. (That last part really does make me wonder if it wasn’t about you — because anyone with any sense would know there was a chance you could still hear them.)

Anyway, here we are. Whenever you see or hear someone’s private, negative thoughts about you that they didn’t mean for you to learn about, the most constructive way to look at it is as useful information. Most people won’t tell you to your face if they find you annoying or clueless or incompetent — particularly when you’re their manager — but it can be awfully useful to know they feel that way. Ideally, when that happens, you work to get past the sting and try to reflect objectively on where their feelings might be coming from. Not because you necessarily are the thing they labeled you as, but because it’s evidence that something is going on in your relationship with them that could benefit from reflection. So it’s worth taking this as a nudge to think about the relationship from her perspective. (When I’m hiring managers, I sometimes ask candidates, “Given that even the best managers annoy the people who work for them at times, what do you think the people you manage are most likely to find annoying about you?” The answers are fascinating, as is the number of people who genuinely seem like they’ve never reflected on that before.)

But I also think it’s fair to clear the air. It’s going to be awkward for both of you, but that itself isn’t a reason not to do it. You could say, “I know this is awkward, but on our call with Jane last week, when I briefly put myself on mute I heard you say something pretty unkind about me to Jane. I have no intention of policing your thoughts, but I do want you to be more thoughtful about not venting about work frustrations to an intern, who is not a peer. And I also want you to have the opportunity to tell me if I’m doing something that’s making your job more difficult or if something else is going on that you’d like me to handle differently.”

However, you should only say this if you are absolutely 100% sure from the context that she was talking about you. If there’s any chance she wasn’t, don’t do this. In that case, you might check in with her more broadly — leaving out the part about what you overheard and just asking for feedback on how things are going, any frustrations she’s having, etc. You won’t necessarily get a candid answer, but it’s a conversation you should have regardless. And then from there, in a scenario where you really can’t be positive about what you heard, I think you’ve got to try to wipe it from your mind. That’s easier said than done, I realize, but otherwise you risk introducing real tension into your relationship with her over something that might not have happened.

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