Inappropriate comments in a professional meeting

Forums: Life At Work, Management, Meetings
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This is the time of year where we as managers get together to discuss ranking/ratings/raises. This is across three different sites - in three different states.

My company/group likes to rank people 1 - 30 or whatever number and then assign raises and ratings. This starts at 1st line manager on upward.

So a peer and I attend this meeting - we attend the 1st line manager meeting because we have directs that are also at the lowest levels as well as higher levels. At one point, they are discussing one of my reports - the top of everyone we are ranking in my opinion so we discuss putting him for promotion along with this other guy.

So - one 1st manager says - well I think we should put this other guy (not my report) because if only one can get promoted my report's job is slated to move out of state next year and if he doesn't move then we lose the promotion.

What the F---! Now remember there are two individuals here being impacted with this move that are at a higher level than this woman. What the heck is she thinking?

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U can point out the errors of her reasoning.

David

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@Linkat,

I've sat in these types of meetings and while we would like to think that it is all based on merit, there are often other factors involved. I had one employee have her promotion delayed because she hadn't been in the job very long and my second level manager was criticizing one of his peers for fast promotions and didn't want to undermine his position. We routinely had to examine promotions and salary changes on a global level to make sure we met corporate guidelines around gender and racial balance. I don't think the comment was unprofessional. If all other things were equal (which is sounds like they are not) is might be a reasonable tie-breaker. It is wierd that she is commenting about people in a higher salary grade than her. How does that happen? Maybe that is the unprofessional part.

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@engineer,

She wasn't commenting about people who are in a higher grade than her - she is commenting with people who are a higher grade than her. I don't know about your company, but we are high on values and this is considered inappropriate and unprofessional and at the very least insensitive especially concerning the fact that two people within the meeting are having their jobs moved out of state.

I've talked directly to her manager about it and the first thing he said was - that doesn't matter - we are supposed to look at this based on merit. (Her manager and I are peers). He stated the exact things I did - that at the very least it was an insensitive comment.

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Inappropriate comments in a professional meeting

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