How Do I Manage An Employee Who Can’t Take Criticism?

By Liz Ryan

Dear Liz,

I have a management challenge I know you can help me with. I have a new employee (and new grad, about 22 years old) on my team. His name is Brendan. He is a terrific employee in almost every way.

He’s smart, he works hard and he really cares about his job. There’s only one thing about Brendan that is causing me some difficulty as his manager, and that is the fact that he cannot take constructive criticism — at all.

I was surprised the first time I tried to coach Brendan, because up until then I had been praising him almost daily. Even the day I had a bit of coaching for him, I had already told him “Great job on that report!” because indeed he did do a great job, and it was the first time he had created that particular report.

The small bit of coaching was that in our staff meeting, he cut off one of his co-workers (Melissa) twice and was somewhat impolite to her. All I said to Brendan about that was “Brendan, I wanted to mention that in the staff meeting today you may not have been aware of it, but you cut off Melissa while she was speaking and when that happens, it doesn’t feel good. It feels like the person who cuts you off doesn’t care what you have to say.”

Brendan looked at me and said “You’re overreacting. Melissa and I are fine.” I happened to walk back to our work area from the conference room with Brendan so I know that he and Melissa hadn’t spoken since the meeting. I said “I’m sharing what’s called ‘a word to the wise’ and I hope you can hear it in the spirit with which it is given — to help you, not to hurt you.”

That was all I said in that discussion. I saw Melissa later that day and she said “It’s not a big deal, but I didn’t really like Brendan cutting me off twice and basically telling me to shut up.” I have tried to give Brendan feedback two other times since then and I got the same basic reaction. He says “I’m fine.” He doesn’t want to be coached, no matter how minor the coaching is.

This excellent article was originally published here – http://www.forbes.com/sites/lizryan/2016/02/25/how-do-i-manage-an-employee-who-cant-take-criticism/#66f746453c45