How to Handle a Disrespectful Employee as a New Manager

00:00The first moment of disrespect, and who is watching

The first time someone on your team is openly disrespectful to you, there are usually more people watching than the one person you’re actually dealing with in the moment. And a lot of new managers miss that. You focus on the person who rolled their eyes or said the thing you didn’t like, and meanwhile, five other people in the room are trying to figure out what just happened, what’s happening on this team, and what happens with you when someone pushes you.

00:30Disrespect vs. disagreement

And by the way, what I mean by disrespect in this context is different from disagreement. People should absolutely disagree with you. What I mean is the moment someone signals, in front of others or around you, that your role doesn’t carry the weight that would call for respectful engagement. And that first moment is almost always a boundary that’s being tested.

So someone wants to know where the line is, and the line ends up wherever you let it settle. My name is Ramona Shaw, and this is The Manager Track. Also, quick note: there will be cliff notes for this episode, so make sure to check the show notes.

Now, the instinct in situations like this is to treat it as a relationship problem. People will come to me and say, "I have a problem with someone on my team." The question might be: Do they like me? Did I do something wrong? How do I win them over? How do I gain their respect? But before we decide this is a relationship problem, we actually have to look at the potential structural problem here instead. The way that you respond in that first moment shapes what the whole team believes is acceptable, and that’s a much bigger deal than whether or not the person likes you.

So here’s what we’re going to cover today. First, what disrespect actually looks like and why it shows up for new managers in particular. Second, the two mistakes almost everyone makes. Third, a four-step method for handling it, with the exact words. And then lastly, what to do when it stops being a moment and starts to turn into a pattern.

02:05What disrespect looks like on a new manager’s team

Let me start with what it looks like, because it’s rarely some dramatic outburst. It’s usually pretty small. It might be, like I said earlier, an eye roll when you introduce a new process, or a "per my last email" response with your boss copied. It might be a joke in a team meeting about something that you said or did that gets a bit of a laugh. Or it can be a deadline that you set that someone just ignores, and then acts surprised when you bring it up. It’s like, "Weren’t you listening? Weren’t you paying attention to what I was asking you to do?"

Another example that sometimes comes up, just to give you enough examples to see how these things sneak into behaviors and teams: someone goes straight to your manager with something that they should have brought up to you, and you don’t hear it until your manager tells you. Now it feels like someone went behind your back.

Now, each of those examples on its own is easy to dismiss, and that’s exactly why they work as a test for team members who want to check your boundaries. If you react big and you look rattled over an eye roll, it’s a signal of insecurity, a big ego, you name it. There are a lot of interpretations people can have about it. But if you don’t react at all, you’ve told everyone that the line, that boundary, is further out than they might have thought. So they’re testing it, first level. They’re like, "Okay, the line is not here. Let’s keep pushing."

03:35The 3 people who test new managers

Now, the reason this happens to new managers in particular is that there are basically three people who test you early. One is the peer who wanted your job. They may have applied. Maybe they just assumed it was theirs. Or maybe they just hoped that they would be asked. They’re not necessarily trying to sabotage you in a really bad way. But part of them needs the decision to have been a mistake. They need to see, "No, they’re going to fail. This shouldn’t have unfolded this way." And even if that intellectually doesn’t make sense, there’s something in them that wants to test this out to get some validation that it should have been them, or someone else.

The second group are the loyalists. They liked the previous manager, or they liked how things ran before, and every change that you now make as a new manager can read to them as a criticism of that, or as something that goes against what was there and what they’re loyal to.

And then the third group are the senior people on the team. It could be someone with more tenure or expertise who is checking whether your title has anything behind it, whether your title is deserved. If you watched the recent episode on leading someone more experienced than you, then you’ll recognize this one.

Naming which one you’re dealing with changes your response. The peer needs to see that you’re staying, that you were the right fit for this role. The loyalist needs to hear that you respect what came before. You’re not trying to tell them that it wasn’t good enough and that the changes are necessary to fix bad decisions in the past. The senior person needs to see you make a decision and hold it. They need to see that you have executive presence, confidence, competence, and that you’re decisive.

Now, on the surface, it’s the same kind of eye roll or snarky comment, but underneath, different conversations are happening inside of their heads.

05:30Example: "Is this a new manager thing?"

Let me give you an example. Say a leader comes to me and says, "I’ve just been promoted to lead my team, and in my second week, I presented a new way of prioritizing incoming requests." Now, one of her former peers leans back and says in front of everyone, "Is this an actual necessary change, or is this like a new manager thing?" A couple of people laugh in the moment.

The leader’s first instinct is to walk through the whole rationale again, staying composed and affirming to the team member that this is actually a necessary change. Now that section of the meeting turned into her defending herself. She lost the frame a bit, because she thought she needed to address the comment that was made.

So this leader brings the situation to me and says, "I don’t know what I should have said, but I could immediately tell that I started to get rattled, and I started to feel like someone was trying to poke the bear."

And it’s not that she shouldn’t have addressed that comment at all. She could say, "Yes, this is an actual meaningful change, and here’s how we’re going to go about it. We’re going to track the numbers over the next two months, and then in two months we’re going to assess what the data shows and decide what’s next." And then move on. No edge in her voice. She doesn’t need to lecture anyone. She also doesn’t try to get their buy-in. She’s not looking for them to nod and say, "Oh, okay, got it. In that case, let’s proceed." She’s not looking for their validation.

But here’s the second part that’s really important. Saying something like this and moving on doesn’t mean you let it go. So let’s go back to this example. Later in the day, this leader would grab the person and ask, "Hey, do you have a quick minute to chat?" And I’ll tell you in a moment what she could say in that situation. But it means taking someone aside after the incident, not during the meeting itself, and sometimes even intentionally doing it visibly. So instead of sending an email and saying, "Can you come to my office or meet me in meeting room one?", she would walk over to the desk and say, "Hey, can you quickly hop in a meeting room with me?" Doing so signals, a few hours later, that she wasn’t going to let that go. She was going to address it, and she’s not accepting comments like this going forward.

08:00The 2 default mistakes

So before we talk about what she could say in that meeting room, let’s talk about the mistakes that so many new managers make. The first one is letting it slide. You tell yourself it’s not worth the friction. You’re new. You want to keep the peace. You don’t want to stir up any conflict. It’s fine. I understand the logic, but the problem is that silence and letting it slide is also a response. So the person who tested you learns that the line, the boundary, is further out. And everyone who watched learns the exact same thing. And you bet the next test is also a little bit bigger. The next test will be to find out how far the line really is from where they first assumed it was. And so they’ll test that line too.

Again, this is usually not ill-intended. It usually comes from a place of having some resentment, or some questions, or some doubts, or some frustration that may have nothing to do with you. But they come out in those moments, and they just need to be addressed. This relationship is not cursed. We don’t need to make it a bigger issue than it is, but we also can’t let it slide.

The second mistake is the public correction. Saying in a meeting, in front of everyone else, "Hey, I don’t appreciate that comment," will likely come across as friction and conflict. It may feel strong in the moment, and sometimes that is actually the necessary thing to say. But what the room may actually see is that one comment, especially if it’s the first one, got under your skin, and now the meeting is about the two of you trying to hash this out or drawing that line, instead of the actual work.

Now, if something is genuinely inappropriate or in some way discriminatory, you obviously have to address it and make it visible to everyone else. If it’s a slight testing of boundaries, ending it clearly in the moment and then making sure you bring it up with the person privately afterwards is the better approach to take early on, with these slightly disrespectful behaviors.

So again, letting it slide lets them set the line, and correcting them in public gives them the reaction they were after. Now you’re looking like the one who got rattled, and that again can be read as insecurity.

10:15The calm correction: 4 steps

Okay, so let’s talk about the four-step method. I call it the calm correction. The principle underneath it is to address that slight disrespect promptly, privately, and briefly, with no visible emotion. The calm does a lot of the work here. It tells everyone, including the person who tested you, that this didn’t knock you off balance. This didn’t rattle you. This didn’t shake your confidence. This is about you setting the boundary and being confident about it. Address it promptly, privately, and briefly. That’s it.

So step one: reset the room if it happens in a meeting. In the meeting, when it happens, you need one line that acknowledges it without engaging with it, and then you keep going. It can be something like, "Let’s take that offline. Next item." Or, "Fair question. I’ll come find you after this meeting." Or the brief answer that we looked at earlier: "Yes, this is a meaningful change. Moving on." The goal in the room is to keep the meeting about the work and, if appropriate, to signal that you’ll deal with this later, especially if it’s not a one-line response.

Step two is to follow up the same day, so it’s timely. Don’t let this go on for too long. It’s a small thing, a small behavior, and hence it deserves a timely reaction. Doing it the same day also means it’s fresh for both of you, rather than next week or at your next one-on-one in 10 days, which makes it seem like you sat on this and ruminated over it for a long time. Because if you wait, a couple of things will happen. One, you start rehearsing it in your head, it often gets bigger and bigger, and they assume that you’ve dropped it. And then if you bring it up later, you might be even more emotionally attached to it or upset about it, because it’s been sitting in your head for so long. And two, it might come as a surprise to them, and they wonder, "Why did you sit on this for so long? Why didn’t you just tell me right away?" So it’s better to do this in a timely way.

And then the third step is to ask first, and then state the standard. Open with curiosity, since you don’t actually know yet what was behind it, what the intention was. Even if it wasn’t delivered nicely or respectfully, you want to get curious about the intention. Sometimes there’s a real concern underneath, and of course we need to address how it was said, but we also need to address the concern. And sometimes they genuinely did not realize how it landed.

So: "Hey, I noticed what happened in the meeting. You seemed frustrated when we talked about so and so." Or, "This seemed to bother you." And by the way, never say, "This bothered you," or, "You were frustrated," because we can’t read emotions. We don’t know for sure. So always hedge that: "It seemed like you were." Then: "What was behind it? What was going on for you?" So we’re calling out the behavior, and then we’re asking an open question. Then stop talking and let them answer. See what they say.

Whatever they say, take the substance of it seriously and separate it from how it was delivered. Don’t lose the message just because it wasn’t delivered nicely. Then you can say, "Look, we can disagree, and we can do this openly. We can disagree respectfully in front of the team. What we can’t do is demonstrate disrespectful behavior or say things in that tone in front of the team. If you have a concern about a decision that I made, bring it to me first, and we can hash it out. I’d rather hear it in a private meeting than in a team meeting, especially if you feel frustrated."

That’s an easy way to outline the standard. You’re saying, "We can disagree. I want to hear from you. Your message matters if you actually disagree with me and there’s some substance behind it. I want to know that. And we can’t do it in this way. We can’t say it that way. We can’t let our emotions get the best of us." We want to keep that short. One standard, said once. Don’t repeat yourself over and over again, waiting for them to agree with you.

Now, if you notice that you’re explaining why respect matters, or you start to list other times they did something similar, notice that you’re drifting into a lecture, and the lecture tells them they got you. They got you rattled. So clearly outline what is okay and what isn’t okay after you ask them what was going on, because that first question, by the way, may already bring to the surface a lot of things you didn’t know. Separate the substance from how it was communicated. Pay attention to the substance. Set clear standards on how it should be communicated.

And then close the loop at the end. End the conversation with, "Good, let’s leave it there and move forward," so that they know this is actually closed. It happened, we’ve dealt with it, and now we’re moving on, and we’re assuming we’re going to do better. And then the next day, or right after that, you treat them exactly the way that you treat anyone else on the team. No being cold, no point-making, no cutting them off, nothing. That’s how they learn that you were addressing a behavior and you’re not holding a grudge. Once it’s discussed, you’re moving on.

15:403 questions to ask before you respond

Now, I quickly want to talk about a mental checklist here. Before you respond to anything that feels like disrespect, run these three questions in your head. First, is this a disagreement, or is it a status move? Is someone trying to throw you under the bus or poke the bear, or is this a genuine disagreement? Second, which of the three people am I actually dealing with? And third, how can I address this in one sentence, max? Is it one where I can quickly answer, or one where I have to say, "We’re going to take this offline. We’ll talk about it separately"?

16:15The Leadership Accelerator

Okay, quick pause here. If this is resonating with you, I want to tell you about the Leadership Accelerator. It’s a 12-week program that we run for new and early-stage managers: people who are good at their jobs and know what they’re doing. They’re the go-to people. Now they’re in a leadership role, and they need to become good at leading. And maybe you’ve been leading for a while, and you realize, "I’ve actually never gone through leadership training. There are probably a lot of things I don’t know how to do." This is for you too.

We go deep on exactly the kinds of things we’re talking about here: setting expectations with people who used to be your peers, having direct conversations without either avoiding them or overdoing them, giving direct feedback, staying calm and composed, and so much more. And that’s just the beginning. The program is set up so that you go through it not alone, but with a small group of other managers in similar roles. We combine that with live group coaching, on-demand training, and one-on-one support, so that what you learn really applies to your situation, you can immediately put it into action, and the learning sticks.

So if you’re a new manager who wants to get this right early, or you lead a group or you’re in HR and you’re looking for how to build this capacity across your managers, check out the link in the show notes.

17:35What the research says about incivility

Back to the episode. Let’s talk a little bit about research here. There are three pieces of research that explain why this matters as much as it does. Christine Porath at Georgetown and Christine Pearson at Thunderbird polled 800 managers and employees across 17 industries about what they did after being on the receiving end of incivility at work. 48% intentionally decreased their effort. 78% said their commitment to the organization declined. 12% said they left their job because of it.

So when disrespect goes unaddressed on your team, the cost lands on the people around it, and those are the people you’re responsible for. You’re setting the tone, and the way that you respond tells people how they should respond and what they should tolerate too. If you’re letting stuff go, people feel like they have a free pass to be disrespectful. And we see this all too often, where suddenly the culture starts to take on a different vibe. It just doesn’t feel right anymore. So it’s on the leader to be really clear about where that line is, both when people are talking to each other and when people are talking to them.

Will Felps, who studied organizational behavior, ran an experiment where he planted an actor named Nick in small teams working on a business task, and Nick played one of three roles: the jerk, the slacker, or the downer. Teams with Nick in them performed 30 to 40% worse. When Nick played the jerk, other people on the team started acting like jerks too. And this is the critical point. There was only one group that held up, and Felps described what the person who made the difference did. He made it feel safe and kept turning to the others to ask what they thought. He didn’t confront Nick or make a speech, and his steadiness set the tone for everyone else.

And the third piece of research is about you. Nathanael Fast at USC and Serena Chen at UC Berkeley ran four studies on people in positions of power. When people in a power role felt incompetent in that role, they became more aggressive toward the people below them. When the researchers boosted their sense of self-worth, the aggression went away. Chen put it this way: "It’s the combination of having a high-power role and fearing that one is not up to the task that causes power holders to lash out." This is the insecurity, and we have an intuition for it. We pick up on it between the lines. New managers are exactly the group that feels this. So when you feel your ego hit back hard in a moment, it’s worth asking whether that’s about the comment or about your own doubt that you’re ready for the role.

20:15When it becomes a pattern

Now, everything so far assumes it happened once. Sometimes that follow-up conversation works, and you never see it again. You drew the line, and people respect it. Sometimes it doesn’t, and here’s how to think about this. The first time is a moment, and you handle it with the calm correction we just talked about. The second time is information. You now know this person heard the standard and chose not to meet it. So the conversation has to get a lot more direct. We can’t just repeat the cycle here. We’re escalating it: "Hey, we talked about this two weeks ago, and it happened again in today’s meeting. I need this to stop. What is going on?" So again, you see that I’m being a lot more direct, and I still end with a question, to engage the dialogue and hear from them. That’s super important, so it’s not a one-way feedback dump. That’s never useful. We always want to generate a conversation.

Now, the third time, if this continues to happen after that, it’s becoming a performance issue, and you have to treat it like one. That means you’re writing it down: the date, what happened, and what you said. It also means telling them plainly that this is now part of how you evaluate their work, and it usually means looping in your own manager or even HR.

Now, the point of writing it down is to be specific. "You’re disrespectful" is not useful. It’s not specific, even if it feels like, "But that’s exactly what happened." We have to be more clear. For example: "On the 4th and on the 12th of this month, you dismissed a decision in front of the team." Now this is something that both of you can look at, remember the specific situation and what happened in that team meeting, and assess.

22:05The mindset shift

Now, let’s be honest about this. The disrespect stings partially because some part of you already wonders whether you should have this job. The Fast and Chen research applies to you as much as to anyone else. The moments that hit hardest are usually the ones that land on a doubt you already had, some kind of insecurity.

As an individual contributor, disrespect was mostly about your standing. Maybe it was personal, and you had to deal with it personally. But as a manager, it’s information about the system, about the team. It tells you what this person is worried about that you as a manager need to be aware of, what the rest of the team is learning, what kind of tone and norms it sets, and what you want them to learn instead. So as a manager, you can’t just deal with it by yourself like you used to as an IC, because now you have a much bigger responsibility to address this for the system, for the team. And the sooner you can see it that way, the less it will cost you and the clearer your response gets.

23:10An advanced move: public credit

Now here’s an additional, advanced move that you can try. If you’re in a situation like this, within a couple of weeks of having had that private conversation, find a real reason to credit that person publicly for something specific they did well, and do so in front of the team. For example: "The analysis that Jordan pulled on the vendor costs changed what we decided last week. Thank you so much for doing that."

This does two things. One, it shows the team the correction was about the behavior and that you’re not running a grudge. Two, it shows the person the way back in. They know that despite this situation and these moments of friction, you’re going to treat them fairly. You’re resetting, assuming that they stop the testing and the poking, and you’re treating them fairly. Plenty of people who test a new manager are waiting to find out whether they can work with you, and this will answer it. They will see: this happened, we moved on, and they’re fair. I can work with that.

So the next time someone on your team pushes on you in front of others, will you let it slide, react in the room, or reset and follow up in a timely, private way? That’s the big question here. And then self-reflect. How much of your reaction is about what they did, and how much is about whether you think you belong in the seat, whether they actually hit on something that you’re already insecure about, and hence your ego jumped right in to defend it?

And a year from now, what do you want your team to say about how you handled it the first time, and how you handle it any time you see disrespectful behavior? That will be something people remember about you, and about how they see and experience your leadership.

If this was useful, please subscribe so you’re alerted to new episodes, and share it with someone else who would benefit from hearing this too. Your team is going to learn where that line is either way, so decide exactly what they will learn and what you will do ahead of time, not in the moment when it’s actually happening and you blank out and don’t know what to say. I hope this episode was the answer to exactly that. And with that, I’ll see you next time.