It comes up sooner or later with anybody you mentor from outside their team. You told them to push for the platform work. Their manager told them to stay on the product team for another year and get a release under their belt. Now they are sitting across from you, waiting for you to say which of you is right.
Be careful here, because the easy move does real damage. You are the person they chose, you are pleasant to talk to, and you are not the one assigning their work or writing their review. It is tempting to be the reasonable voice against the difficult boss. If you take that role, you have made their working life harder and you will not be there on Monday to help with it.
Start by remembering what you do not know. Their manager can see the headcount plan, the reorganisation that has not been announced, the other two people who asked for the same move. You are hearing one side, filtered through somebody who wanted a different answer. Advice that disagrees with yours is often advice built on information you never had.
So change the question. Not which of us is right, but what would each of us have to believe for our advice to be correct. I am assuming the platform team will still exist next year and that your current work is not teaching you much. Your manager may be assuming the opposite on both. Which of those can you find out? That turns a contest between two people into a couple of facts they can go and check.
Then send them back with a better conversation rather than a counter argument. Help them write the question they will ask. What would I need to show this year so that a move next spring is an easy yes? A manager who hears that feels consulted, not challenged, and usually gives a much more specific answer than the first one.
And say the one thing plainly. You have to live with their decisions and you do not have to live with mine, so weigh that. It is not modesty. It is accurate.
Your job is not to win. It is to make sure they choose with both sets of reasons on the table, and that they still have a good relationship with the person who signs off their year.
– Asael Shinder
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