Business English: How do I manage a sexist slacker?

A female CFO (in her 40s) wrote: I am a Filipina living in a male-dominated Arab society, where Filipinas are typecast as burger joint cashiers, and have just been promoted to CFO. I have a colleague who is an Arab, quite full of himself, quite poor on self-assessment, a slacker. ... von Lucy Kellaway, London

... The current CFO has admitted he found it hard to control this man, and he did nothing about it - our company does not punish slackers. How do you think I should approach him, bearing in mind that he is unlikely to enjoy taking orders from me?

Read what Lucy Kellaway, "agony-aunt" of the Financial Times (London), answered:

Lucy Kellaway

I'm not sure you need me to tell you what to do, as you seem to be doing rather well on your own. You are a woman and a foreigner - and the wrong sort of foreigner at that - and yet you have landed a big job in a country where tokenism has not been invented. And, having been in the job for all of three seconds, you are already planning to bite a bullet that your predecessor did not contemplate bringing anywhere near his mouth for years.

But before you do so, I think it might be wise to find out what your bosses expect of you. Did they choose you to replace this laid-back CFO because they know you will be tough when he was feeble?

If the answer to this is yes, then so much the better. You should fire the slacker and employ someone who feels under some sort of obligation actually to do what he is being paid for.

Yet I fear the answer is no. You say that the company doesn't punish slackers, which leaves you with only two options: to try to make him slack less or to leave him alone.

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He probably will not change

The first option seems sensible but I don't recommend it. Slacking is a way of life and, in my experience, the dedicated slacker is fantastically resistant to change. I have only once met a truly reformed slacker and that was only because he moved from the corporate life (where he procrastinated and skived all day long) to running his own business. Former slackers never turn into conscientious workers as a result of being managed better. And they particularly don't in this case, when the slacker is predisposed to ignore or deplore everything you say.

Not only will you fail if you try to get him to work harder, you will have a wretched time while trying. You say he won't enjoy taking orders from you but you may enjoy giving them even less. So, by far the best thing is not to issue any. If you make no demands on him, you won't be disappointed when he fails to meet them. As he's doing almost no work as it is, his total idleness isn't going to place much additional load on anyone else. And there is just an outside chance that when he goes from having little to absolutely nothing to do, he might just get fed up and quit.

Aus der Financial Times, London. www.ft.com