At first, it seemed we had found the right person. He spoke clearly, knew the work and had an answer to the questions that mattered to us. We liked the fact that he understood the problem without a lengthy explanation. After a few meetings, we decided to work together. We even recommended him to someone else, pleased that we could finally say: “With him, everything is easy to agree on.”
He failed to deliver on his first promise on time. He got in touch, explained what had happened and said when he would finish. We understood. Things go wrong for everyone. The second time, we had to remind him. By the third time, we were offering an explanation ourselves before he had even given one. He has a lot of work. He has taken on more than he can handle. It is not his fault; he depends on other people too.
None of that had to be untrue. But while we were explaining his circumstances, our own commitments were being pushed back, other people were waiting, and we were increasingly answering questions that he should have been answering.
Then someone tells us they have had a similar experience.
We feel the need to defend him. We mention how much he knows, how he has treated us and all the good work he has done. The other person is talking about an agreement that was not honoured, while we respond with a story about his abilities. As though the knowledge we credit him with could somehow make up for what he has not finished.
Why has someone else’s criticism affected us so much?
Perhaps we were the ones who chose him. We defended his proposal, persuaded others that he should be given a chance and took on part of the responsibility for working with him. Now his behaviour could also call our judgment into question. What did we check? Why did we trust him so much? Did we dismiss a warning that did not suit us at the time?
While responding to criticism directed at him, we already feel the need to explain our own choice.
When we recommend someone, we attach part of our reputation to what we expect them to do. A recommendation has value precisely because we stand behind it. That is why it can be difficult to admit later that experience no longer supports what we once said. We would have to go back to the same people and say: “I was convinced this would be a good working relationship. Now I can see that we need to do things differently.”
Sometimes we put off saying that for much longer than we should.
We point to the good beginning. We remember the first job he completed, a conversation in which he helped us or a moment when he showed that he understood more than the others. All of that is real and forms part of his work. However, a good experience a year ago does not answer the question of whether we can rely today on the agreement we have with him.
A person can be very capable and unreliable. He can be pleasant to talk to, sincerely want to help and regularly promise things he has no time for. If we keep defending him against every criticism because of his abilities, we eventually stop assessing the very thing we need in a working relationship.
It is even harder when our choice has already cost us something. We have invested money, passed up another opportunity or spent months waiting for things to improve. Admitting it then feels more costly. Continuing leaves open the possibility that the next result will justify everything that came before. Ending the arrangement means looking at what we have invested and accepting that some of it will not come back.
So we accept one more promise, this time with the assurance that it is the last. We explain to others that there is no point in replacing him now, when he has already become familiar with so much. There may be business logic in that. But we need to examine what gives us reason to expect a different outcome.
Has he reduced his workload? Brought in someone who can help? Accepted a commitment he can realistically meet? Or has only the explanation changed, while everything else has stayed the same?
Those questions can also reveal something uncomfortable about us. Perhaps we were harsh with the people who warned us about the problem, while constantly finding understanding for him. We demanded evidence for every criticism from the former. For the latter, an assurance that things would soon get better was enough.
Those people then take over what has not been finished. They rearrange schedules, stay late and explain the delay to people who had no part in the choice. When they complain to us, we repeat that they need to be patient. At some point, they stop speaking up. We may take that as a sign that the situation has settled down, even though they have simply concluded that their experience will not change our position.
By then, our excuses are already affecting the trust of the people who consistently do their share of the work. They watch their additional responsibility become taken for granted, while someone else’s broken promise receives yet another explanation. They may still respect our position, but they are no longer sure how willing we are to be fair when it means reconsidering our own decision.
Of course, no single failure should erase someone’s earlier work. A serious working relationship requires patience and an understanding of difficulties. There are periods when a person genuinely cannot deliver what they once could. But understanding includes an honest conversation about what can now be relied upon. Commitments need to be adjusted to reality, especially when other people bear the consequences too.
Giving someone another chance makes sense when there is something concrete on which to base it. We also need to be willing to look at the result. If we already know that we will explain away the next failure on his behalf too, then the conversation we called a final warning has changed very little.
When disappointment finally becomes unavoidable, we tend to say that the person suddenly surprised us. Sometimes he did. But sometimes something we had already seen several times simply happened again. This time, the consequence was serious enough that we could no longer fit it into the picture we had been defending.
Then our own memories hurt too. We know whom we told they were exaggerating. Which message we left unanswered. How many times we thought something was wrong, then put off the conversation because we expected things would work themselves out after all. It is painful to have been wrong, and even more painful to realise that we may have made things harder for the people who tried to warn us.
It is worth admitting that without trying, after the fact, to convince ourselves that we should have known everything in advance. We did not. The first decision may have been reasonable given the information we had at the time. But new information arrived afterwards. Our responsibility also includes what we did with it.
Sometimes we will also have to speak to the people in front of whom we defended him. To say that their criticism had a basis and that we did not take it seriously enough. Without immediately adding an explanation of how complicated the circumstances were for us. They may have known all that already. They wanted us to hear what was happening to them too.
Changing our assessment does not require us to deny every good quality a person has or declare the entire working relationship a fraud. We can acknowledge what he did well and stop counting on what he repeatedly fails to deliver. We can be grateful for earlier help and decide to organise future work differently. These are all decisions we can explain without humiliating anyone.
Often, the hardest part is bearing the brief admission that we no longer believe what we once said so convincingly. In that conversation, there is no longer a mistake of his for us to hide behind. We have to name our own: we spent too long defending a judgment that experience had already called into question.
If you already know you cannot rely on him, whom are you still trying to convince that you chose well?
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