In the movie, “When Harry Met Sally”, Harry tells Sally that there are two kinds of women: high maintenance women and low maintenance ones and that Sally is the worst because she is high maintenance but thinks she is low!
Through the years I have observed that the high maintenance/low maintenance designation is NOT gender specific. In the workplace there are employees that are high maintenance and low maintenance. Managers tend to like the low maintenance types who keep a low profile, do their jobs, and don’t necessarily ask questions – and don’t take up inordinate amounts of the manager’s time. In contrast, managers tend to view the high maintenance direct reports as demanding, hyper-sensitive, and time sinks, usually because they ask questions and demand more time from that supervisor. What a lot of managers miss is that sometimes, people who are inquisitive, want to learn more about why they are doing something, and want to develop will take more of the manager’s time and that’s part of the role of being a manager. The dirty little secret is that many of the twenty-somethings joining the work place now would be what Harry would call high maintenance people. If managers ignore the demands of this group, they may miss out on the talent that this youngest generation can bring. More about this later….