It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go…

1. Asking junior staff to speak for their generation

Any suggestions for how to curb the need some of my colleagues have to use the “youth” in the room — be it younger staff or interns — to speak for all people of their demographic? This happened to me when I was an intern and I hated it since it felt reductive. Now that I’m further along in my career, I feel like I have a chance to make a change, but I’m not sure how to tackle it.

An example is when we’re discussing a social media campaign video as a group and a member of staff turns to the 20-something intern and asks, “What does YOUR generation think?” then laughs.

It’s pretty casual right now and limited to two particular members of the team, but still feels inappropriate. I want people to realize we respect everyone for their opinions and expertise, ones that do not rely on age or social status, and that one person’s thoughts on a matter do not scale up to represent an entire demographic. It’s infuriating and diminishes the person’s opinion to the year they were born, not experience.

Yeah, that’s annoying — and treating an entire demographic as a monolithic block is rude. That said, it’s also pretty natural for people to see “youth culture” as something they no longer understand or relate, and to be curious for the young people they do know to explain aspects of it to them. In other words, you may not be able to shut it down in every situation, but you can try.

One way to do it: The next time it happens, you could jump in and say, “I don’t think any of us can speak for our entire generation, but I’m interested in hearing Jane’s take as just herself.”

If someone is a repeat offender and you have the standing to speak to them about it privately, you could do that too — something like, “I’m sure you didn’t mean anything by it, but when you ask our younger staffers to speak for their whole generation, it puts the focus on their age in a way we wouldn’t do with people who were older. It used to make me really uncomfortable when I was younger and people would do that. It’s great that we’re asking for their input but I think they’d feel more respected if it we didn’t tie it to their age.”

2. I keep ending up involved in things that I wanted to hand off

I’m noticing a trend in my professional life and am wondering if I’m at fault for letting myself end up in these situations. I constantly feel like I end up in the middle of things. I mean, I seem to be in situations where I find an issue at work so I try to bring it to the correct authority, but instead of being able to remove myself from the rest of the scenario, I get roped in. This seems to happen all the time, and I don’t know if I am not good enough about making a clear hand-off or if I am unintentionally keeping myself in the middle because I’m trying to be part of the solution instead of butting out and letting those who really need to be involved take it over.

This may seem like a small example but it feels like a good representation of how it goes: There is a fun run coming up in the city I live and work in. The company I work for would benefit from providing flyers to the organizer of the race because we’re having a similar fundraiser this fall (when I will be out on maternity leave). I know the organizer of the upcoming event, so I ended up pinging between him and the person at my company who is handling our fun run to organize getting flyers and water bottles donated to the event. In retrospect, I wish I had just given my coworker the contact information for the race organizer and stepped away from the situation, but I didn’t.

I think sometimes I feel like I have to stay involved like that because it feels like I’m just unloading an issue onto someone like hot potato if I don’t — but it also feels equally like I’m muddying the water by staying involved.

Is there sample language on how to bring an issue to someone’s attention and make it clear that I don’t plan to continue following up unless that’s required of me? I want to make sure I stay involved if that’s necessary or the expectation, but also to not give mixed signals that I want to stay in the middle – because I definitely do not.

The words you want are “I’ll let you take it from here!” and variations on that. Examples:

* “Jane, I’m connecting you with Cressida Mulberry, cc’d here. Cressida is organizing the county fun run and is the person to talk with about getting our flyers at the event. I’ll let the two of you take it from here!”

* “Cressida, you’d mentioned you might be interested in talking with Jane Smith in Llama Services. Here’s the note she sent me and I’ll let you decide what, if anything, to do with it from here!”

* “In case it’s helpful, I’m sending along the notes I took when I talked with the llama policing program last year. I’ll let you take it from here if you decide it’s something you want to follow up on.”

* “Here’s the contact info for the person who contacted us about providing free llama saddles for the summer picnic. I’ll let you take it from here.”

3. Coworkers are planning a weekend bridal shower for me and I don’t want to go

I have a (good) problem in that my coworkers are friendly and generous. I’m getting married in the fall, and my coworkers apparently decided amongst themselves to throw me a bridal shower.

The problem:

1) I do not consider these coworkers to be my friends outside of work. That wouldn’t be a huge issue if this was a bridal shower held during lunch or happy hour BUT

2) It’s being held in a different town at a coworker’s house.

3) I don’t have a car because i live in the city, and it’s going to be a two-hour round trip for me ON A SATURDAY to go to a bridal shower in the suburbs that I never asked for.

4) None of these coworkers have been invited to the wedding, and I am happy to chat about my wedding at work as part of small talk, but I am not really interested in having my coworkers be part of any of the wedding or pre-wedding activities.

5) They’re both very conservative and religious, which is fine! But my idea of fun outside of work (pub crawl, bawdy jokes, team sports etc) does not align with theirs — sitting around, eating cake and making small talk about our families.

6) They’ve all asked their work friends to attend, but not my work friends. There’s a huge generational divide here.

How can I politely bow out of this without burning a bridge? My weekends are precious to me and I also want to set a clearer boundary that I do not want or expect coworker involvement in my wedding or wedding planning. These coworkers are all my peers, not managers.

You can get out of this — just do it quickly before the planning goes any further! You can say, “It’s so kind of you to offer to do this, and I’m really grateful. My weekends are bananas right now, so doing it on a Saturday won’t work — would you be up for doing it during lunch one workday instead?”

If you don’t want to offer up that alternative, you could instead say, “It’s kind of you to offer to do this! But I think I’d rather not have a work shower — the rest of my life is so full of wedding stuff right now that’s it’s a relief to keep work more of a wedding-free zone. Still, though, it was so lovely of you to think of it — thank you for making the offer!”

4. Can I talk with my husband’s boss about how his job is affecting his health?

I am extremely worried about my husband. He is diabetic and has had two heart attacks in the past year. He called me today almost crying from work because he is so stressed out at his job. I don’t know if I should get involved and talk to his boss. His boss knows the situation about his health but obviously does not care. My husband has spoken to him several times but to no avail. I am very concerned that my husband will have another heart attack or that his health will get worse. What can I do for him? Can I speak with his boss when it is affecting his health?

I’m sorry, this must be incredibly upsetting. Unfortunately, though, you can’t talk with your spouse’s boss about this type of issue. But that doesn’t mean there’s nothing you can do here! While you don’t have standing to talk with the boss directly, you very much have standing to talk with your husband about how to approach this, your concerns, and whether he needs to leave the job. From there, though, he needs to be the one to talk with his boss.

5. How can I do well in panel interviews?

A few months ago, I applied for a job and thanks to your amazing resume and cover letter advice, I got an interview. I wanted to do well for this interview, so I researched the organization, wrote out answers, practiced saying them out loud, etc. I felt very prepared for it. When it was time for the interview, it turned out to be a panel interview with four people from the department. They each had questions to ask from a sheet of paper and they asked 2-3 questions each. I did my best to answer them, however, I was not prepared for interviewing with four people at once. I wasn’t sure who to look at while answering the questions and I definitely stumbled over my words more than I normally do while interviewing. I have had interviews in the past where I interviewed with multiple people, but they were all one-on-ones.

I did not get the job, but I know that I did not do the best interview that I could have done. I am getting back into the job search now and I was wondering if you have any advice for panel interviews specifically?

Treat it the way you would a business meeting with a group of people. The more you see it as a panel of interrogators, the more nerve-wracking it will be.

Introduce yourself to everyone, and thank everyone at the end. When you’re speaking, start off making eye contact with the person who asked you a question, but over the course of the conversation, make sure you’re making more or less equal eye contact with everyone, even people who aren’t speaking as much. Treat everyone with the same amount of respect; don’t disregard someone who seems more junior or less involved (their opinion may carry more weight than you know — and even if it doesn’t, your treatment of her might).

Also, when you’re setting up an interview, it’s fine to ask, “Can you tell me who I’ll be interviewing with?” That way you’re less likely to be blindsided if you walk in expecting one person and it turns out to be a panel. (Plus that way you can learn a little about their roles and backgrounds beforehand, which can help you feel more prepared.)