“I think you and I have very different definitions of holding someone accountable!”
This actually explains a lot.
You appear to want to stick it to this employee–hold them accountable, maybe put them in their place. A very old-school management style; there’s a reason I named Peter Parker’s boss.
I’m not focused on holding ANYONE accountable. I’m focused on resolving the issue. The REAL issue, not just the easily-identified symptoms. At worst, by doing so I’ve given myself an opportunity to identify where flaws may be in the team’s systems–issues with workflow, unreasonable workloads or expectations, that sort of thing. These always warrant more attention than anyone gives them, and identifying problems like this is one of the tasks of a manager. If it turns out to be personal issues, sometimes that’s still something we can work on or with! Accommodations for an executive disfunction are not inherently unreasonable, for example. And if it’s 100% personal, like that divorce case I mentioned, there still may be things I as a manager can do to help–time off to get things straightened out, for example.
“I think that managers should not be involved in their reports’ health or personal lives.”
OSHA, MSHA, DOT, and a bunch of other regulatory agencies would quite strongly disagree.
“Coaching a report on how to plan out when to eat so they don’t get grumpy and behave unprofessionally with their coworkers?”
This is a situation where the story we tell ourselves determines our interpretation. You’re viewing it as “Telling a report how to plan out when to eat.” I’m viewing it as “Helping a report learn to manage workload in such a way as to allow them to take care of themselves.” It’s not always as easy as you make it sound, believe me!
I remember a job where I wasn’t able to eat until 8 pm for two weeks–no breakfast or lunch. It was due to a very specific issue on our client’s side, that meant I was the only person who could do some critical tasks that needed done for every person on a ten-person team. Was I cranky? Sure. But my manager agreed that in that case I was the victim, not the problem–and we were able to find a solution (one that I needed my manager to do, for legal reasons) that didn’t just solve the immediate issue but made future projects more efficient, because we were willing to investigate beyond “You’re an adult, deal with it.” And no, I’m not saying that is what’s happening; I’m using this example to illustrate that your method would actively harm the team.
“Bringing in snacks to feed them because they can’t remember to feed themselves?”
But that’s not what I was talking about, at all. Again, that’s just dealing with the symptoms, the easily-identified part. What I’m concerned about is why my direct report feels that they don’t have time to eat. That indicates at minimum that there is a problem with the team–and one of my jobs as a manager is to find out where that problem is and how to fix it.
“When you conduct your RCA, are you keeping in mind that the cause is likely to be something private that an employee shouldn’t be asked to share with their boss?”
Sure. We have yet to really define the possibility space and “Personal issues that the boss can’t know about” is within that possibility space. I’m not opposed to the idea that this is just a bad employee, or a poor fit, and that the best option is to let them go, either. There are points in any good RCA where you can say “Okay, this seems like the ball is in your court; let me know if you need any help, but I expect this to be resolved quickly.” I’ve seen that a few times–and the employee asked for time off, or to be allowed to temporarily work remotely, or some other reasonable and temporary accommodation to resolve the issue. Sometimes they got it, sometimes not. But the important thing is, at that point we’d KNOW. Right now we don’t, making it equally likely that this employee is in crisis because of something the company, or the team, is doing.
Right now you’re hostile to the very idea of investigating. That means you’ll never know. You are, in fact, willfully ignorant of the causes. Where you and I disagree strongest–and believe me, I strongly disagree with your approach here–is that I’m not willing to be willfully ignorant when it comes to potential threats to my team.