Hey, so I lead a small satellite office within a big company. A new hire (4 months in) who is my direct report is talented but a bit immature. His way of dealing with stress and authority issues is getting passive-aggressive. I saw small signs of this in the past few months toward others and feel like I have tried to handle it in a straight-forward way. I’ve taken meaningful steps to build trust and be direct in our relationship, but just on Friday, he got pretty upset when I made some recommendations on a draft of his work that he brought to me for approval. He was working remotely so our “conversation” was via email and chat. My suggested revision would have taken about 5 minutes of additional work in order to make it meet standard, but instead it turned into a longer antagonistic inquiry from him about standards and procedures. I entertained some of his questions at face value, but when he got straight-up toxic, I just responded, “Hey, seems like you’re getting upset. Let’s talk Monday.”

IRL I’ve talked with only DH and would really like to get some more thoughts on how to handle him. Ugh. These kind of situations really stress me out. If I were him in my younger and brash days (not sure I was ever so brash), I’d be stewing on this all weekend, be super embarrassed over my behavior and come to work very apologetic. But I’m a woman in a male-dominated profession! For some reason, he felt comfortable taking a belittling and condenscending tone with me and I find that very troubling. Do I address just the questions about standards and procedures? Or do I need to address the unprofessionalism? If yes to both, how direct should I be?