Three things I'd say to a team to help hold them together:

If anything goes bad, I did it.

If anything goes semi-good, then we did it.

If anything goes real good, then you did it.

-- Paul "Bear" Bryant



"The best job goes to the person who can get it done without passing the buck or coming back with excuses."

--Napoleon Hill

Sunday, February 7, 2010

Post #3.1: Resolving interpersonal conflict

i could still remember some time ago, i was in this organizing committee for organizing a sport event under the committee sports club.

I was placed in charge of the logistic side under the committee and so, i had to make sure all the logistic items are sourced out and the transportations planned out properly. My job too, included making sure that the members in my team do their part of work for this project.

As a leader, i am thus tasked to allocate the jobs to different members within my team. For some reason, one of my fellow team mates was not happy with my allocation of jobs. But instead of telling me, he just kept quiet, until a few days before the dateline.

When we are reaching the dateline, i called for a meeting to discuss what they have gathered. To my amazement, he reported that he had not done a single stuff as he was not happy with my arrangement. In the heat of the moment, i told him off, saying that he was very irresponsible to have not done the work allocated and he had just caused our whole team's progress to become stagnant.

In the end, he just stomped out of the room and disappeared. He was never seen for the rest of the meetings and hence out of desperation, we ended up having to cover his part of the work.




As i reflect back at the moment, i realized that i was too harsh on him. I should not have been so hurting to him and i should exercise restraint when i am angry. I feel that i should apologise to him, but i could not put down my pride and be the first one to apologise. Hence, i begin to avoid him every time i see him.

What should i do?

1 comment:

Junius said...

Hi Bryon, I apologise for the late comment.

As a leader in this particular situation, it is your duty to make proper job allocation. His silence to the matter was feedback to you that you have done this part correctly. However, you could have done it better. Perhaps in future, you could go the extra mile to ask and ensure that members are content with the allocation.

Your other role was to make sure there is good progress with the task. In this case, it also means reprimanding your team if they underperform. You have done so abeit a tad too harsh, but nonetheless, it was reflective of the seriousness of the situation.

Later on, your team member left and that proved to be hurtful to progress of the task. This is the part where you failed in the second role. Sure, the leader must reprimand, but more importantly, he must correct. He must ensure the member knows where he has gone wrong and help him to go back on track.

You already stated clearly the solution yourself. You must lower your pride and apologise if need be. You do not have to be in the wrong to apologise, but you most certainly will be right if you do. That is what makes a good leader.