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Having an unstable teammate on a project I led. Long story short, they: (a) saw things in terms of them being persecuted, and took critique of their work or ap
by throwarayes 5y ago
Having an unstable teammate on a project I led. Long story short, they:
(a) saw things in terms of them being persecuted, and took critique of their work or approach deeply personally
(b) tended to see things as us vs them, and not a two-way street, where both sides bore responsibility. And that sometimes crappy things happen with no malace.
(c) resented other's success at the company, and thought that the 'successful' person was only successful because management supported them unfairly in a way my colleague was not supported. My colleague perceived themselves as a secret failure for not doing what the other person was doing. They also thought others telling them they were successful was not genuine.
(d) lacked a kind of self awareness, and tended to take over meetings with their grievances and upsetness. They couldn't see that other team members needed to discuss their own issues, or with the issues they brought up, that other people also had valid emotions and points of view on them they needed to hear and appreciate.
The time we worked on it as a leadership team went beyond having difficult conversations. I've had difficult conversations, where you talk about someone leaving a job, or someone's difficult behavior. You give it in a loving, compassionate way. Some people can get defensive, maybe upset, but will hear the feedback and take some time to digest it. Even when they're upset, they take some part in the responsibility for the feedback they hear.
This person, assumed off the bat, you were going to attack them. They couldn't see the compassion you were trying to bring. They froze up and got defensive. They tended to carry their own narrative of how they were the victim, and didn't take responsibility for their side of whatever they were having a problem with.
I give credit to our leadership team that we kept at it. We didn't accept this person's sometimes abusive behavior. We tried, and frankly, by letting others know it was not OK, and that we kept our focus on it, it helped the rest of the team understand that "yes we get there's a problem here".
We wanted to help the person. We gave them lots of opportunities for improvement and to do the kind of work they said they wanted to do. We gave them coaching and their own time to develop their own interests into new business directions.
After trying and trying, probably helped a bit through some coaching, this person realized the company wasn't a good fit for them, and they left on their own accord. This was a good outcome. Though I wish there was some way to have accelerated it and/or let the person go so they weren't as destructive to the team.
- uh_uh 5y agoSounds like quite the nightmare. Was the person at least technically competent in their role?
- jansommer 5y agoWhen someone is that kind of person, they likely don't have many relationships, but a lot of time. I'd be surprised if that person wasn't good at their job, and if not, what motivated grandparent to put so much effort into trying to heal what seems like a fundamental distrust in other people.
- ohazi 5y agoI think I understand why you phrased it like this, but using "at least" here might be read as implying that technical competence can excuse these issues. It can't. I can understand management being hesitant to fire someone technically competent, but this kind of disfunction can tank the productivity of an entire team of otherwise technically competent people, as OP alluded to at the end of their comment.
- apozem 5y agoCompletely agree! Something I realized lately is if you don’t ha e soft skills, it literally makes you worse at coding. I always knew you needed them to be a good employee, but it wasn’t until I worked with a “senior” without an ounce of social grace that I realized lacking soft skills makes you worse at writing good code. The “senior” didn’t solve the application’s problems because they didn’t care to ask. They thought they knew everything. They didn’t spread their knowledge onto the rest of the team. Instead, they spent their time working on a half-baked idea no one asked for. They would get stuck on a problem and never ask for help, a junior mistake. My hot take is you need some minimum of social skills (doesn’t have to be a lot!) to be “technically competent.”
- nickthemagicman 5y agoDon't business analysts figure out what would solve the applications problems and the engineers code it?