Teamwork: A follow up
7 September 2006As a follow up to yesterday’s thought. Today my direct engineering manager called me
aside into the conference call to discuss the email I had sent.
He disagreed with the message, and with how it came across. He said that to be a
team player one had to be willing to help others, even if that means signing
documents with a past date. He mentioned that it came across as if I was trying
to teach everyone, that I had removed myself from theam. There was a bit of
truth to this, wanting to challenge others to a higher standard, but not at
all that I wanted to remove myself from the team. From my position of
authority, or lack thereof, I cannot make statements that determine what others do, I
can only control what I do. And the idea was to control what I sign and
what I don’t as a way of influencing what I can, and not compromising my
standards. He also discussed how at some point in the future I
would come across a similar situation and I would need the support from people, but
I responded by saying that I would never force anyone to sign anything if
it went against there core principles.
We had a long discussion, tense at times. I admitted that it came across
stronger than I wanted, but was not willing to take back my refusal to put my signature
on something that I did not agree with. This really upset him, I
think he might have been expecting me to just accept everything and cower down,
but I wasn’t. At times he was visibly angry, asking why I wasn’t taking
his advice. I responded by saying that I was listening, and taking
some of it, but that I can’t take all the advice.
It did get me thinking more of the overall issue. I’m reading this book “Crucial
Conversations”, and one of the examples is not to make react too strongly, like
the guy who says something mean “because he was the only one who had the
guts to.” This doesn’t usually have the desired effect of rallying
people around a cause, and I wonder if what I did was similar, or if it indeed
has some of the similar points.
The other conundrum is that by holding others to a higher standard, and putting yourself on
real or perceived pedestal, you’re exposing yourself more and better work harder
to keep that position. I guess that’s a good thing, having to keep
yourself honest, and openly admitting failures when they go against a position
you’ve claimed.
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