The first team problem
Read Part I, Part II and Part III of our story for background information.
The team has been moving along well and, as Alice predicted, during the first team meeting, they really did seem to come together as a team.
However, Alice began to notice an issue. Similar to what happened at the initial team meeting, Mimi was very outspoken and frequently interrupted Samantha and didn’t seem to value working with her. Samantha and Mimi were working together on a component of the project and Samantha really seemed to be acting as the assistant to Mimi. Mimi frequently shouted out orders to Samantha and, when things didn’t go well, blamed Samantha.
Alice was hoping that Samantha would stand up for herself, and things would settle down between the two of them, but that has not happened. And now it was apparent to the entire team that something was going on with Samantha and Mimi. Mimi, though she certainly was very knowledgeable, had made a few decisions on her own (discounting Samantha’s expertise) and it had impacted a few others on the team – creating more work for them to correct issues that has arisen. They were beginning to complain to Alice.
Alice realized she had to do something and do it quick. But she also realized she had to plan first otherwise she could make the situation worse. She also knew at some point the entire team needed to be involved or brought up to speed on what was going on and how it would be solved; however, before she reached out to the team, she wanted to talk with Samantha and Mimi first.
Alice reached out to Samantha and Mimi to schedule a time to talk with each of them individually to understand the situation from their own perspectives.
The conversation with Samantha
Alice decided to meet with Samantha first. She told Samantha she was concerned about her relationship with Mimi and how they were working together. It was obvious they were not working very well together and, it appeared to Alice, Samantha was not able to contribute her ideas, suggestions and expertise to the team. Alice told Samantha she was glad that she was on the team because she knew how much she could contribute to the success and wanted to understand what she (Alice) could do to help Samantha more effectively contribute.
Samantha poured out her frustrations. She felt that Mimi was very controlling and felt she knew the best way to approach every task. She consistently knocked down Samantha’s ideas; and sometimes Samantha could not even get the idea out of her mouth fully before Mimi told her to forget it. What most frustrated her though, was in a number of cases where Mimi took the wrong path because she wouldn’t listen to Samantha, she then turned around and blamed Samantha when things failed. Samantha had heard from some of the other team members that she was being blamed by Mimi when things went wrong. She did try to confront Mimi about this, but Mimi simply told her that is part of being a team. Samantha didn’t feel like she could keep working like this. She was also frustrated that Mimi had no respect for the time differences and would only talk or meet virtually when convenient for her (she was in the Shanghai office) rather than balancing it out given the significant time differences. Additionally, the meetings were not very productive and Mimi spent the time checking in on Samantha’s work and ensuring she had her tasks for the following week. Samantha did try approaching Mimi to resolve these issues and find a better way to work together, but Mimi told her flat out that she likes to be the one in control so tasks don’t go off track and, since she had seniority, she shouldn’t be inconvenienced when the two needed to talk or have a virtual meeting.
The conversation with Mimi
Alice then met with Mimi. Mimi was agitated during the meeting and was surprised this conversation was even happening. From her perspective someone had to be in control of the work that she and Samantha were doing and she felt she was the best one to be in control. Bottom line – she was more senior to Samantha in the company and therefore should be the one who makes all the decisions. Mimi said if she ever felt that she needed input from Samantha, she would ask but frankly felt that was unlikely to happen since she understood what needed to be done and how it should be done.
Alice asked about perceived unfairness in meeting times given the time differences. She reminded Mimi that even the team as a whole had arranged that all team meetings would be scheduled so that everyone “suffered” at some point and had to meet at an inconvenient time. Mimi went right back to her claim that seniority gave her special privileges and part of being new to the company meant that Samantha had to deal with inconvenient things until she had more seniority.
Alice also mentioned to Mimi that she had heard that frequently Samantha was taking the heat for things that had gone wrong and was concerned about that. Mimi got defensive and said that they were part of a team and if something goes wrong, everyone is responsible.
Alice had quite a bit of work ahead of her. She needed to get Samantha and Mimi together and work out this problem/conflict. Moving them around wasn’t an answer as she needed these two to work on the tasks they were assigned. She also felt that wasn’t the answer regardless because with such a small team they would have to work together again at some point. She had to help them solve this issue.
Alice reached out to Samantha and Mimi, thanked them for their time and sharing their thoughts with her and let them know she wanted to meet with them together within 2 weeks. Prior to that, she would send them some information to consider/review before the meeting. Two weeks was selected because Mimi was going to be in the US anyway around that time period so it was perfect timing to get together as a team. Alice would prefer this was done face-to-face rather than virtually.
Part V – Preparing for the joint problem solving/conflict management session
