A Short Story
Background
Jasmine has been leading a team of 8 people who provide support to customers implementing the company’s software products. This team has been together for the last 10 years, and Jasmine has been leading them the entire time. No one has joined the team during that time and no one has left. They are a close knit group and work together quite well – flawlessly supporting customers and collaborating well to achieve their goals and meet customer needs. At one point a contractor came in to the team to help during a particularly busy time. The team was not very accepting of this individual and kept him out of the loop, completely ignoring him during team meetings and not collaborating with him as they did with each other. Jasmine was shocked at how they closed him out, but didn’t overly worry about it since he was a contractor and was only there for a few weeks.
Current Situation
The customer base is growing and more people are needed to support customers implementing the software. To that end, Jasmine’s boss, the VP of Product Support, has decided to hire a new employee to join the team. The VP already has someone in mind – Allen who has been working with the company for a number of years in another division. He has been great with customers in a variety of situations and the VP believes he’ll be a great addition to the customer support team. The VP let Jasmine know that Allen would be starting with the group the following Monday and he has asked Jasmine to introduce him to the team and get him started working with customers immediately.
Jasmine’s Concerns
It was already Thursday. Jasmine had to figure out a way to introduce him to the team on Monday so that they will accept him. She didn’t want the same situation she had with the contractor.
What should Jasmine do to introduce Allen into the team?
Part II of the article will share some ideas for what Jasmine might do.
