The reason you’re meeting up with this person is to help them realize how much they’d love to work with you someday. That way, when a role opens up on their team, or someone asks them for a referral, your face pops into their head.
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My company, based in the US, has a sizeable-and-growing office in India, and our team meetings always include them. Recently we tried scheduling some brainstorms to get everybody connected and motivated, and our APAC teammates spent the whole meeting on mute. This sent the managers spinning out and wondering how we failed our international teammates in terms of prep (there was a pre-read) or tone-setting. We struggled to find any resources online for managing cross-cultural teams. Any advice?
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Today’s about a very specific kind of panic that we thought was maybe too specific to write about until we each kept coming up with example after example after example of it happening. I think of it as “third-party panic” — where you unexpectedly get swept into someone else’s freak out and wham-o, you’re suddenly co-piloting the panic rocket.
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You are unhappy with the work. Telling your boss doesn’t mean they’ll change it, but not telling your boss means they definitely won’t. Here are two ways to approach it.
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I am thinking specifically here of white people like me who are working among other white people and feeling the urgency — the need for growth plus a desire for growth. How do we keep going with accountability, every day from here on out?
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I find great relief in knowing that my job isn’t ever to stop a rumor from existing. It already exists! If Beyonce can’t get an “unflattering” picture off the internet, I’m certainly not going to be able to stuff a rumor back in its bottle. My job is to help surface the truth in the most useful way possible. As a manager, I’m more weatherman during a tornado watch than god of wind.
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I don’t think it’s wrong at all to expect follow-ups from your team when something has slipped through the cracks. What I love most about this question, though, is that there’s not a single clear-cut answer. It’s one thing to ask your boss to respond to an email that’s been languishing in their inbox for three days. It’s another to have to ask again after a week, and again after two.
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Don’t shrug off real change by blaming and shaming yourself. It’s probably not you, and that means the solution is probably not you, either. There are real next steps to take. Let’s find them.
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Any advice on how to better manage a team that doesn’t like to ask for help? Our company culture is mistake-friendly and solution-focused, and we reiterate that all the time. Why is my team still hiding mistakes or operating with an “I got this!” mentality when they, erm, don’t always got this?
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It took me a long time to build up the confidence to let my team’s actions stand on their own, and not let my own insecurity take over. In the meantime, it’s helpful to have a process to fall back on — a sort of program you can mindlessly rely on when you may not be thinking clearly.
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