When the Fickle Finger of Fate Pointed at Me - Part 1

 

I've not told this story before. Not sure why. Maybe because it's embarrassing. Maybe something else. The reason to tell you now  is because I may be coming off as a know-it-all who does not really understand what is going on in your world. For your consideration, then, is this story of when I dealt with "problem" employee. What happened here is one reason why I am forever obsessed with managing the workforce correctly. There's a lesson for all of us here.

Many, many years ago, one of my first direct reports was a good employee. She took control of her responsibilities and added value. She was very assertive - something that was needed - and I was of course "enlightened" so I did not feel threatened. There was one incident that I charatcterized as unusual at the time. A company we purchased materials from complained to me about her behavior. According tot he customer service agent, this employere had used bad language and threats to resolve a disagreement. Surprised, I took it up with the employee, to get her side of the story. I made it clear that the behavior described by the customer service agent was not acceptable, but the employe felt that the agent had overblown the whole thing. Looking back, my intervention was not rigorous enough.

I made a note of this incident, and that was the end of it. Months later, I went to another position in the ever-changing company. The Fickle Finger of Fate pointed at me again, though, because I was to take over a new department a year later, and she was again a direct report. Now she had her own team and was successful. Through passive aggressive behavior, she was resistant to collaborating with the other teams reporting to me. I was "enlightened," remember, and understood that she may feel strongly about her ability to handle things herself. I played it laisses faire for a while.

Boy was I naive. In my next entry, I'll explain how this awkward situation ended up not with the employee disciplinary process, but with jail time.