[HN Gopher] Ask HN: What was the biggest leadership challenge of... ___________________________________________________________________ Ask HN: What was the biggest leadership challenge of your career? Engineering is a team sport and leadership is a major dynamic necessary for groups to get stuff done together. What was your biggest leadership challenge of your entire career? How did you overcome it? What happened then? Author : mparkola Score : 26 points Date : 2021-04-17 22:00 UTC (1 hours ago) | throwarayes wrote: | Having an unstable teammate on a project I led. Long story short, | they: | | (a) they tended to see things in terms of them being persecuted, | and took critique of their work or approach deeply personally | | (b) tended to see things as us vs them, and not a two-way street, | where both sides bore responsibility. And that sometimes crappy | things happen with no malace. | | (c) resented other's success at the company, and thought that the | 'successful' person was only successful because management | supported them unfairly in a way my colleague was not supported. | My colleague perceived themselves as a secret failure for not | doing what the other person was doing. They also thought others | telling them they were successful was not genuine. | | (d) lacked a kind of self awareness, and tended to take over | meetings with their grievances and upsetness. They couldn't see | that other team members needed to discuss their own issues, or | with the issues she brought up, that other people also had valid | emotions and points of view on them she needed to hear and | appreciate. | | The time we worked on it as a leadership team went beyond having | difficult conversations. I've had difficult conversations, where | you talk about someone leaving a job, or someone's difficult | behavior. You give it in a loving, compassionate way. Some people | can get defensive, maybe upset, but will hear the feedback and | take some time to digest it. Even when they're upset, they take | some part in the responsibility for the feedback they hear. | | This person, assumed off the bat, you were going to attack them. | They couldn't see the compassion you were trying to bring. They | froze up and got defensive. They tended to carry their own | narrative of how they were the victim, and didn't take | responsibility for their side of whatever they were having a | problem with. | | I give credit to our leadership team that we kept at it. We | didn't accept this person's sometimes abusive behavior. We tried, | and frankly, by letting others know it was not OK, and that we | kept our focus on it, it helped the rest of the team understand | that "yes we get there's a problem here". | | We wanted to help the person. We gave them lots of opportunities | for improvement and to do the kind of work they said they wanted | to do. We gave them coaching and their own time to develop their | own interests into new business directions. | | After trying and trying, probably helped a bit through some | coaching, this person realized the company wasn't a good fit for | them, and they left on their own accord. This was a good outcome. | Though I wish there was some way to have accelerated it and/or | let the person go so they weren't as destructive to the team. | uh_uh wrote: | Sounds like quite the nightmare. Was the person at least | technically competent in their role? | seneca wrote: | Having a severely unperforming, and sometimes belligerent, | employee that couldn't be fired because of HR reasons. His work | was horrible, and his responses to feedback was to become | hostile. | | Not only was he dead weight, he destroyed the team's morale and | hurt their relationships with other teams. The team looked to me | to solve the issue and couldn't understand why he wasn't being | fired, and I couldn't tell them "I'm not allowed to fire him". | | I spent months working with him on improvement plans, coaching, | and mediating with no improvement, and in the end managed to | shake him off in a RIF. | | I stayed long enough to repair the team's morale and strengthen | the hiring process, and then quit as I had completely lost faith | in the company. | adverbly wrote: | Follow up question: | | What attracted you to our company, and how did you find out about | our job listing? ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-04-17 23:00 UTC)