Avoiding addressing a staff issue

I lead a team of three people, one of whom takes fairly regular leave at short notice. For various reasons the other two are frustrated at them – finding them unreliable and not pulling their weight in the team. I receive some ‘he said/she side’ from all sides, with everyone expressing frustrations to me at different times.

As their manager I take the responsibility for addressing the issue to get the team to a place of running smoothly. So far I’ve put in place a performance monitoring framework for everyone, so that we have a clear picture of how everyone is doing compared to what we’ve agreed ‘good’ looks like. I’ve encouraged open conversations with the two people who feel let down, where they’ve shared the impact the situation’s having on them and their work. I’ve spoken to the person who takes leave and shared that it’s having an impact on the rest of the team. I set clear expectations about how leave is managed to minimise disruption to our work as much as possible.

I received advice about working towards an open conversation as a team where we acknowledge the issue and what we’re doing to resolve it, and how we can work together as a team. To air things out and give everyone a chance to be heard. In theory I love this idea but I when I think about running that session I feel sick. I’m imagining how one person will be defensive, one will get fiery, one upset in another way, and I won’t be able to handle it. The model is:

C session about team issue
T I won’t be able to handle peoples reactions
F dread
S sick, clammy
A avoid the conversation, assume the worst from everyone (that they won’t handle the conversation maturely), have manuals for them, ruminate on not being good enough, beat myself up, buffer

The results I can see with this is that I don’t handle my own discomfort with the situation in a healthy way. Also that by avoiding/delaying the conversation, it’s possible that people’s feelings will build more and be more intense by the time the conversation comes.

 

Answer:

 

When you see this model written out, what do you get curious about? What do you think it shines light on you?

The question that emerges for me is what does handling people’s reactions look like or mean to you? Investigating this opens up the door to get curious about the expectations that you have of yourself when it comes to other people’s reactions, and to look at where your responsibility lies versus where the other player’s responsibilities lie. Knowing this doesn’t mean you won’t feel uncomfortable, but I wonder if knowing what it is you’re responsible for might help you start to think differently about what everyone can bring to the table to have a good discussion.

Finally, you seem to have set the stage for openness and discussion for each party already – I’ll wouldn’t be surprised if  you found a way to can bring that grace, warmth, and atmosphere of trust and vulnerability into this discussion as well.