managing teams in the workplace

Overall Situation There are two elements to the overall situation. The first is with Sue. She typically finishes her work ahead of time and then, waiting for the next step, offers to help the others. This is not taken positively by them. Sue is probably quite unaware that she is doing anything wrong here, but the older workers are quite established both in their roles and in their work rhythms.

It is not uncommon for a young hotshot to come into a situation with a group of older workers and earn their resentment, especially if they feel that she is showing them up. Jack's comment about "useless equations and formulas" definitely indicates that there is an element of this – that he is appealing to Max in part because he wants to make sure that she isn't making the rest of them look bad.

The other element to this is the bias that Jack and the rest of the team has. This is probably both gender- and age-based bias, especially given that she also works harder and has more current knowledge. The existing team all has some tenure, and all are male, so the reality is that introducing a woman fresh out of college is probably going to upset whatever team dynamic they have built up.

If there are informal hierarchies and power structures within the group, any new member puts those at risk, so some resentment is actually quite predictable, but given the gender and age issues as well, the resentment likely also comes with more than a smattering of bias. So the issue is really one of team dynamic. The new person, Sue, was always going to upset the team dynamic that has likely been established over the course of years.

It is unclear just how much work the company put into preparing the team for this change; by the sounds of things Max doesn't quite understand what's going on, or he has a great poker face; or the case isn't saying something. Analysis of Max's Conversation with Jack Max's role here is to listen to Jack's concerns and transform those concerns into action. The first thing that Max has to do is really read between the lines a bit.

Max is responded to Jack from his own perspective, rather than seeking to understand Jack's perspective. He literally says "I don't understand…she's an excellent worker." Jack wasn't telling Max that Sue was a bad worker; he was explaining that she was disruptive to the team dynamic. Further, Max then offers that he'll "keep your thoughts in mind, but I can't promise improvement…", which is not the best thing to say, for a couple of reasons.

First, there shouldn't really be any connection between what Jack says and what Max does in the performance review. If peer review is part of the process, it should be more formalized. But further, Max isn't really offering Jack anything tangible here, either. He is not demonstrating to Jack that he understands the issue, nor is he showing Jack that he will address the issue.

Max comes across here as either clueless or dismissive, neither of which is likely to sit well with the team, and neither of which will bring this issue to any kind of resolution. The problem here is that Max really has to deal with this deftly, before the group targets Sue directly, at which point the.