Jaakko I'm leading a project that involves a few my team members and about
10 other team members from other functions the project has high
visibility in the large organization over 10 billion in revenue that I work
for so the pressures to execute is high we have had some issues with
cross-functional team members meeting their deliverables and keeping them to
keep the project on path but we're pushing sometimes dragging everyone
along to make things happen recently on a formal review with the leadership team
the question was asked why is this project behind I'm a firm believer in
providing protection for your team so my response was there are excuses but to be
honest they're just excuses so we're doing everything we can to get it back
on track trying to take the brunt of the performance mists on my shoulders no
additional comments were made in that meeting and it ended my boss was on the
call and pulled me aside the next day and voiced his opinion that I should not
hesitate to call out the lack of performance on the other functional team
members his thought is that doing so does not allow the leadership to coach
mentor and/or fix the issues correctly I understand this logic but I don't feel
that true leaders point fingers or throw others under the bus your thoughts would
be appreciated ok so first of all your boss has a little bit of a point but
it's but it's also there's some limitations to it number one you know
our goal as a leader is to build relationships with people accomplish the
mission etc etc so if if we if we start just calling people out in front of a
senior leadership on a call well are you forming a good relationship with people
the answer's no you're actually making them mad and they're saying the first
thing you're gonna do when you call them out it's called call you up as soon as
the call ends and they're gonna say dude why don't you tell me that why you
telling me this in front of the boss so here's the deal you should not ever have
to throw someone under the bus without plenty of warning right without plenty
of them to know and expect and be prepared with an answer that's what you
should be doing it's kind of like that escalation of counseling when I talk
about like you start off by just saying hey man you were late you know what's up
and you go all the way to like okay if you're late again and there's a whole
slow escalation or depending on how fast you need to get it done but with this
one it's the same thing you say hey echo you know you're part of the project what
do you need help right now what's going on you don't seem up to speed and then
it then we escalate to hey echo you just missed another you know target date this
is the second target date you've missed we get weird a problem and then it's hey
echo do you not have the sports you need what do you need cuz this isn't working
out and then it's look the only way I'm
gonna be able to do this we gotta bring us up to the boss I think you need more
people and then that's another important thing is is you frame it you frame it in
such a way that it's not hurting them but it's actually helping them so I
might say on the call hey you know Alpha Team is working really hard but they
need more XY and Z to get the job done so you know I think we should give echo
and Alpha Team more XY and Z okay because he missed a date and and I know
they're working hard or you say you know I think we need more people allocated
over to Alpha Team I think they've been over tasked and they could use some
support so let's give them some more people or you can even say I'm moving
two people from my team over to Alpha Team temporarily to give them some
additional capacity over there because their task is more demanding than what
I've been assigned hmm so all of those things are letting
everyone know bringing the problem to the attention of the of the group so
that now you say actually jaakko here's what's going on I don't need two more
people I need four more people hmm or you know you say okay um hey I
don't need anyone else if you're one of those people the ego gets in the way I
don't need anyone else and he'll say okay well you missed two time marks you
missed two you know dates well I don't need any more people
okay okay well let's see if you can if you can make this next date then I guess
you don't but if you miss another date well then I guess you need more people
mm-hmm so we move through it like that so yeah you do have to discuss things
you can do you can discuss these things you can bring them up in a way that they
are not offensive to two people they don't throw them under the bus but they
do however is signify that the bus is around and that if we
aren't careful you might get hit by the bus and you've got to give people plenty
of warning it's the same thing with same thing I've talked about in the past with
skipping the chain of command you know you shouldn't be skipping the chain of
command unless unless you've given so much warning and you do it in such a way
that you know vague they actually know what's gonna happen they expect is gonna
happen they kind of agree with you so be careful with those things again if
someone's doing something immoral illegal unethical and you skip the chain
of command cuz you've already tried to solve them and they're not doing it well
then you might have to just go get some because if you're Koval if you don't
yeah so form good relationships and people don't form antagonistic
relationships you know I just had a conversation with a guy when I was in in
Boston similar situation but you know he he was saying he there was a situation
he was in and what he said was politically it was he didn't want to
address it because politically if he'd rested it might explode and I said well
if the if at address if you address the situation there's like a classic case I
know how to do this more efficiently this experienced person doesn't want to
try my method okay and I said well why don't you present him with the method
and say you know hey here's here's how we should do this and he says no I don't
want to do that because the person that I want to get to use the new method is
really close friends with the boss and even if I form that bad relationship
it's gonna be bad and I go would that affect your overall mission to your
ability to do the mission to have bad relationships not only with your
immediate boss blow through your boss's boss and he's like yes it would and I go
then doesn't sound like a good plan there you go there's your answer because
even though you have a better method and you might say like a direct person with
a direct train of thought mindset would say no you go you tell the boss's boss
that this is the method and we're gonna be more efficient if we do it this way
well now you've just exploded a bomb on yourself
and it's gonna be bad so I gave him the classic hey why don't you say listen I
think I've thought of a new method I think we might be able to get some
efficiencies out of it but since I'm not as experienced and don't know the
system's as well as you do I would love to get your feedback
how it works I think that you're the only one that could really know how to
do this consider so experienced and smart and brilliant all that stuff and
awesome and you try and feed him some of the new methods so that he can try it
and meters say yeah this stuff's pretty good or you know what there's some
things that you didn't realize Young Buck and we got to get them fixed yeah
so check try and form relationships positive relationships not antagonistic
relationships if you throw people under the bus you're
not forming good relationships check especially that surprised one that's
rough mmm yeah