Not long after the conversation with Aunt Peg I was asked to work with Sally, a young team leader. She had an incredibly messy environment, an overload of work, and unrealistic optimism about how much she could achieve.
No matter how hard she worked, and how much overtime she put in, work was one long litany of complaints. Other departments complained about lack of communication, her supportive CEO was seriously frustrated with multiple missed deadlines, and Sally's team were sometimes over- and other times under-managed.
She sat somewhat to the right on the continuum. I believe Sally could have conquered her challenges over time, but the further to the right a person is, the longer they need to make change - if they want to. Unfortunately, there were commercial implications that couldn't wait. Sally was asked to resign.
Natural achievement level
We have a range of natural achievement levels in everything we engage in.
In Sally's case, her day-to-day work was excellent, but at the time of her promotion to team leader she didn't have the right mix of skills. Her warm and caring personality meant that she had worked very well when part of a team, but this strength needed to be modified for her to become a good team leader and delegator. Instead, when anyone asked for help, she would stop whatever she was doing, no matter how important and no matter for whom, and extend the helping hand. She wasn't good at saying 'no' appropriately.
Matching task and person
If you're experiencing a situation like this, from Sally's perspective remember that there's no shame in changing your mind and stepping back. Life is too short to burn yourself out in an environment that doesn't suit your natural style. If you want to move into new arenas, look for non-critical opportunities to practice the required new skills before you put yourself on the line.
And if you're in the shoes of her CEO, try to avoid putting people into a critical position of responsibility, or passing over full responsibility, until they've proven themselves in smaller ways as equal to the task.
Be prepared to coach and supervise until you're confident the staff member has a grip on their task and you've got a grip on their skill level. Some managers hesitate to check the work of their staff whilst it's in progress, for fear of appearing to lack trust. How you set up review meetings is one key: if sufficient review guidelines to catch potential problems are established at the outset it becomes 'the way we do things round here' rather than inappropriate checking.
And if things just aren't working out, bite the bullet, have a frank heart-to-heart with the person concerned, and encourage them to look for different and less stressful opportunities. In almost all cases they'll thank you for it later.
