A Friday afternoon surprise.......

I was feeling pretty content with the week after signing a business deal after being way for several days in Portugal. At the same time, I was tired and looking forward to getting home ....around midnight.Flying back to Madrid only takes an hour but I happended to do some last checks on the teaam before we took off. I read one email that put me in a bad mood and at the same time made me quite sad.

As a manager we need to ensure that the team is pulling in the same direction, the direction we have agreed to go in. Right?

Well, when you discover that not everyone is going that way, we need to find out why, first of all, and then if there is no really good reason, we need to nudge them in the right direction.

It is the nudging bit that can go awfully wrong, especially if it can´t be done face to face and we leave it down to emails or a phone conversation.

This is what happended last week.

A local Area Manager has not responded to two reminders for herself and her team to carry out essential product training via webex.  This essential product training had to be done at a time when the reps are on the verge of  closing sales of a new product in a new segment and therefore require as much help as they can get. It is clear that if we fail to sell, then the budget will be affected negatively.

I sent a fourth reminder, thist ime to each individual and they all agreed to carry out the training on the Friday. However, when the time came, the Area Manager allowed her staff to do other work instead of the training, It wasn´t so much the fact that she overrode an order after ignoring requests for a month, but the fact that, after so many years of working together she took this "nudge" as personal and this made me feel bad, especially after working so hard to build a the team spirit.

I wonder if her reaction was due to tiredness and the stress of the campaing more than anything else...  I hope so because if not, then it would seem to indicate that a boss is always running the risk of annoying, hurting or disappointing someone.