Sunday, October 27, 2013

Can't we just all get along?

Different work situations call for different courses of action. Sometimes things go well and other times work relationships and friendships can be sacrificed.  Both scenarios that will be described involve my organization and the executive board.

In the first scenario when things went well, my executive board had to deal with the problem of not allowing all members to live in the house. There were 60 girls who wanted to live in, however the house could only fit 55. We wanted to be fair in our judgements so we got to brainstorming how we could decide which members could live-in. Me and 2 other executive board members (the VP and the House Manager) discussed at length the different options. We all were able to keep calm even though this was a stressful situation because we were deciding where girls would potentially live for the next year. We decided to choose based off of points that they receive for going to certain events or achieving certain awards (GPA, philanthropy events, etc.). Having the three of us work together was best because the VP was able to gather all of the points, the House Manager was in contact with our House Director about an updates, and I (as President) was overseeing all operations.
We presented ourselves as a united front and knew that we would face some backlash. The girls who couldn't live in would not be happy with our decision but we felt that together we could explain or reasoning and help the girls find alternative housing as best as possible. Because of our diligent work and commitment to the sorority, we were able to resolve this issue rather quickly.

In a second scenario, the outcome was not the desired one. As President, it is my job to deal with any exec member who is not doing their job. While this may be difficult, it needs to be done for the best of the organization. The problem was that this executive board member did not have any of their events planned for the semester when I asked that it all needed to be completed, and in addition broke some of the organization's rules. Multiple members came to me because they felt this board member was not doing their job. It came down to me to address the issue. I sat down with this board member and explained that she had not completed any of the tasks that I asked her to complete and that I felt she needed to get everything done in the next few days or we would need to find a replacement for her. I gave her a chance to speak as to why the work was not completed, but I felt that she was just talking in circles. She started to get angry with me for brining this up, but I explained that it was not a personal issue, but rather a part of my job. This board member and I had been friends for a long time, but being in these power positions has torn our friendship apart. She no longer wants to be my friend and believes that I don't trust her as a person. I was not trying to make a personal judgement, I was just the messenger for what the entire organization was thinking. I believe that our conflicting work ethics and thoughts on procrastination got in the way of having a productive conversation. The situation has still not been completely resolved.

2 comments:

  1. In the first scenario, one of the big deal issue is whether people get over it or if they bear a grudge that impacts future activity. Can you comment on how that went for your group in the instance you describe.

    For the second issue, I've second guessed myself quite a bit when in a similar circumstance. Was there a way to play this out better so, while unpleasant, it could have had a better ending? One issue that occurred to me in reading what you wrote was whether you had been aware of the problem earlier, but didn't have as much evidence. If so, might a conversation been appropriate at that time? There is also the question of whether you came up with a causal model for her behavior. There are multiple possible explanations - incompetence, indifference to outcome, preoccupation with something else. Perhaps your penultimate sentence was saying it was the middle explanation, but I wasn't sure reading it.

    It's not a pleasant thing to say, but sometimes severance is the efficient solution. Patching things up doesn't always work.

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  2. In response to your question about the first activity there is a sort of unknown here. We haven't had to deal with this issue in the past so we are unsure of how the girls will react. Hopefully they will be able to get over it, but some girls may drop the house because of it.

    For the second scenario, I think that my fault came in not addressing the issue earlier as you stated. I also believe that this girl was indifferent to the outcome and thought that she was doing a fine job.

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