PART ONE
THE PROBLEM
Bhaskar Raja is a team manager
for an MNC based in Chennai. He
runs a fairly large team of 23
people. “I love their dedication,
and professionally, they always
deliver a great product.” However, two of
his teammates are unable to get on at a
personal level. “I wouldn’t really care
about my team’s personal equations, but
when these two are squabbling, it affects
everyone else’s morale and they get distracted. They even keep coming to me to
sort out their problems. Both of them are
good workers, so I don’t want to relocate
either of them. I am really at a loss as to
how to deal with them.
PART TWO
THE SOLUTION
Shefali Batra (MD), is a psychiatrist and counsellor in Mumbai.
She points out that a manager
has to be a good manager of
people as a whole. “One
method would be to devise a small anonymous questionnaire for the entire team
to answer. Ask them about the problems
they might have. When he gets the responses to the questions, though they are
anonymous, he can bring them up at the
meetings and through that people will realise how they are being perceived and
can change their behaviour accordingly.”
Batra believes that the changes will start
showing in a couple of months.
PART THREE
THE OUTCOME
I didn’t have the patience to draw up
a questionnaire,” laughs Raja. “That’s
a little too corporate-heavy for me.
What if knowing that the others harbour secret resentments makes the
employees even more sensitive and unhappy?” Raja decided to meet with each
one individually. “I noticed that the
number of arguments reduced because
they realised I was making an effort.”
The second step he took — something
which was “a bit of a gamble”, he admits
— was putting both of them in charge
of an important project. “The situation
forced them to put aside their problems.”
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