Helping someone who has antagonized her colleagues

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I work as a developer in the web/mobile department of a big org. We have developers divided in teams, we have team leads, and we have project leaders. There’s a “new” project leader who is having trouble with how our team works and “clashes” now with our team leads and a few of our developers. From what I see, it stems from misunderstandings (followed by some unfortunate incidents from the team leads) and maybe incompetence on her part (this is the first time she has such a role).



I didn’t work with her the first four months she started here, just heard a bit from people at the end, some of them not wanting to work with her anymore. I started to work with her a couple of months ago.



Here are the things I’m seeing from her :



  • She takes things very personally : she’s working on a project which has been abandoned for a while (not many people who worked on it are still there) and the analysis isn’t good. So when we develop a feature and we discover there’s more than meets the eye and things will take more time than expected, we tell her. From the way she reacts, it’s as if we told her “You missed this, you screwed up !” where it’s more of a “This was missing, we have to investigate this further to make sure we’re not missing anything else to make sure everything works still as expected”.

  • This ties with the second issue : she must place blame. And since it’s not her fault, it must be ours. That’s not how we work : if something goes wrong, our first priority is to fix it. Then, depending on the severity or if there’s a pattern, we try to fix this too (be it a personal failing or an issue in the way we work). But you rarely hear here “That’s your fault, I’m not dealing with this”. So when we raise an issue, since she thinks we blame her, she quickly becomes very defensive and blames us for things which are not our responsibility. She says stuff like “You missed it”, “You hid this”,… very confrontational and not constructive.

  • Which brings me to the incompetent part : I don’t think she realises that some stuff is her responsibility (or that we as dev just don’t have the knowledge to foresee some issues that she should as project leader).

To be fair, she has some reasons to be (now) uncomfortable in the team (which would make her more defensive, although from what I heard she was like that in the beginning too) :



  • I know of an incident where team lead A send an e-mail to her by mistake, where he complains about her about her not respecting once again a protocol put in place (no calling names or insults).

  • During meetings, team lead B has been losing patience bit by bit (as have some developers), namely because of the stuff described above (she gets defensive, there’s non-constructive blaming and time is wasted instead of solving the actual issue). This has all cumulated in today’s meeting, where again we made her aware a certain feature wasn’t done (which should have been) because it was missing from the scope. When she started again saying “Why did you miss it, why didn’t you tell me it was missing and waited until now ?” (we just discovered today this had to be done, that’s why), team lead B kinda lost it. They went back and forth, with B telling her at different points to leave the room, that the whole team was complaining about her and that he hopes she’s not a product leader for this feature anymore.

So she has her shortcomings, but things haven't been handled on our side that well either.



The thing is… I feel for her.



  • She’s a woman in IT (I am too) which is not easy. I know I’ve been
    fortunate in the places I’ve worked, but I know other women who have
    experienced the “boy’s club” that the IT world can be. The people who
    have the most problems with her also seem to be strong-minded men.

  • She might come from a culture where I know they are quite cut throat (the “blame game” can come from there : colleagues aren’t your friends, they throw you under the bus and step on you to go a bit higher). I’m not 100% sure since I didn’t ask her, but it wouldn’t surprise me.

  • English isn’t her first language and she seems to have difficulties at times to find the right words, so I think there’s also something lost in translation (and again, that same culture I was talking before, are known to be bad at English)

  • It might be a hell from her own making, but some members of the team are now actively against her (for example not wanting to be in a meeting with her without her manager or someone senior present)

I’d like to offer her to go to lunch sometime, but don’t know if it’s a good idea. We’ve had a cordial relationship until now, when we’ve talked one on one before and it went well. I wouldn’t bring all this up, but I think it would be good to get to know her, and her to know someone from our team. We’re going to continue to work together the next few months, and I’d like for us to work as a team and be productive, and I wonder if lending an ear and getting to know each other might help. Right now, since things aren’t so well, we only see her rarely in critical meetings where emotions run high (on both sides).



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colleagues conflict-resolution






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    I work as a developer in the web/mobile department of a big org. We have developers divided in teams, we have team leads, and we have project leaders. There’s a “new” project leader who is having trouble with how our team works and “clashes” now with our team leads and a few of our developers. From what I see, it stems from misunderstandings (followed by some unfortunate incidents from the team leads) and maybe incompetence on her part (this is the first time she has such a role).



    I didn’t work with her the first four months she started here, just heard a bit from people at the end, some of them not wanting to work with her anymore. I started to work with her a couple of months ago.



    Here are the things I’m seeing from her :



    • She takes things very personally : she’s working on a project which has been abandoned for a while (not many people who worked on it are still there) and the analysis isn’t good. So when we develop a feature and we discover there’s more than meets the eye and things will take more time than expected, we tell her. From the way she reacts, it’s as if we told her “You missed this, you screwed up !” where it’s more of a “This was missing, we have to investigate this further to make sure we’re not missing anything else to make sure everything works still as expected”.

    • This ties with the second issue : she must place blame. And since it’s not her fault, it must be ours. That’s not how we work : if something goes wrong, our first priority is to fix it. Then, depending on the severity or if there’s a pattern, we try to fix this too (be it a personal failing or an issue in the way we work). But you rarely hear here “That’s your fault, I’m not dealing with this”. So when we raise an issue, since she thinks we blame her, she quickly becomes very defensive and blames us for things which are not our responsibility. She says stuff like “You missed it”, “You hid this”,… very confrontational and not constructive.

    • Which brings me to the incompetent part : I don’t think she realises that some stuff is her responsibility (or that we as dev just don’t have the knowledge to foresee some issues that she should as project leader).

    To be fair, she has some reasons to be (now) uncomfortable in the team (which would make her more defensive, although from what I heard she was like that in the beginning too) :



    • I know of an incident where team lead A send an e-mail to her by mistake, where he complains about her about her not respecting once again a protocol put in place (no calling names or insults).

    • During meetings, team lead B has been losing patience bit by bit (as have some developers), namely because of the stuff described above (she gets defensive, there’s non-constructive blaming and time is wasted instead of solving the actual issue). This has all cumulated in today’s meeting, where again we made her aware a certain feature wasn’t done (which should have been) because it was missing from the scope. When she started again saying “Why did you miss it, why didn’t you tell me it was missing and waited until now ?” (we just discovered today this had to be done, that’s why), team lead B kinda lost it. They went back and forth, with B telling her at different points to leave the room, that the whole team was complaining about her and that he hopes she’s not a product leader for this feature anymore.

    So she has her shortcomings, but things haven't been handled on our side that well either.



    The thing is… I feel for her.



    • She’s a woman in IT (I am too) which is not easy. I know I’ve been
      fortunate in the places I’ve worked, but I know other women who have
      experienced the “boy’s club” that the IT world can be. The people who
      have the most problems with her also seem to be strong-minded men.

    • She might come from a culture where I know they are quite cut throat (the “blame game” can come from there : colleagues aren’t your friends, they throw you under the bus and step on you to go a bit higher). I’m not 100% sure since I didn’t ask her, but it wouldn’t surprise me.

    • English isn’t her first language and she seems to have difficulties at times to find the right words, so I think there’s also something lost in translation (and again, that same culture I was talking before, are known to be bad at English)

    • It might be a hell from her own making, but some members of the team are now actively against her (for example not wanting to be in a meeting with her without her manager or someone senior present)

    I’d like to offer her to go to lunch sometime, but don’t know if it’s a good idea. We’ve had a cordial relationship until now, when we’ve talked one on one before and it went well. I wouldn’t bring all this up, but I think it would be good to get to know her, and her to know someone from our team. We’re going to continue to work together the next few months, and I’d like for us to work as a team and be productive, and I wonder if lending an ear and getting to know each other might help. Right now, since things aren’t so well, we only see her rarely in critical meetings where emotions run high (on both sides).



    Do you guys think it’s a good idea ?






    colleagues conflict-resolution






    share







    New contributor




    MlleMei is a new contributor to this site. Take care in asking for clarification, commenting, and answering.
    Check out our Code of Conduct.





















      up vote
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      down vote

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      up vote
      0
      down vote

      favorite











      I work as a developer in the web/mobile department of a big org. We have developers divided in teams, we have team leads, and we have project leaders. There’s a “new” project leader who is having trouble with how our team works and “clashes” now with our team leads and a few of our developers. From what I see, it stems from misunderstandings (followed by some unfortunate incidents from the team leads) and maybe incompetence on her part (this is the first time she has such a role).



      I didn’t work with her the first four months she started here, just heard a bit from people at the end, some of them not wanting to work with her anymore. I started to work with her a couple of months ago.



      Here are the things I’m seeing from her :



      • She takes things very personally : she’s working on a project which has been abandoned for a while (not many people who worked on it are still there) and the analysis isn’t good. So when we develop a feature and we discover there’s more than meets the eye and things will take more time than expected, we tell her. From the way she reacts, it’s as if we told her “You missed this, you screwed up !” where it’s more of a “This was missing, we have to investigate this further to make sure we’re not missing anything else to make sure everything works still as expected”.

      • This ties with the second issue : she must place blame. And since it’s not her fault, it must be ours. That’s not how we work : if something goes wrong, our first priority is to fix it. Then, depending on the severity or if there’s a pattern, we try to fix this too (be it a personal failing or an issue in the way we work). But you rarely hear here “That’s your fault, I’m not dealing with this”. So when we raise an issue, since she thinks we blame her, she quickly becomes very defensive and blames us for things which are not our responsibility. She says stuff like “You missed it”, “You hid this”,… very confrontational and not constructive.

      • Which brings me to the incompetent part : I don’t think she realises that some stuff is her responsibility (or that we as dev just don’t have the knowledge to foresee some issues that she should as project leader).

      To be fair, she has some reasons to be (now) uncomfortable in the team (which would make her more defensive, although from what I heard she was like that in the beginning too) :



      • I know of an incident where team lead A send an e-mail to her by mistake, where he complains about her about her not respecting once again a protocol put in place (no calling names or insults).

      • During meetings, team lead B has been losing patience bit by bit (as have some developers), namely because of the stuff described above (she gets defensive, there’s non-constructive blaming and time is wasted instead of solving the actual issue). This has all cumulated in today’s meeting, where again we made her aware a certain feature wasn’t done (which should have been) because it was missing from the scope. When she started again saying “Why did you miss it, why didn’t you tell me it was missing and waited until now ?” (we just discovered today this had to be done, that’s why), team lead B kinda lost it. They went back and forth, with B telling her at different points to leave the room, that the whole team was complaining about her and that he hopes she’s not a product leader for this feature anymore.

      So she has her shortcomings, but things haven't been handled on our side that well either.



      The thing is… I feel for her.



      • She’s a woman in IT (I am too) which is not easy. I know I’ve been
        fortunate in the places I’ve worked, but I know other women who have
        experienced the “boy’s club” that the IT world can be. The people who
        have the most problems with her also seem to be strong-minded men.

      • She might come from a culture where I know they are quite cut throat (the “blame game” can come from there : colleagues aren’t your friends, they throw you under the bus and step on you to go a bit higher). I’m not 100% sure since I didn’t ask her, but it wouldn’t surprise me.

      • English isn’t her first language and she seems to have difficulties at times to find the right words, so I think there’s also something lost in translation (and again, that same culture I was talking before, are known to be bad at English)

      • It might be a hell from her own making, but some members of the team are now actively against her (for example not wanting to be in a meeting with her without her manager or someone senior present)

      I’d like to offer her to go to lunch sometime, but don’t know if it’s a good idea. We’ve had a cordial relationship until now, when we’ve talked one on one before and it went well. I wouldn’t bring all this up, but I think it would be good to get to know her, and her to know someone from our team. We’re going to continue to work together the next few months, and I’d like for us to work as a team and be productive, and I wonder if lending an ear and getting to know each other might help. Right now, since things aren’t so well, we only see her rarely in critical meetings where emotions run high (on both sides).



      Do you guys think it’s a good idea ?






      colleagues conflict-resolution






      share







      New contributor




      MlleMei is a new contributor to this site. Take care in asking for clarification, commenting, and answering.
      Check out our Code of Conduct.











      I work as a developer in the web/mobile department of a big org. We have developers divided in teams, we have team leads, and we have project leaders. There’s a “new” project leader who is having trouble with how our team works and “clashes” now with our team leads and a few of our developers. From what I see, it stems from misunderstandings (followed by some unfortunate incidents from the team leads) and maybe incompetence on her part (this is the first time she has such a role).



      I didn’t work with her the first four months she started here, just heard a bit from people at the end, some of them not wanting to work with her anymore. I started to work with her a couple of months ago.



      Here are the things I’m seeing from her :



      • She takes things very personally : she’s working on a project which has been abandoned for a while (not many people who worked on it are still there) and the analysis isn’t good. So when we develop a feature and we discover there’s more than meets the eye and things will take more time than expected, we tell her. From the way she reacts, it’s as if we told her “You missed this, you screwed up !” where it’s more of a “This was missing, we have to investigate this further to make sure we’re not missing anything else to make sure everything works still as expected”.

      • This ties with the second issue : she must place blame. And since it’s not her fault, it must be ours. That’s not how we work : if something goes wrong, our first priority is to fix it. Then, depending on the severity or if there’s a pattern, we try to fix this too (be it a personal failing or an issue in the way we work). But you rarely hear here “That’s your fault, I’m not dealing with this”. So when we raise an issue, since she thinks we blame her, she quickly becomes very defensive and blames us for things which are not our responsibility. She says stuff like “You missed it”, “You hid this”,… very confrontational and not constructive.

      • Which brings me to the incompetent part : I don’t think she realises that some stuff is her responsibility (or that we as dev just don’t have the knowledge to foresee some issues that she should as project leader).

      To be fair, she has some reasons to be (now) uncomfortable in the team (which would make her more defensive, although from what I heard she was like that in the beginning too) :



      • I know of an incident where team lead A send an e-mail to her by mistake, where he complains about her about her not respecting once again a protocol put in place (no calling names or insults).

      • During meetings, team lead B has been losing patience bit by bit (as have some developers), namely because of the stuff described above (she gets defensive, there’s non-constructive blaming and time is wasted instead of solving the actual issue). This has all cumulated in today’s meeting, where again we made her aware a certain feature wasn’t done (which should have been) because it was missing from the scope. When she started again saying “Why did you miss it, why didn’t you tell me it was missing and waited until now ?” (we just discovered today this had to be done, that’s why), team lead B kinda lost it. They went back and forth, with B telling her at different points to leave the room, that the whole team was complaining about her and that he hopes she’s not a product leader for this feature anymore.

      So she has her shortcomings, but things haven't been handled on our side that well either.



      The thing is… I feel for her.



      • She’s a woman in IT (I am too) which is not easy. I know I’ve been
        fortunate in the places I’ve worked, but I know other women who have
        experienced the “boy’s club” that the IT world can be. The people who
        have the most problems with her also seem to be strong-minded men.

      • She might come from a culture where I know they are quite cut throat (the “blame game” can come from there : colleagues aren’t your friends, they throw you under the bus and step on you to go a bit higher). I’m not 100% sure since I didn’t ask her, but it wouldn’t surprise me.

      • English isn’t her first language and she seems to have difficulties at times to find the right words, so I think there’s also something lost in translation (and again, that same culture I was talking before, are known to be bad at English)

      • It might be a hell from her own making, but some members of the team are now actively against her (for example not wanting to be in a meeting with her without her manager or someone senior present)

      I’d like to offer her to go to lunch sometime, but don’t know if it’s a good idea. We’ve had a cordial relationship until now, when we’ve talked one on one before and it went well. I wouldn’t bring all this up, but I think it would be good to get to know her, and her to know someone from our team. We’re going to continue to work together the next few months, and I’d like for us to work as a team and be productive, and I wonder if lending an ear and getting to know each other might help. Right now, since things aren’t so well, we only see her rarely in critical meetings where emotions run high (on both sides).



      Do you guys think it’s a good idea ?






      colleagues conflict-resolution




      colleagues conflict-resolution





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