Teamwork - Trust and Respect
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Steve posted a topic called 'Teamwork' a few weeks ago. What if you have doubt about your manager's technical and management skills? What if some of your co-workers always blamed someone else for their mistakes? What if your boss told you that the company was going to outsource your job if your team is not performing well? What if one of your co-worker asked you to help but you were too busy and you told your co-worker to get help from other teammates, that co-worker immediately reported you to the manager that you refused to help and you were not a team player?
Is this a team? How can this team be successful if trust and respect is not there?
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Ask your manager to prioritise your work and make politely sure you get double the time needed for each task. Don't pay much attention to your co-workers' skills level and behaviour, you cannot change them; just try to excel for the best in your dba work and you will surely make yourself "the most wanted person" in your team. I cannot tell you how to do this, but what I can say for sure is to use this website because you will find an answer here to any of your technical "un-knowns".
Good luck.
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Good advice above.
I'll add that you should document your work and use email to respond to people when there are issues, copying your boss. If he cannot work with you to resolve issues, you can always move on to the next boss, but that can be tricky. If things are really that bad you might want to consider looking for new employment.
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Just a minor note to add regarding your manager's technical and managerial skills. While I think it's imperative that a manager have good managerial skills, and it sounds like your's needs some work in that area, I don't think technical prowess is needed in most cases. While my current boss is actually quite capable of doing my job, and is a good manager to boot, some of the best IT bosses in the world couldn't write a line of code nor troubleshoot a jammed printer.
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If your boss is concerned about losing their job if the team is outsourced, ask them to work with you to help make the team the best it can be. (If your boss thinks threatening people with loss of job is motivation, start looking for a new boss / job.) Not knowing your exact situtation, I would say you should look at your situation and determine what kinds of changes in the group dynamic would help the team succeed; then I would look for ways the team could make those things happen (since these are internal changes with the group, you all should have the power to make them happen). Things like respecting boundaries, clear communication, appropriate division of work, prioritization of tasks, and so on. Treat this like any programming challenge - analyze what isn't working ("social debugging", if you will
), and see what you can change to try and fix it. (And note, sometimes you have to change YOU - analyze how you are responding to others: are you clear in your communication; are you matter-of-fact in refusing requests rather than emotionally charged, etc.)As an example, where I work, it is perfectly acceptable to tell a co-worker you can't help them as long as you give the business reason, and an alternate (like getting help from another co-worker, as you did). Right now, if someone asked me for an hours worth of my time, I'd have to tell them "No", but instead of saying "No, maybe <other expert> can help you", it would go something like this:
"I'm sorry, I can't help you right now. I have two high-priority projects on a deadline. Can <other expert's name here> help you? Or can you wait until after July 14? I would have time available then."
Can you see how the first answer does not build trust, but the second one has a better chance of doing so? Even if you were the only person to start using this technique, it would change the level of trust and respect within your group, over time. (And others might emulate you!
)I also use this same type of answer for users when I can't accomodate their request right away. They are part of the larger team, and deserve the same respect I would give my immediate team members. It helps that we have a company policy that this is an appropriate response. Another part of our policy is that you don't go running to the boss to resolve issues between yourself and a co-worker unless you have already tried, and been unable, to resolve the issue between yourselves. (This works well because it is a known, company-wide policy, and the managers DO enforce it!)
I definitely agree that email can be a good idea, especially if you have a chronic complainer (or shirker of work), because then you have a paper trail of the behavior to protect yourself and your reputation. It can also give you something to review if you're looking to improve communication within a group, since you can pull examples from it.
Good luck with your situation; I hope you can find ways to turn it around and help your group become successful again.
Here there be dragons...,Steph Brown
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I agree that the manager of the IT team does not need to have excellent technical knowledge. As a matter of fact, I used to work for a manager who did not know anything about programming, he knew a lot about the business.
However I mentioned my new manager's technical skills was I had to update a program and before I knew it, he told me what to do and said it was a piece of cake. He did not look at my program, he did not understand the system and I certainly did not know why he thought it would be easy. That made me very frustrated. I felt that he wanted to show off he has good technical skills. He was working in another company and my company aquired his company. I heard from my boss that in his old company, he was considered as a 'asshole' but he was hired by my company because he was one of the best in that company. Now I know why his old co-workers considered him as an asshole, he was arrogant. He once gets something to work and never try to learn something new.
He still uses the old standard of join (oracle join) instead of ANSII standard.
He was barking at me yesterday and today about some production issue. I explained to him what the problem was and he was not satified with my answer and kind of insulted me that I did not put in too much effort to investigate. He did not understand the system very well since he was new manager but he complained that I did not understand the system ?
My old boss who becomes my manager's boss pushed me to work with him. I just have a hard time. I don't feel the new manager respect and trust my knowledge and skills and I don't know what to do.
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I think I may be able to offer some advice in this area.
I tend to consider myself a bit of a problem solver in that I can think of a wide and varied list of solutions to a problem including those not bounded by physics and common sense and then whittle the list down to something workable.
Something I have found in "Office Johnny" types (ie: people who "work" in offices and claim that they "work" hard but don't really know about hard physical labour (real work)) is that after a while of playing the childish word games and politicising that goes on in offices is that they forget about real world solutions and tend to think that their way is the only way to solve problems.
The funny thing is that when they step out of an office and are confronted by someone who isn't familiar with office politics and their way of doing things is when they are quite likely to end up copping a punch in the mouth for their efforts.
As I have done years of serious manual labour as well as working in an office, I know how to speak to clients who are not computer literate and know what causes offence via your demeanour. I've found that a lot of female managers who want to be the micro-managing, domineering types are the most ignorant in this regard and wil often talk down to clients and subordinates in order to prove their position. I've seen similar 'evolution' with some blokes in offices who, over time, develop the female attitude of words and manipulation being the only solution and that they can push any buttons they like on anyone because they've forgotten that not everyone will react in the intended manner.
[note: before someone goes branding me a misogynist: don't. You don't know me and you definitely don't know what I've seen and worked through in order to develop opinions like this.]
All I can say to Loner is: Don't let the bastards win! I have been in the position where I have told the micro-managing morons who have pushed and pushed and insulted and baited me via politics and then been absolutely terrified when the reaction they sought was not the reaction they got and said manager was then faced with someone who, as a normally calm and cool person, suddenly had no problem with causing them extreme physical damage. The actual "offer" I made to one manager was that I was going to throw him down the fire stairs (I can't remember if I told him I was going to stomp his face into paste as well but I may have....
) All this does is give them ammunition to continue the politicising and white-anting so that they can get rid of you.Failing that: remain calm and collected and then push them down the fire stairs when nobody is looking and they can't prove it was you....
Resorting to physical violence is just one aspect of "solving" the problem but is not a very good solution if you wish to be employed anywhere else (I just thought I would mention this....
)In the end, you need to realise that what the managers are doing to you demonstrates their inability to think "outside the box" like they're always expecting others to do. It also demonstrates how limited they are in their capacity to do their jobs.
My recommendation is to find a couple of books on office politics by Kathleen Kelly Reardon (look on Amazon). The books are fantastic (can also be obtained as audio books) and are VERY helpful in my opinion. Her theories have been expanded by other people over the years but this is an excellent starting point. The Secret Handshake is an excellent book to start with IMO.
A lack of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on mine.
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Excellent reply, Stephanie! Wanna come work for us?
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[font="Arial"]Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves or we know where we can find information upon it. --Samuel Johnson[/font] -
This is a very interesting topic. Even more so because this subject crosses career lines and isn't an IT Only problem. When I was in Customer Service, I had some of the worst managers that I've ever come across. One minute, they're giving you permission to do things a certain way, the next minute, they're screaming at the top of their lungs demanding to know who allowed you to do what you just got permission to do. (Okay, maybe there were a couple of weeks or months between the two, but you get the point).
So someone asks me for help and I'm too busy? Happens all the time, unfortunately. But having been in Customer Service for 17 years, the skills I learned there pay off in IT. If you don't want the co-worker accusing you of sabotaging the team, you have to make time. We're all busy. The questions are always going to come at the worst possible moment while you're in the middle of something major. But sometimes, it really only takes 5 minutes to answer some of these questions or to get your co-worker back on track. Besides, I needed a break from that never-ending project anyway. @=)
Also, I have a habit, whenever I get to a breaking point (SSIS package is taking forever to run or I'm waiting for the Business Unit / BA to return that vital phone call) that I turn to my co-worker and say "I'm in waiting mode again. What do you need help with?"
It may seem stupid, but that little piece of curtesy, even on days when they've got everything under control, means a lot to them. There are some days where the response is "Oh, thank God! This stupid query is kicking my butt! Can you be my second pair of eyes?". And how can proactively asking the question "What do you need help with?" be a bad thing anyway? Certainly it makes my life easier when I need them to help me. After all, they're more likely to help me when I keep offering to help them then they would be if I always blew them off. Right?
Nothing you can do about the boss except try to talk with him/her and ask if there's a problem you can help resolve. If it's just the boss's personality, you might as well look for another job. If it's just that the boss is under so much pressure that he/she is in the middle of a meltdown, well, that's more forgivable and easier to resolve (sometimes).
Co-workers blaming others for their mistakes? That's behavior they learned in childhood and nothing you do is going to change that. No matter how hard you try. Are you the one taking the brunt of their accusations? It's either time to move on to a new job or DocumentDocumentDocument everything you do and everything you think is being handled by the other team members (and the reasons you believe those tasks are being handled by other people). But whatever else you do, DO NOT play the blame-game. Once you sink to your co-worker's level, you'll be branded as the same type of person and no one with any reasonable sense of the situation will ever listen to you and your accusations again, no matter how true they may be. There are better ways to phrase things than "Joe was supposed to do that. He screwed it up!"
If the boss tells you your job is going to be outsourced if the team doesn't perform well, ask him. "My job or the jobs of everyone on the team?" The answer to that question (or non-answer and physical reaction of the boss) will tell you a lot about what your boss thinks of you and your work. If he flinches or prevaricates, he's thinking of firing you personally and no one else on the team. Time to send out that resume!
And lastly, if you do get called on the carpet by the boss and accused of not being a team player, ask him for specifics. What did you do or not do that makes you a problem for the team? Then, ask yourself, is it true? This is the hardest thing of all, because as much as we all get defensive when someone starts saying those things about us, the truth is 90% of IT people are individuals who are fairly anti-social in some regards. We are all geniuses who just want to solve the problem, darnit, and leave us alone because we have work to do. So, there is some truth to the accusation that we aren't team members because by nature or inclination, most of us aren't and have to work at it.
On the other hand, if the shoe doesn't fit, remain calm and polite explain to your boss the reasons why you couldn't help co-worker X. It might be that you've explained the problem and solution to co-worker X twenty times already and he/she just doesn't get it. It might be that your project deadline is tomorrow and you still have a ton of work to do. Whatever the reason, don't get defensive, don't get flustered. Remain calm, explain yourself to your boss and then ask what you can do to improve the perceived problem and still manage to accomplish your goals.
Some bosses are actually more reasonable than you might think. Some. There are those who just won't listen to you no matter what you say. And, again, if you find yourself in that situation, you'd better weigh your options and see if you really want to keep this job.
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I actually take the time when I am waiting for a long run query/SSIS package/whatever to walk around and talk to the developers. Asking them what they are working on and seeing if there is any help I can give them with SQL. Builds a lot of good will cheaply. And sometimes I even learn something!
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Brandie,
Some very good points there. I like the occasional reminder of things that get pushed to the back of my head and temporarily forgotten
I call it the 'Kelly Bundy" principle (think: Married.... with Children for those old enough to remember) where if she learned one new thing, one old thing would fall out the other side of her head I've also found that the typical idiot micro-manager (excuse redundancy) who practices the blame game does not like being confronted by a team member who is genuinely interested in improving their performance if the manager behaves in the manner described earlier in this topic.
I was being excluded from one team (of 3) for some reason I still do not know (but have suspicions) - and when I tried to organise a team meeting to find out what was going on, I was chastised and then taken through a HR hearing for my troubles. That same manager (female) also started a personal file on me of emails from 'team' members containing outright lies and accusations - the file being an illegal act in this country.
Just another example of why I will not go back into a government department while my backside points to the ground!
A lack of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on mine.
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Brandie,
You had touched many good points here. You are right on one thing, we always do our own work and it is not our nature not being a team player, it is our work nature.
However since we are on our own for so long, we start develop our style, it is difficult working on team with different people with different level of skills and styles.
The manager is definitely the one who has to organize this. I just feel that my new manager does not have to skill to do it. In his old company, he was called an 'asshole'. Now I knew why, he was a good developer and got the job done, but he was also very arrogant and jealous. He was the type of person who got something done and stick to it and never wanted to hear a second opinion. Even I offered a different solution, at the end of day, his solution was always much better than mine.
For the people on the team, there was one guy we hired a year ago. On his resume he had over 10 years of SQL Server skills and when he came to interview, he could talk. Even right now whenever he made a mistake, he would say he did not understand the business or something. Also he was a slow learner.
He never asked the other developers to help him. It was because we were supposed to be on the same level, he knew his skills was not as good as some of us, but he was too proud to ask for help since he was afraid we would look down on him. The result was he created more production problems and we had to fix them. My manager knew about it and asked how to help him. The only answer I gave was we can only help someone who wants to get help, if he refuses to get help, there is nothing we can do.
I just take one day at a time. Every company has its own problem. I just start looking for a job. The best new is my son is going to college next year, so I am free to find a job anywhere in US instead of staying in this town.
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