Ana Lorena Flores

I was offered at some point to take a few trainings to enhance my launch proficiency. After completing the trainings, we created a program to cascade these learnings to the rest of the team. It was really encouraging to me that I was given this opportunity. It not only allowed me to receive a great training, but in addition, it helped me build on my leadership qualities with the rest on the team.

I would first analyze if I was clear when I communicated to the team the objectives. Often, there is a cascade of events that lead to a team member to non performing as expected, and also often, miscommunication from management may be one of the factors. As a minority worker, being from Latin America, as fluent and proficient I may be in English, there is a certain room for misunderstanding due to a language glitch. Also consider if the team member is undergoing some hardship. Sometimes that can impact our priorities, and as managers, we need to see the team as a whole; if a team member is undergoing a difficulty, we can assign the task they are having trouble with to another team member. SUPPORT has many faces.

We all love giving and receiving positive feedback, but when there are some sensitive feedback that needs to be communicated to a sensitive team member, you need to prepare upfront, give the employee the space for stating their point of view and showing yours with respect. Always emphasize we are a team, and we are on the same boat, so we need to row together and in harmony to succeed and bring the projects to shore.

Unfortunately more than once I have been in the position of public exposure attempts, and even though I don't consider myself sensitive, it is definitely an awkward place to find oneself. You can't be impolite, you have to have a strong character and not react. This usually turns around the table and leaves the exposer exposed. Negative feedback is never done publicly, and always needs to be in a trusting environment, so the employee is certain that we are trying to ensure success for them, and for us. We need to be very careful even when a colleague makes a comment that is not appropriate in a public meeting, we explain to them we can discuss about that topic offline and carry on. Throwing someone "under the bus" is always a bad idea.

I would start by asking for their perspective on the matter, and try to understand where they come from for their elected course of action. Following, I would give my perspective, incorporating the strengths and vulnerabilities of the employee contributions. I would aim to identify the learning opportunities for the employee into the corrective actions of the issue, and let them know I am there to support them.

Nowadays, where every company is extremely jealous of their budgets, it is less common they spend on team development, which includes team building activities. This is a huge loss, even more so after the COVID pandemic, when we became more virtual. I am proud to say that there is no need to go into huge expenses to make a team united and engaged. I used to start my team meetings with a game, a story time, or what ever activity that allowed us to know each other better. This created a space of tremendous trust, and my team meetings were recognized as a best practice to other teams. Usually global team members are more acquainted with the already available e-learnings offered by the company, and it is our duty to share these information