31st Mar 2006
Ms. Theologian reflects on responsibility….
Dear Ms. Theologian,
I recently transferred to managing a different department. When I made the announcement to my direct reports, one of them told me privately that she was very upset because I was the first person who actually listened to her, and that she was always ignored by the rest of the group, and that people had even taken credit for her ideas.
Before I left I was trying to help her communicate more with our outsource group in India, and she was making progress, but I don’t feel like I did enough, or even realized the extent of the problem. Part of which is, she is Middle Eastern and so there is prejudice, as well as her not being a very effective communicator in English.
What can I do to help, keeping in mind that I am no longer her manager and there are a lot of weirdly political boundary issues involved, not to mention I am wrapped up in this new department and don’t have a lot of time on my hands?
Signed,
Where does my responsibility end?
Dear Where does my responsibility end?:
In short, your management responsibility for this person does seem to have ended. But your mentorship responsibility may only be beginning. And this is something that can take as much or as little time as you want to devote to it.
You have the opportunity to help someone improve her workplace skills. I hope you seize it.
In general, when we are speaking a language other than our native tongue, we benefit from seeing graphs, charts, or anything that helps make something visual. Also, you may find that if she uses more visual methods to communicate with others, she may find that she can make a point more clearly. And who doesn’t love a nice histogram, eh? Joke. But graphs, flow charts, tables–these help all of us to communicate better, providing they are well done.
As you probably recall from language classes in high school, when we hear things rephrased, reworded, and simplified in another language, this generally helps us. It will probably help when you work with her if you stress how she may need to explain something to coworkers in multiple ways, not as an annoyance, but if it seems like they are not comprehending what she is saying. She may want to practice this ahead of time, before meetings and important presentations.
She might also benefit from role playing with you as a coworker and her as herself attempting to communicate. Again, who doesn’t love a good role play. I’ll be the cheerleader and you can be…anyway, joke.
I’ve had a number of mentors and benefited greatly. I think you will find that it is mutually beneficial, both on a practical level by creating a more satisfied and happy employee (even if you’re not immediately supervising her) and spiritually because you are finding a way to use your skills to address the needs of others.
–Ms. Theologian
P.S. If you wish to write to Ms. Theologian, send your problem off in an email to ms dot theologian at gmail dot com. And she loves updates. That Ms. Theologian just loves to know how people are doing months later!
