Timeline for Senior employee of my team understood my email as an order and didn't like it
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
13 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dec 1, 2018 at 19:53 | comment | added | Steve Jessop | And yeah, John might be awful. But the questioner wants hints on how to do better at email, so that's what they'll get :-) No matter how bad John is, the questioner can still be clearer one way or the other. We've not even got into, "I'm leading the Agile team with a flat structure". I mean, either it's flat, or the leader has authority to unilaterally decide and announce stuff without warning or consultation. So there might be some cognitive dissonance there adding to the tension. | |
| Dec 1, 2018 at 19:43 | comment | added | Steve Jessop | @Fattie: maybe so, but the questioner thinks it was not an order "I told him that I didn't mean that and apologized". If it was intended to be an order, then the criticism of the way the email is written is somewhat different from the criticism since it wasn't. Sure, if the organisation is accustomed to giving orders in public then John either should STFU and do it, or tell the questioner (publicly?) that they've issued an impossible order and can FRO. But most people, including John and I think the questioner, want for whatever reason for this all to be a bit more discreet. | |
| Dec 1, 2018 at 17:47 | comment | added | Fattie | But Steve. Of course John was being ordered to do something. John should have STFU and got it done. That's life as an employee. To be utterly blunt and cut to the chase, it seems to be a case of "John" (who is, say, native German or English) getting pissed off that a "foreigner", his senior, is telling John what to do. | |
| Dec 1, 2018 at 14:04 | comment | added | Steve Jessop | What if this person has leave booked at a critical point, or is already 100% committed at the relevant times? What if there's some other good reason that although there's an agreement in principle of them to own this kind of project, there's a specific reason not to own this one? What if there's no such reason this time, but they don't want you taking their availability for granted in future? Do you really "need" their help, or just want it? None of this is communicated. This is why people like you to talk to them directly to confirm that they can take on work, not just announce they'll do it. | |
| Dec 1, 2018 at 14:02 | comment | added | Steve Jessop | I agree that's likely to be part of the trigger. To my mind, "we need your help", even if not taken as an order, is saying that there's no room here to do anything else. Telling someone that they have no choice to do X is always going to come across a lot like ordering them to do X, even if it's not you who actually made the decision. | |
| Nov 30, 2018 at 14:58 | comment | added | Rob P. | What are you asking/saying? - That per Chris, we need your help to confirm that everything related to this project's delivery is finished. It even explains how...by getting the details of the project from the scrum master, the business stakeholder, and comparing notes with the developers who were involved in the project. I feel like it's very clear and even if I had specific questions, I'd know who to talk to about it (scrum master, business stakeholder or developers). Can you be more specific about what's missing or unclear? | |
| Nov 30, 2018 at 13:59 | comment | added | Fattie | I can't even imagine how it could be more clearer. The transcripted email is flawlessly clear. | |
| Nov 30, 2018 at 11:54 | comment | added | BigMadAndy | Your reply has nothing to do with the OP's question. He didn't ask whether his message was clear or not. He was wondering whether it was inappropriate. Not to mention that he might have changed the text, made it more general to anonymize the post. | |
| Nov 30, 2018 at 11:48 | comment | added | clem steredenn | @JanDoggen, if we discuss clarity, you might try to take a leaf of your own book for yourself. Can you be more explicit? The OP obviously did not get the unclearness of it, having read it more often than you did probably. So you could present the different interpretations that you could see for that part. | |
| Nov 30, 2018 at 10:46 | comment | added | UKMonkey | @Mixxiphoid when requests are unclear, you roll a dice with how people will react because it can be interpreted in multiple ways. | |
| Nov 30, 2018 at 9:29 | comment | added | user8036 | @Mixxiphoid People react how they react. You can only change how you yourself behave. | |
| Nov 30, 2018 at 9:26 | comment | added | Mixxiphoid | I agree it could be a bit more clear, but that doesn't explain the reaction of John. | |
| Nov 30, 2018 at 8:44 | history | answered | user8036 | CC BY-SA 4.0 |