I work with a junior colleague in a pair. The junior had no idea about something in the project and went ahead & discussed about it with client on his own.
Although my reputation was fine with the client, but the client has now escalated his concerns about the team. What should I do?
Since you are interested in protecting your reputation, it's important to ask yourself what will earn you the most respect from your colleagues and managers - placing blame on a junior team-member, or taking responsibility for your team's mistake? I can recall several instances where team respect went up significantly for a manager who took responsibility towards upper management for one of our own failings.
It's also important to remember that, realistically, a manager/senior is in some ways responsible for the actions of their team, or juniors. While ideally your junior would know what is acceptable to communicate to a client, you were aware that he is a junior and didn't clarify (presumably) what is acceptable to communicate, or if you did communicate this, it wasn't in a way that is clear to his learning style.
In either case, fault can be shared in this mistake, so I advise you to, while not taking total responsibility for the mistake, don't "throw your colleague under the bus," as it were. This won't win you points with him nor your managers. Your best bet would be to think hard on where the failure point was, what could have prevented the mistake from happening, how you can adjust going forward to ensure the mistake doesn't happen again, and what sort of damage control you've implemented/plant to implement.
If you're explaining why the client expressed concerns about the team, you could say something along the lines of "(colleague) and I are aware of the client's concerns. The issue came from a miscommunication between (colleague) and myself about the points of contact with the client. We've worked it out that I would be the sole point of contact going forward, and have already discussed this with the client, who seem happy with the solution."
it's important to note that people respect someone who takes a fall for a fellow employee as much or more than a run of the mill competent employee. This depends very, very, VERY greatly based on what region of the world you are in. If the OP is in India (as their profile suggests), this is absolutely not the case.
– enderland
Sep 8 '15 at 20:06
Involve yourself in the solution as much as possible. You are the senior member. Use it as a teachable moment for your partner. The problem with many people isn't that they don't know anything, it's that they know things that aren't true. This is the mistake your inexperienced partner made and you can benefit both of you if you help prevent this type of thing in the future.
The client and your boss will be much happier if you fix it instead of just avoiding the blame.
You should act as a team and take collective responsibility.
Use it as a mechanism to learn. Who is to say that you did not make mistakes and could have prevented it happening?
Being a part of a team is sharing trumps and failures.
The problem is not that your colleague discussed some aspect of the project with your client but that he had "no idea about something in the project". This should never happen, especially using Pair Programming methodologies.
Your next step, in my opinion, is to acknowledge your failure to provide adequate training to your junior colleague and, more importantly, demonstrating that you have taken steps to ensure that a similar problem does not arise in the future.
