Put down the grudge, Put in a correction

Two people this week have complained to me about someone else’s failure to do something. One was Dan, a mid-level manager, who felt that another mid-level manager should have informed him of a decision she made. “She should have known it would create problems for our service team”, he said. “Why didn’t she call me to talk about it first?”

The other was Candace, a member of a service team whose boss had asked her to work overtime during the holiday season to help handle extra customer requests. “A boss should make those scheduling plans at least a month ahead”, she groused. “Now I have to find a baby-sitter with only three days notice.”

Both of these people owe themselves a good “closure conversation” with the other person involved. It may be too late to fix the situation in either case, but it’s never too late to put down the grudge and put in a correction. I suggested this to each of them. Here’s what happened:

Dan said, “I was afraid I’d let her know how mad I was, and it would turn into an argument or her getting defensive. So I blew off some steam first, then sent her an email to set a time to meet. When we talked, I asked her to be sure to include me in decisions like that in the future. She seemed fine with that, maybe even a little glad that I came forward instead of being upset. It worked well.”

Candace told me, “No way am I going to confront the boss about this.”

I couldn’t make her see that communicating about the timing of a request to work extra hours didn’t have to be a confrontation. She couldn’t imagine anything other than a bad outcome. Maybe the difference is that Dan’s relationship is a peer, where Candace’s is a boss. But it still seems it could have resolved something for her to get into communication instead of carrying the resentment. Closure isn’t confrontation, it’s completion.