Employer employee relationships
About
When an employee and employer clash it's like two fists clashed together. A fraction of the problem might be technical, but often a large fraction is just a different way of thinking - different expectation. What's difficult in these circumstances is that even if one person tries to open up (one fist opens), the trust is broken, and so the other person is already thinking defensively enough to leave that fist closed. Both workmates see the other workmate as having an attitude problem or some kind of vendetta against them, since they don't see their other workmates getting this same treatment.
A friend told me this little analogy and I liked it so much I decide to write it down.
The solution is really not clear... if the trust is really badly broken you might have to relocate someone to a different team. But if the two people can have an open conversation about broken trust, maybe it can heal.
It was after talking about unconscious bias with a friend, I realized an issue that I had was largely a difference in background. In my case, from an academic background, if someone tells me to do something, I ask why. Always - I want to know that it's valuable, that it's had some level of research, that it isn't a waste of time... and then my next step is to put in some extra research to work out the best approach, how long it might take and so on. Other people in my team don't ask why. They just do it. It was described to me as "leap of faith". If you want promotion you do as your told.
Often two people have different methods of work, and sometimes this is debilitating, but the hope is, with the right attitude, you can appreciate the value of having these different opinions on the same team, and that there is almost always good merit to both sides of an argument.
If you don't feel your side of the argument is even considered? Some people are more resilient than others, but eventually this is going to lead to you becoming demotivated. Demotivate employee, reduced performance, and suddenly you might be heading towards a dark place like a Performance Improvement Plan.
I'll maybe update this page one day if I get out of the tricky situation I'm in where I feel like I simply can't meet expectations. At the end of the day, if you are unable to transfer you may have to just try doing it the other person's way and trust that you'll learn or see some value in it.
