We had a new team join the dept. last month so somebody decided it would be a good idea to have a getting to know you meeting. My dept. has 4 men managers and one woman manager. The getting to know you meeting was supposed to be each of the managers talk about what your team does. The 4 men got up and told us about what their team did and then had the members stand up, but didn't really introduce us. The woman manager had her team members each come up front and introduce themselves plus say one interesting fact about themselves. If I didn't know what her team did already, I still wouldn't. The fact that one of them went skydiving last summer is interesting, but doesn't really help me do my job.
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David
The chief cause of failure in this life is giving up what you want most for what you want at the moment. -
Do you know about kickback? Ray has a good writeup here... https://www.sawdustzone.org/articles...mare-explained
For a kickback demonstration video http://www.metacafe.com/watch/910584...demonstration/ -
have you considered maybe they don't know, themselves?
Loring in Katy, TX USA
If your only tool is a hammer, you tend to treat all problems as if they were nails.
BT3 FAQ - https://www.sawdustzone.org/forum/di...sked-questionsComment
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I work for a very smart, very driven woman (just the two of us right now). She definitely thinks about things much differently than I do, especially when it comes to work/life balance and taking care of employees.
Consider also that the woman manager might be new.Comment
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The "say something interesting" trick is usually a good way to get people talking to each other and building rapport. I've used it in training a lot with great success.
When you ask people to speak in front of a group in turn, and the first person you choose is nervous, then he/she might only do the bare minimum, and then the rest might just follow suit. It's really easy to hear one thing ("Tell them your name, how long you've been here, what you do, and something interesting about yourself") and do something totally different ("Uh. I'm Alex, and I like to think inside the box") when you're nervous. This is one reason the presenter often goes first -- to set the example.
But if the team members were perfectly comfortable, then perhaps they should have taken the lead of the other managers and given a bit more content. Or maybe the manager should have gotten back up at the end with more detail if the other managers had already done so...
But if, by the end of the meeting, she still thought that everything went perfectly and consistently, then, yeah -- there's clearly a disconnect there.
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You should know the difference between men and women by now.
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Perhaps her understanding of the purpose was to get a glimpse of "who they are" as opposed to "what they do". After all, a protocol manual will give a job description, without the need even for their attendance...
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She was not a new manager. She has been in our department for a while and may be a very fine manager. I don't know I've never worked for her. I already know what her team does. However the new team still doesn't know how hers operates or how to engage them on a problem, which was the whole point of the meeting. The men managers are all roughly the same age. I am not dumb enough to speculate on a woman's age.
David
The chief cause of failure in this life is giving up what you want most for what you want at the moment.Comment
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