The other day I was talking to a woman in a Chicago seminar I was teaching. She said she and a friend had worked side by side with a great sense of camaraderie, until she got promoted over her friend. Since then the friendship disintegrated and everything in the world she had tried to make amends had failed miserably. Her question was what was left to try. I told her what she had was an opportunity to work on some brand new approaches to problem solving. Granted she’s pretty frustrated, but here are some approaches she could take:
Confront it. Acknowledge how you feel (disappointed we can’t work together effectively, frustrated that you choose not to do the work I give you). Ask how he or she is feeling. If you can get a dialogue going then you can start to understand the behavior better, and get some tools for resolution.
Assign a task to get the person involved, with the understanding that a copy of the finished work will go into a file the supervisor will read. This takes the lethargy out of the situation because instead of being resentful and doing as little as possible, the person now has someone higher up the food chain watching the outcome.
Create team projects or shared responsibility for certain tasks. If there’s a rotation, or a team accountability, the jealous person is going to be interacting with others, yet having to do tasks well because it’s peer awareness. In other words if she acts out it’s behavior the whole team/department will notice.
As with many things we’ve discussed, dig deeper to see what need isn’t being met. For example, was she sorely disappointed that you got the promotion instead of her? Once you know what the need seems to be, look at several different approaches you could take to help get the need met. Could you ask your boss to:
A. Give the person an additional job title and perks, even if there’s no additional compensation?
B. Put her at the head of a mentoring program? Remember, it’s her ego that has suffered.
C. Give her a different set of challenging tasks, like conference planning that would help her prove her worth?
Regardless of the details, if you think about meeting the unmet need, you’ll go a long way towards correcting the problem. As a side benefit, you’ll stretch you creative problem-solving skills along the way.
Best regards,
~ Jennifer
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