Interview Story - Resolved a Conflict

When I was working at BlackBerry as a Supply Chain Manager, our department had 4 teams made of 3 to 4 people. Each team managed the supply chain activities for one manufacturing outsourcing partner, including multiple factories. To have more flexibility and so then everyone knew all the partners better, learned best practices, and experienced more diverse tasks, our team members were exchanged regularly. Once a year the whole team, including the manager, changed their assigned manufacturing partner.

I received in my team one Supply Chain Specialist who was a recent graduate. He was previously one of our intern students I mentored 2 years before, and we hired him on a permanent role after he finished school. Initially, he started on another team reporting to another manager for less than a year. A month after he joined my team I noticed a change in his attitude, being less communicative and looking like something was bothering him, but he never said anything.

I wanted to better understand what happened and reestablish an effective working relationship.

It was on a Friday when I decided to invite him for lunch outside the office, to a restaurant where we could have a private conversation. I told him my impression that he was not the same person I knew when I trained him and if something is bothering him to tell me. He eventually opened up and told me he was not very happy since the move. He felt I didn’t give him enough support and he was unsure whether he was doing a good job. I asked him why he thought that and what he wanted to see more from me. He told me his previous manager, who he copied on all emails exchanged with the manufacturing partner, was jumping in every time an issue arose, to support him in order to emphasize his authority and show she was supporting his actions. Because I was not doing that, he thought I’m not reading his emails and he didn’t know if he was doing or saying the right things.

I realized that he felt insecure because of his lack of experience on the job and not working with different styles of management, being more micromanaged before. I told him that I was actually very happy with his performance and I wanted to give him space to learn to manage things on his own, jumping in only if necessary or when he asked me to. My initial expectation was that he will handle the situations and come to me when he needed help, or if he faced any problems or push back from the factory.

After both of us understood and learned what the other’s style of working was, we collaborated very well.

I learned that when you start working with new people or new teams, you need to have an initial conversation about expectations, style of working and responsibilities, in order to understand how other people prefer to communicate and be managed. Later when I started working for Wistron and collaborated very closely with different teams located in Mexico, China, and Taiwan, I always had an initial conversation about how to communicate better and expectations. Since I had to work mostly remotely it was very important to clarify that from the beginning so I can have a good relationship with people in the factories.