Re: Challenging and oppressive SME situation

Subject: Re: Challenging and oppressive SME situation
From: "Margaret L. FalerSweany" <mfsweany -at- MTU -dot- EDU>
Date: Thu, 20 Aug 1998 22:39:23 -0400

It's a shame that we have to play these types of politics, but you can
survive it with your professional and personal life intact. The advice
you've been given really helped me in a similar situation. A couple of
techniques you might try were given to me by a conflict counselor--I have a
tendency to get defensive and let the other people in a confrontation run
the scenario. These helped me maintain a calm control (no quivering lip,
whiney voice or scared rabbit look).

1. Before you meet with the DemonSME, your boss, or a group of them, have a
practice meeting in your head. Practice what you'll say to start the
meeting, how you want to present your points, etc. Also, play at
anticipating what s/he will do/say and how you'll respond. In my case I was
pretty sure he'd yell that I'd missed deadlines. I had copies of a timeline
of all deadlines, when they'd been met/missed and the reason for missing
them (in almost every instance he'd changed specs.) As he was bringing it
up, I visualized calmly pulling my list from my documents and saying: "well,
let's just look at the scheduled deadlines and why they were missed.)

2. Have a clear idea of what action you want to have happen after the
meeting. What is the minimum change you will accept and by when do you want
it to happen? Do you insist on being transferred to another project? Do you
want a mediator to monitor your relationship with this person? If you don't
hear positive action, what are you going to do? I.e., you may simply want to
come out the meeting with an agreement that the DemonSME will treat you with
respect both in your presence and in discussions with others in the company
and will sign off on all tasks as acceptable/unacceptable, etc. (In my case,
for instance, we agreed that my boss had to approve specs changes before
implementation.)

Good luck and do let us know how it's resolved.

Margaret L. FalerSweany
Mfsweany -at- mtu -dot- edu


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