Terry and Chris – Allowing Multiple Paths

Terry and Chris are senior custodial supervisors in the athletic department. They recently completed a bulk hire of new custodial staff and are amidst orienting the new staff to their roles and expectations. Within the first few months, Terry and Chris begin to experience tension with the new staff member as they are frustrated with the inflexibility of the informal policies and protocols that guide their work. They share concerns about work norms regarding timeliness, decision-making as majority rule, and how decisions are made in general regarding daily work functions and project management. The new staff members assert that there is more than one way to be successful and ask senior staff to maintain openness to trying new things.

Terry and Chris meet separately to vent their frustrations. There initial reaction is defensiveness and they lament that the new staff has not given adequate time to experience the culture and traditions of their team. With more dialogue, they consider the perspectives of the new staff and challenge one another to be a bit more open-minded about the possibility of working in new ways. They implement a few of the new suggestions as a good-faith effort to integrate the team. They decide to begin with adding a standing agenda item to their monthly staff meeting where staff can propose ideas and take the time they need to deliberate their ideas and include input from the whole team.

Through their openness to trying new ideas, Terry and Chris are pleased to find new and more productive ways to accomplish their goals. Similarly, after feeling heard and validated, the new staff comes to appreciate several of the established work norms within the unit and reciprocate trust.