I have worked in a management position for my current company for nearly 7 months and I love my job and the people I work with. I work in a middle management position in charge of Customer Services/Administration/Personnel alongside 3 other company directors (1md/1 finance/1 sales). I have had a very good relationship with all directors from day 1 but somethings happened and one of them has become very frosty in his attitude towards me over the past week. Our main accounts lady left the company on Friday 31st October 2008 and as she worked a lot from home she had a laptop which has been given to me as I do a lot of work from home during evening and weekends which is great and I’ve thanked the director who gave it to me letting them now how much this will benefit me. My problem is the laptop profile is set up for the previous accounts lady and although I’ve added and removed various programs it would be good to change it over to my profile completely,and certain important programs need updating by the administrator. I e-mailed the director who gave it to me to ask if this can be done and since then he’s been very frosty towards me and he’s not replied to my e-mail or spoken to me. I think he’s struggling to accept that our previous accounts lady has gone – she was only with the company for 4 years but very highly thought of and changing this laptop to my profile would kind of finalize her departure. Is my request unreasonable and how can I resolve this issue?
The Team Doc Says…
Your request is not unreasonable. You need to meet with this person face to face and quit making assumptions about his behavior. Unless he tells you he’s angry with you (or someone else), you really don’t know that. And you are interpreting his behavior as “frosty” whatever that means.
When something needs to get done and you are not getting results, the best course of action is to meet with the team member in person to get it resolved. If you are not in the same physical location, a phone conference would be the next best thing.
What about you reader? Additional thoughts? Please leave a comment.
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
Bottom line here is how you can be expected to do your job if you don’t have all the tools.
Consider what this would be like if it wasn’t resolved in 6 months…how would your life be then.
Tough and you need to face the challenge right now with the director.
Regards
Martin
Thanks for your thoughts Martin. Good point about looking 6 months down the road.
Thanks for your replies.
This laptop has now been taken by our payroll lady who works from home and apparently had no pc to work on although she came in the other day and did the payroll in the office.
I dont think I will see it again – I think maybe its felt i’m pushing my luck a bit too early here after only 6 months as its a very small family run company.
This director is still being very frosty with me – I’ve asked him if I have done something wrong or upset him and he insists no – but something is definately up.
The other directors are fine but I cant force the one who isnt to admit whats wrong if he doesn’t want to.
I’d just like some honesty really but it doesn’t seem like I am going to get it.