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Subject:Re: Plays well with others From:Joy Brady <joy_m_brady -at- yahoo -dot- com> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Thu, 29 Mar 2001 09:08:52 -0800 (PST)
One thing I believe these two have in common is FEAR.
Fear of being discovered a "fraud."
For James, he might believe that what he's done so far
is "not enough," and is defensive.
If you designed, together, a timeline for his projects
where he could name the length of time things would
take, that would be a start. If he seems to be being
overly ambitious in his estimates, that would be a
clue that he's thinking he "should" be performing
faster than is actually reasonable. You could suggest
to him that he might need more time for this step or
that. For the status reports, give him a chance to
name issues/obstacles. The nice thing about doing the
timeline and having that published ahead of time, is
that he can "build in" success by having agreed-upon
realistic goals, then being able to knock them down.
For Sally, the same thing would help, I suppose. It
sounds like she really has something to fear, though!
If she is anti-technical, she's probably afraid she
can't learn. If you want to keep her, what may be
required is to offload more
"clerical/grammar/formatting" stuff and work in
technical stuff. Has you actually talked to her about
the need to pursue technical knowledge? Have you made
an effort to help her learn how to fish? Fearful
people are cranky, I've found. They get sweeter, and
more hopeful about learning, when you alleviate that.
Just my theory, though.
Joy Beer
--- Lief Erickson <lerickson -at- mqsoftware -dot- com> wrote:
> Cross-posted to TECHWR-L and STC Mgmt SIG.
>
> How would you deal with Sally and James?
>
=====
Joy Brady
Technical Writer
Columbus, Ohio, USA
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