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Names have been changed to protect the innocent!
Need some advice here - a fellow line manager (let's call them Pat) in my department got a new hire (Sam). Pat specifically reached out to me to tell me that Sam would be available to help with any testing requirements on my product. After I reached out to Sam, starting onboarding them and involving them in our project, another line manager (Rowan) told me that they needed Sam back. Sam should never have started with me, and I should stop involving Sam in my product. Pat never contacted me to say anything about this.
I'm pretty annoyed about this.
Honestly, this has to be a regular occurence as a line manager. I'm thinking tell Pat they owe me one.
How to handle gracefully?
I wouldn't worry about
I wouldn't worry about handling it gracefully. I'd worry about handling it effectively.
My suggestion would be to sit down with Pat and Rowan to fix the communication problem. Perhaps someone misunderstood something, Pat and Rowan might be squabbling, or 100 other things might be going on. You'll just allow assumptions, suspicion, and resentment to breed if you don't deal with it directly.
I always jump on these situations as soon as they happen. If you aren't assertive in resolving the issue you risk watching a minor hiccup turn into major dysfunction.
Thanks for this! I talked to
Thanks for this! I talked to Pat who said they'd resolve it with Rowan. After their discussion, Pat got back to me to say that Sam's only available for 1 day a week. So it was handled by Sam's line manager.