It was an unpleasant experience happened to
me in 2012, at that time; I was a section in charge in department of design in
my company that I served for. The works we basically faced daily as whole is to
handle all sorts of design and coordination roles to new stores and renovate current
stores; it also involves many of decision making. The process of which will
required frequently access and analysis business data, then to suggest
proposals to managing director & relevant stakeholders. In a nutshell, it
is a real complex and diversify job; and “Stress” is one of the most frequent
word in our bible.
In Quarter 3 of the year 2012, I was
handling a 30,000sqft. store (about X10 tennis courts size). It was a flagship
store for our newly developed store concept in Hong Kong Region; everything
went very well as expected throughout the whole project. However, on the other
hand, what was missing was a junior replacement role in my team where remained
vacant for some time back in 2012. Our team was desperate for this replacement role
to handle some of the extra works to cope with rapid expansion of our business.
While I was struggling about filling this
place, I had a “friend-ish” person contacted me for Chit chat; and this guy (I would
called him “X” below) was finding a new job and was telling me all the
harassments and difficulties he was encountering at his place. Sharing the
background of “X”, I knew this guy from a night school a few years ago, “X”
seems to be an honest guy, willing to learn, but not achieving much at his
career; he is a bit younger than me with less strong in academic background. So
“X” was asking if there is any opportunity to work at the role that we had
offered. As a manager, I know very well about how difficult of managing a “Friend”
is, especially I knew this guy in advance.
Before my decision was made, I weigh about
the pros and cons of having a “Friend” in the business, advantage if this would
means “X” would dedicated to help me and discussion can be easily carried out
through our trust , but the disadvantage is more difficult for me to manage as “X”
may not treat my indication seriously because of our relationship; other study have
also shown that embedded relationship have advantage of initiating
self-organizing arrangement through trust[1] but also pitfalls of this
relationship gets emotional[2]. But because the point in time, we were urge to
get a replacement and recalling to my impression about “X” being a guy whose
willing to learn and kind of honest; I didn’t take too much time to consider
deeply about accepting him to join our company.
Under my recommendation, “X” had joined our
company, and work as a junior role. Very soon after he join, I realized 1+1 ≠2, in fact he had created more
holes for me to fill. Although “X” seems willing to learn, but he is having
difficulties of understanding instructions an DO talk back when he hasn’t done
thing correctly; my comment of him is a “Role Model” for others NOT TO FOLLOW,
cause he blame everything he has done wrong and make excuses to whatever mistakes
he had created. Then I started to realize I shouldn’t made that decision even I
had already highlighted the risk of it. Perhaps I was too trusted in him for
the impression he had shown me. “X” perform badly but I was trying to turn the
situation around by showing more concerns about him in order to improve his
commitment; the material have also give example about “Benevolent of concern”
and how this can regain trust when trust factor is challenging between employee[3].
Because of that, I had allow him to leave half-an-hour early as “X” claimed
that he had unforeseen incident from his family on a random date.
The nightmare came soon after my benevolent,
he have shown me a letter, a white envelope. i have found out that he used my benevolent to go interview for a different job. He lied to me. He had also used the reputation of our company to jump to other job.(the company i am working for is the market leader in this industry ) I knew straight away of his next
word but I was very calm, and had a very good lesson about what could happen if
wrong decision is made. I blamed myself for letting this happen even knowing
the risk and the uncertainty about “X”; just because I was needing a
replacement, it does not mean I could risk this, yet, the decision had been
made differently.
I realized I would probably need some Aloe Vera, cause I’ve
got burned….
Anyway, after the “X” incident, I’ve learnt
to make decision more carefully even there are burning needs to whatever issue I
am encountering. Weighing the pros and cons more seriously and questioning
myself on what the worst could happen if the decision were
made.
[1] Thompson,L.L.(2009).The Mind and Heart of
the Negotiator. (4th
ed.). Prentice Hall (NJ).
Chapter
6, Establishing Trust and Building a Relationship, page 155
[2] Thompson,L.L.(2009).The Mind and Heart of
the Negotiator. (4th
ed.). Prentice Hall (NJ).
Chapter
6, Establishing Trust and Building a Relationship, page 155
[3] Hurley, R.F. (2006). The Decision to Trust. Hardvard Business Review, 84(9), page 55-62.
