“I don’t understand,” complained Marcus. “I got this new guy on the team. We have been running pretty lean for the past eight months and I knew we needed some more help, so we got some more help. But he’s not helping. As a matter of fact, people are complaining about him.”

“What’s the story?” I asked.

“We cut our admin staff last February, assigned all the tasks around to make sure we could still get all the work out. Our volume is picking up a little (at last), and I am afraid if we don’t get another person cross trained, we are going to start getting behind.”

“Maybe they are just taking their time warming up to the new person,” I suggested.

Marcus moved his head from side to side. “No, it’s like they are hording the work. No one will let anything go. Old habits die hard. The level of trust is pretty low. Even though we added a person, my team still thinks they could get laid off.”
__

We still have a couple of scholarships to Working Leadership Online, Time Span and Accountability. If you would like to participate, please respond to Ask Tom.