The Unsaid Partner - Vaishali Chandani, IIM Visakhapatnam

My CHALLENGE and how did I overcome it?

During my college years, I was constantly engaged with one or the other project and these projects used to happen in teams of 5-6. One of my team mates was repeating the year. It so happened that she was frustrated about the same and over the time of few weeks, this frustration turned into an aggressive behavior on her part. Although we had grown comfortable with each other and became friends, one could not ignore this behavior of hers. So advising her called for being my duty. But after doing so, I saw that our friendship weakened. However, as she was a part of my team, and I being the team leader, had to be in constant contact with her regarding updates about the work.  Slowly, she started envying me and ignoring my calls and texts regarding the work. And when I would confront her one-to-one, she would give me false hopes about adhering to the deadlines of the work.

This was a situation wherein I could not even get the work completed, nor could I help her personally.  In turn, I was getting tensed as the deadlines were approaching. So I decided to talk to her personally about the same. And on discussing in detail, I realized that the problem that she was facing was repetition of work. She had done the same work last year and was doing it again, leaving her with neither the enthusiasm nor the incentive to do the work. So, the task was to give her the work that she would find more challenging, and that is what I exactly did. Then, not only did her prior knowledge came in handy, but also the quality of our project improved. The solution to certain problems that seem big can be small and simple. Leaving personal differences aside when tackling professional problems is what is the key to solve these seemingly huge problems.