Vrftsjtryk

I'm leading the Agile team with a flat structure and we recently got a new team member. He is 10 years older than me and more experienced in some things (emotional intelligence) and he is local in a country where I work, I'm expatriate here. No matter what, I'm leader of the team and have responsibility. After several weeks, after he joined, we had escalation about team readiness to deliver one small project where almost every team member was involved. He didn't work on that project but during his interview with my manager, before he was hired, it was agreed that he will take ownership of similar projects. As we had a couple of days left before the small project has to be delivered, I sent email to our developers and asked about individual status apart from that I wrote the following to our new employee in that email:

"John, according to my conversation with Chris, he asked you to take ownership in organizing project delivery of the [small project name] and we need your help in this space to double-confirm that everything is ready. You can work on organizational details with our [scrum muster name] and business [stakeholder name] and double-check individual development status with [individual developers names]".

I sent this a couple of hours before the working day started, and when I reached the office he asked for a chat with me and told me that I should not give public orders but had to have an individual discussion with him to agree on this work. I told him that I didn't mean that and apologized and explained my intentions with pressure coming from the above. After that, I read my email again but still cannot get to the point if it was really that wrong. Of course, I will try to be sensitive to this going further but can anyone explain to me what I did wrong here?

In my read on this I do not think you did anything really wrong here from a functional team level. But you may have made some assumptions on the ramp time needed for the new individual.

It is very common for folks to feel uncomfortable taking ownership for something until they feel that they have had time to ramp up to the familiarity level with product, processes and procedures. Your wording comes across as the individual is fully ready to engage.

I think the problem is exactly what John told you. It may not be as bad as "Giving an order" but you did send him instructions publicly (copying other developers) which I think you should avoid.

I would avoid doing that even if the person is much younger to me (or less experienced), reports directly to me and I have known them for years. In your case, none of this applied so I could understand John's concern. (Although I would not have reacted the way he did).

You can just have 1-0-1 email, phone or face-to-face discussion and sort this out and send email to your team AFTER that and announce:

John has agreed to take ownership of this [small project] and will lead X,Y,Z activities.

1. I cannot see the slightest problem with your email.

As I understand it you are the superior of X

2. When X asked you to "come aside" for a talk, you should not have done it. People who work for you can't ask you to "come aside". Just look him in the eye and say "What's the problem?"

When he "told" you to not write public emails, you should have either

3B. Said in two words "That's what we do here. All set? Let's get back to work!"

or if X makes an issue of it,

3B. You would say, "That's what we do here. X, maybe it's better if we discuss this with Y who hired you. Right? Let's go talk to him!" And then walk X over to Y.

Note that very unfortunately, it seems you "apologized" to X

4. Never apologize to anyone who works for you, if they happen to be offering their suggestions on work practices.

What I mean is, obviously if you accidentally poke them in the eye or vomit on them after a drinking session or whatever, of course apologize profusely. But you have nothing, whatsoever, to apologize for.

Given the facts of the matter as stated, the other guy X seems to be totally in the wrong on this one. And you unfortunately made a mistake by apologizing.

FWIW every single time ever I've given an "order" (I wouldn't put it that way), I cc EVERYONE so that we all feel like a happy family, with teamwork BS and so on. What possible reason could there be that someone doesn't want everything out in the open so that everyone knows what is going on?