A reader writes:
I am a manager on a team where there are two managers and five individual contributors: Buffy, Cordelia, Xander, Willow, and Anya. Buffy and Willow are very good friends. They joined the team at around the same time, about two years ago. Cordelia joined the team just under a year ago and quickly got adopted by Buffy and Willow as “one of the gang.” They have similar tastes and are always lending each other books, talking about shared interests, etc. Xander has been in and out of the team, but is well integrated socially with the others.
Anya joined the team straight out of college in September. She had been an intern here during college, but on a different team. She enjoyed it enough to want to come back when she was hired permanently after graduation. She said she was looking forward to joining our team because it skews young (Buffy, Cordelia, and Xander are all in their 20s and Willow is in her 40s but acts younger).
Before Anya joined, Buffy, Willow, and Cordelia were vociferous about how excited they were and how they wanted her to feel like a member of the team. Unfortunately, they have certain habits that exclude Anya (for example, they all go for coffee together but Anya only drinks tea). There was also an incident a couple of months ago where Anya was catching up with an old contact from her internship days, without knowing that this contact was Cordelia’s ex-boyfriend. There was nothing inappropriate about Anya and Cordelia’s ex having a catch-up meeting, and indeed I would have encouraged Anya if I knew, because it’s good for her to have a wide network. But apparently the others found out when they saw the meeting in Anya’s Outlook and gave her a bit of a hard time, possibly insinuating that she was trying to date the ex herself (which there is no evidence of). (I have only thirdhand information about this incident and only one side of the story.)
Anya has been very unhappy almost since she started, but hadn’t said anything to me or the other manager. She told someone from her previous team about it, and that person spoke to his manager, who spoke to the other manager in our team, so it’s now all come out. According to the manager in that team, Anya was very outgoing during her internship, but the other manager and I have found her reserved from day one on our team, which we just assumed was her personality. I think there may be some feedback loops going on where Anya is quiet and the others forget she’s there and don’t include her, which leads her to withdraw further.
I spoke to Anya today, and she is desperately unhappy and wants to move to a different team. The other manager and I think we can address it with Buffy, Willow, and Cordelia. We think that if they knew they were making Anya feel excluded, they would change their behavior. We wouldn’t make it a disciplinary issue or anything, but more ask what they can do to change the dynamic. (We’re also agreed that if they’re told about the behavior and continue to make Anya feel excluded, that could become a disciplinary issue, but right now they seem to be completely unaware.)
The difficulty is that Anya doesn’t want us to talk to the team members because she thinks it will rebound on her. I have told her that unless I identify the problem/pattern with them and ask them for help in solving it, it’s not going to magically get any better. I have also pointed out that working in a medium-sized company, she could move now only to find that later she has to work with one of the others and that will be harder if things don’t get addressed now.
The other manager and I are also concerned that moving would reflect badly on Anya, particularly because new graduates in our company normally stay in their first role for two years.
Anya seems paranoid that the others are gossiping about her, but aside from the ex-boyfriend incident, I think they are probably being self-absorbed, not mean. Last week, we had a work social event and Anya left early without saying much. The next morning, Cordelia contacted me to find out if I knew why Anya had left early and if she was feeling okay. So I do have evidence that team members care about Anya and want her to feel included (even if their behavior isn’t making that happen).
Anya is clear that she doesn’t blame me or the other manager and acknowledges that she could have spoken to us directly and earlier. But she also wants to leave the team and get a fresh start. I have told her that even if she leaves, we probably need to address the situation with the other team members so no one is treated the way she has been treated in the future. She said she will go away and think about it, but if she doesn’t want us to speak to the other team members, can/should we do it anyway? Would it be better to let her have the fresh start (even if it looks bad to the team/other managers)? Can I help her be more resilient?
I hope you didn’t promise Anya that it’s her call whether you talk to the others about what’s happening, because as the team’s manager you need to be able to talk about team dynamics that concern you, even if Anya doesn’t want you to.
That said … I can’t really tell what’s going on! Are Buffy, Cordelia, Xander, and Willow being cliquish and exclusionary, or is Anya not meshing with the team for other reasons? Aside from the ex-boyfriend thing — which was really inappropriate, which I’ll say more about in a minute — it doesn’t sound like they’ve been actively exclusionary (it’s not like getting coffee together needs to exclude tea drinkers!). Maybe there’s more to it than what’s described in your letter, but based on what’s here it sounds like they’re just a pretty close group, and (a) that can be legitimately hard for a new person to break into, (b) especially if they’re not the sort who’s willing to actively jump in but rather waits to be invited, but (c) that doesn’t necessarily mean that the others did anything wrong. It might be a matter of them just needing to be more aware that because they’re so close, that’s a tough dynamic for a new person to come into, and so if they want future hires to feel welcome, they need to go out of their way to actively include them, more than they have been. And that’s a message that’s important for you to deliver, even if Anya doesn’t want you to — because it affects your team as a whole, not just her, and because it will affect other hires in the future.
However, if Anya doesn’t want you to raise it, you should be sensitive to that in the way you approach it. Stress that these are your observations, not something Anya asked you to address, and ask people to prioritize not making Anya feel awkward as things move forward.
(Also, you do need to address the ex-boyfriend thing if you haven’t already. There’s nothing inappropriate about Anya talking with someone from another team — and even if she started dating the ex, that’s something Cordelia and her coworkers would need to handle professionally. You need to call that out and ask them to remember that workplace rules are what apply when they’re at work, even if they might have different expectations of people in their personal lives.)
Back to Anya. If she wants to leave the team, you shouldn’t stand in the way of that. You can suggest she give it a little time before deciding, to see if things change now that you’re aware of the situation, but ultimately if she’s not happy, leaving might be the right choice for her — and that’s true even if we think she should give her current team more of a chance. If it’s really true that changing jobs before two years would reflect badly on her internally, you should explain how that’s normally perceived so she has all the information and can make the right decision for herself — but she does get to decide it herself, even if you think she’s making the wrong choice.
I do wonder if some of your concern is about feeling you will have failed if she leaves over this … and I do think there’s an important lesson here about paying more attention to team dynamics and how new hires are adjusting, and being more proactive about helping them become part of the team. For example, knowing that you have a close-knit team that might be hard for newcomers to break into, can you look for opportunities to connect your next new hire with people individually? Even just “Willow, could you take Anya to coffee and tell her about your experience with X?” and similar suggestions can really change people’s experience in this regard.
But meanwhile, you can’t change what’s already happened and Anya gets to do what she decides is right for her.
