Responding to Conflict Anthony

A Mystery Meeting

You supervise a team at a manufacturing company in the Midwest. Roger, the person you report to, just sent you a Teams chat:

Weir, RogerToday 10:45AM Anthony, something big has come up. We’ll need a full team meeting ASAP to discuss. We’ll figure out where, though I think where we had the holiday party would work. More later.

Flummoxed, you decide to wait on that until you hear more. Then you realize that your boss sent the message, possibly unintentionally, to the entire team. You decide to go through each message before you respond.

Teams Chat

Sturgis, RoseToday 10:48AM What is this? Never mind, it’s not like my opinion matters.

Evans, BruceToday 10:48AM ROSE YOUR OPINION MATTERS

Willow, IbramToday 10:49AM This is weird. I’m at the office today and ran into Kathy at the water cooler. (Remember when that was a thing?) Anyway, I wish I’d asked her what was going on. Is Rog leaving the company?

Evans, BruceToday 10:49AM Why do you say that? WHAT DO YOU KNOW? What does everybody else think about this?

Timm, PatriciaToday 10:49AM I think I hope we’re just meeting virtually. You all know how far I live from the office, and I don’t want to drive an hour each way to a meeting that ends up being 15 minutes.

McMillan, KevinToday 10:52AM I just saw this. Is there an email that went out about this? I’m still not on all the distribution lists, so I’m probably behind the curve. I’m open to meeting wherever and however; I’ll just defer to everyone else.

Mai, TaylorToday 10:52AM There’s an email thread about this too. Email me if you want to be on it; I know some people don’t like email, but Dishear doesn’t like Teams.

Evans, BruceToday 10:54AM SHOULDN’T WE ALL BE ON ONE PLATFORM?

Washington, BerniceToday 10:54AM I hope we meet in person! I get your reluctance, Patricia, but I so miss chatting with people! Plus, I never get face time with Roger.

Evans, BruceToday 10:55AM FACE TIME FOR THE WIN!

Done at least with the Teams thread, you’re almost ready to respond to everyone. But then you see a notification on your screen that someone has left you a voice mail.

Hi! I see all the messages in email and Teams and I’m wondering what’s really going on. Is Roger really leaving? Either way, I’ll put my two cents in and say that I’m really hoping we can avoid an on-site meeting. I think it’s important to meet ASAP and I really don’t want to sit around for a lot of unnecessary yapping. Sorry if that sounds judgmental!

What Email Thread?

Ugh, that’s right, there’s an email thread too. You go to your inbox to see what else is going on with this.

Inbox – (14)

From: Mai Taylor

So does anybody know what’s going on? I don’t like this. You know what a message like that is always about, right?

From: Bruce Evans

What?

From: Mai Taylor

LAYOFFS.

From: Patricia Timm

What?? When?? Oh, jeez, I can’t take another round of these!

From: Bruce Evans

UGH!!! NOW WHAT??

From: Bernice Washington

Whoa, whoa. How do you know this? What are you talking about?

From: Rose Sturgis

Please stop spreading rumors. This is not productive.

From: Mai Taylor

It’s not a rumor. There’s a meeting that nobody is willing to tell us anything about and it’s insane.

From: Rose Sturgis

How is that not a rumor?

From: Mai Taylor

Oh, so you know there aren’t any layoffs?

From: Bruce Evans

Could someone just tell me WHEN THE MEETING IS?

From: Rose Sturgis

Calm down, Bruce. Nobody knows.

From: Bruce Evans

Oooh, Rose, you’re so hot when you get all I’m-the-boss-around-here.

From: Mai Taylor

Bruce, not appropriate.