A difficult decision

Last Monday while driving home from the office, my boss called me. As she came to know that I was driving, she quickly said that she would like to speak to me once I reached home as it was not safe for me to take her call while driving, a valid reason I would say. Along the way, I was wondering what was so important that she could not wait until the next day to speak about.

After taking my bath and performing my prayer, I called her. It was about something that we had discussed before. To put things into perspective, I have 3 Team Leads and 35 team members reporting to me. Since May, I had to let 5 of my team members joined another unit due to operations expansion. 2 of them progressed on promotion. To make matter worse, I had 2 resignations in the team during the same period. Backfilling of the vacancies was challenging as the support from the resourcing department was far from satisfactory, the time ran faster than the replacement coming in.

Back to my boss, she was approaching me to get my agreement for the release of one my Team Leads to head a new unit. It was a good opportunity for the Team Lead to progress his career as it will be a promotional move. However, with him moving out, my dilemma has become unbearable since I would be losing a Team Lead apart from 7 team members whom I had already lost. After a lot of effort in building the team and stabilising operations within the past six months, I had to do some patching work to get new people in and build back the team dynamics.

However, I took a similar stand that I had made in letting go 5 of my team members earlier, that was to allow them to gain exposure for their career progression. This particular Team Lead had almost reached his retirement. He was senior in service and age compared to me, nonetheless he had been my loyal Team Lead and provided me tremendous support during the short six months working under me. I immediately agreed to the proposal and quickly shared my reorganisation plan in preparation for his departure. My boss agreed totally with me as she had always been due to the rapport that we have.

Deep inside, I was so happy for the Team Lead and my conscience was clear. Do good unto others as you would like others to do good unto you kept ringing in my ear.