Walking the Line Between Support and Honesty
This morning I was talking to a newly-returned (prodigal?) co-worker trying to bring him up to speed on what's happening in the area that he's been asked to focus on. Answer: a lot in the year he's been absent, but nothing he can't pick up on. What turned out to be at least as important as what's happened (to me, at least) was what the mood was after a year of absence.
It's vastly different, and while I didn't want to curb his enthusiasm, I didn't want him to charge off and find that his ideas, while good, were met with a load of screaming folks with torches and pitch-forks. And at the same time, I didn't want to rain on his new parade. There had to be a middle-ground. Someplace where I could tall him that it's important to consider the moods and feelings of the folks doing the work, and letting them determine his choices.
I tried to point out that while his ideas are good, and possible even necessary, there are other things that would be much less volatile and serve just as important a purpose to the overall effort - just not have as immediate a payoff as the more volatile ones. Part of this has to be tempered with the fact that we're in the final days of a year-long push that has left many people at wits end. Work on something they need, but aren't yet critically dependent on, and in a few months when things have settled down, and you've delivered a little bit of help to the crew, you can approach the things they have depended on for the last year. Hopefully, by then emotions will have settled down and even they will understand the problems in the existing system.
It's tough, and I don't envy him his position. But I wanted to help him so that he didn't get too frustrated right away and have a bad feeling before he even really gets started.