Leading&Following

Problem 1: Fear of saying 'No' OR Reluctance to share bad news

Description: When an engineer is assigned a new task on top of what he's already doing, the engineer will accept it irrespective of his ability to finish it because of the fear of saying 'no'. And after accepting the new task, if it is really something he can't chew, he might not go ahead and tell the lead that he will not be able to finish it within the given time/resources etc - because of the reluctance to deliver bad news.

Suggested Solutions:

To the leader:

Before assigning a task to an engineer, the lead should really do his homework about the workload, skills and attitude of the engineer. After that's done, when the task is assigned to the engineer the lead should encourage her to ask more questions about the task itself. The lead can also request the engineer to go through the assigned task once and meet with her again after, say, an hour and see if she has understood what needs to be done and ask more questions like 'what do you think as the most difficult thing in implementing this task' or 'can you think of a similar thing somebody else has implemented so that we start with that?' etc.

To the follower:

Never ever hide a bad news. You are doing injustice for you, the person who trusted you and handed over the job and the company overall. By giving timely information you not only save your trust but help the lead to figure out alternatives. When a task is given to you, and if you don't understand the complexity, always ask for extra time before accepting the task. Normally if think alone for half an hour before accepting a task, most of the delays and bad news can be avoided. You can even go back and tell that the specific problem in hand can be divided and you will be able to finish part of that. There's nothing wrong in it. Remember, you will be evaluated by how much you have completed rather than how much you have agreed to.