Asked to Contribute To Team Event

manpreet Best Answer 3 years ago

Recently my firm organized a holiday decorating contest as a friendly competition between teams. I am an employee, but my direct manager is offshore. A large majority of my work is spent with a team that asked me to be part of their team. A collection was taken, I contributed. When it came to brainstorming, I contributed some ideas that became the central theme. On the day I brought in home made bake goods. However when I saw the display it featured a photo of every team member (including non-employee contractors) but me. When they went out and got props they got them for all team members again but me.

I'll live, but I feel this is a kick in the teeth. Not only did I contribute to this effort (time, creativity and financial) I have been complimented on the work I have done for this team. What can I do? Note that the manager of this team contributes to my performance review

manpreet 3 years ago

Start by assuming it wasn't intentional -- maybe somebody said "collect pictures of the team" and somebody else went and got pictures of actual team members, not thinking about the context. Communication is imperfect and people goof.

So the first thing to do is to simply ask, as soon as you notice the omission:

Hey Bob, great idea about including the pictures. I notice mine's missing -- what do we need to do to get mine in there too?

Notice that I didn't say to ask "why was I excluded?". Instead, take it as given that you should be there and this was an implementation error. Then ask how to fix it.

If Bob is reasonably astute, he might figure out the problem with the props on his own after you bring up the pictures. Whether it makes sense to ask about the props depends on how important they are and how hard it would be to get another.