EU Leadership Magazine EU_EssLeadershipMag_Issue42_King_Cover | Page 34

NEW dōTERRA DIAMOND
Kristin Worley
CINCINNATI, OHIO, USA
C O M I N G
Together as a Team
K
ristin has a story to tell, and it isn’t
an easy one. Her story is about a
leader with whom she had a strained
relationship, putting a burden on the
whole team. “I’d like to tell this story
because I feel like a lot of leaders
struggle with what we struggled with,”
she says. “We have come a long way and
are over the hill. In the end, I think we
both lifted each other.”
Kristin and this leader knew each
other and had what she describes as a
negative history prior to being on the
same team. “We wanted to make it work
but didn’t have the skills to do that.”
Communication was poor between
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dōTERRA ESSENTIAL LEADERSHIP I JAN | FEB | MAR 2020
them, and Kristin struggled to fi gure
out how to manage the situation. They
decided not to work with each other,
but what could she do to avoid creating
confl ict on the team? Anytime they were
in the same room, there was tension.
“This created a huge divide within our
team. People weren’t sure if they should
talk to me or to her. It caused a lot of
confusion, and all along we thought we
were handling everything okay.”
After one stress-fi lled retreat, this leader
called and said it was time to address
the situation. “We fi nally got on the
phone together, and each of us said,
‘These are the things that are bothering
me. I want to let it go, and I’m sorry
for the things I did to you.’ We both
realized we could either be each other’s
greatest enemy or strongest ally,” Kristin
explains. “It chokes me up even to talk
about this because we have both come
along way to where we are today.”
Kristin hears about problems like this on
other teams. “The reality is things like this
happen, but no one wants to talk about
them. I never wanted to tell anyone
about it because I didn’t want to be the
person with the issues,” she says. Once
they started working it out together, the
two of them talked to their respective
teams about the situation. They decided
Images by by Adam
Julie Johnson
Images
and Keli Photography