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Inconsiderate Actions Incompetence E-mail Communication Assertiveness Feedback

I am supposed to coordinate my work with a person in the publicity department of our company. She works in another city, and I have left her several telephone and e-mail messages, but she hasn't returned any. On my last call, I got her voice mail and it indicated she is out of town and to call her assistant. When I called her assistant, her voice mail said that she herself is out of town too. What should I do now?



Your publicity department is about to get some bad publicity. There could be any number of reasons for her failure to reply to your messages, but there is not one excuse. Even if she is totally unavailable for the next hundred days, she needs to let you know. The problem is that she does not even seem to know where her assistant is.

Since the publicity person has gone private on you, there are two people for you to contact. The first is your own manager. He or she needs to know why you have not been able to coordinate with the publicity person. Perhaps your manager can pick up the phone and give the publicity person a wake up call. If this does not happen, then perhaps your manager could give the publicity person's boss a heads-up call.

At the same time, if your manager feels that you should handle the matter, then you should call the publicity person's boss. When you make contact, do not go into attack mode. Rather, tell this individual that you need his or her help, and then relate the facts of the situation. If this boss has even a modicum of managerial skills, he or she will get the publicity person to move on this hot story.




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