[hqsolomo]

>Yes, I agree, but he's bringing that from prior experience, not our company...

That's exactly what I'm saying! I don't think he's guarded because of you guys but I do think he's guarded. It's gonna take effort to get that guard down- especially if he's been formally punished for asking for help before (again not saying you guys have done this to him- just that it's possible it happened to him at some prior point in his life, like childhood or a previous job). I see this less as a "hey man, not asking for help is hurting us" and more of "what can I do to support you better?"

Especially if he spent 2 weeks on an urgent issue- was everyone else so swamped that they couldn't coach homeboy? Was this not actually an urgent issue? I would ask the team "how did we even get here? How did we let this task slip so far without progress? What can we change today to prevent this from happening again?" Note that I'm explicitly calling out the entire team, because at the end of the day a teammate struggling and not getting help is a whole team issue even if said teammate never asked for help.

Personally I think this can be solved with coaching for the whole team ideally but at the very least, have homeboy job shadow/pair program with a mentor for a while. If you guys aren't Agile I'd see about adopting those principles- 2 weeks of silent churn on a 2-day issue feels like a much bigger problem to me than someone not asking for help when they need it- either that wasn't a 2-day issue (just because YOU could do it in 2 days doesn't mean EVERYONE could) or it was a classic case of "calling something urgent to get people to act on it but not treating it like it's actually urgent." Not a knock to you guys at all- "storming" is a healthy part of team-building! As you all develop more as a team problems like these will be a thing of the past.