The Workplace Coach

It’s the easiest thing in the world to manage a team of talented high performers who all get along with each other, but in my experience these teams are essentially rainbow coloured unicorns.  I won’t deny their existence, but very few of us have ever seen one. 

Now when we talk about employees behaving badly, there is a scale of poor behaviour. Let’s say that a 1 is a minor annoyance, 5 means something formal needs to happen, and 10 is borderline criminal.  I’ve been dealing with people in the workplace for a long time (more than two decades), and I have to say that I’ve probably only come across a dozen really bad eggs in all that time. In most cases the complaints that come through from employees and/or managers will be somewhere between a 1 and 3, with the occasional 4.

 Lieutenant General David Lindsay Morrison once famously said “The standard you walk by is the standard you accept“.  I want you to pause and ask yourself, as a manager, how willing are you to address issues in your team?  Have you ever let bad behaviour slide?

The reason I ask, is that in my experience very few managers are prepared to address poor behaviours directly, preferring instead to have HR deal with it through a formal process.  And that’s okay, except that what this does is escalate the issue.  Resolution is likely going to take some time, will potentially be quite adversarial, and may result in some relatively minor but significantly disengaging sanction being applied, such as a ‘formal reprimand’.  In other words, a formal process is a punitive one, rather than being developmental or remedial, and will often create a disengaged, disgruntled employee who then sticks around to be a long-term problem for the manager and the rest of the team. 

Quite early in my career I worked with a battle hardened ex-union industrial relations advisor whose approach was always “If in doubt boot them out, let them fight to get back in”.  I’m not suggesting this is the best way to go, but I do tend to agree that if you are going to go the formal process with a view to imposing some kind of sanction, then anything short of termination of employment is just going to create more problems than it solves.  This same old warhorse also authored a handy little guide for managers titled “Sacking people made fun and easy” which was really just a procedural how-to to ensure that procedural fairness and natural justice were applied to the process.

The good news though is that dealing with poor behaviour does not have to be hard, difficult or uncomfortable for anyone.  Pick any scenario, it could be someone is always late to meetings, or they speak rudely to a customer, or they yell at a colleague, or they leave the kitchen in a mess.  Whatever it is, it’s important that it get it dealt with immediately, and with the lowest level of formality possible. How about we call this recalcitrant employee Dave?

You observe or are told about the behaviour.  You call Dave into your office, and you say something along the lines of “Hi Dave.  Listen I need to talk to you about [INSERT BEHAVIOUR].  Now, we don’t do that here, and quite frankly I need you to do better.  I expect that everyone in the team will do [whatever it is that you expect them to do], so I want you to tell me right now if you can’t do that.  Okay great, look let’s leave it at that for now and I don’t want to have to talk to you about this again.  If we do have this conversation again there will be consequences, do you understand? Excellent, okay thanks for the chat.” 

Then you make a file note of your conversation, you send Dave an email outlining your expectations going forward, his agreement to meet those expectations, and the possible consequences of him not meeting them.  And then you let it go because you just solved the problem with no fuss and no muss and Dave will respect you all the more for being upfront and informal about it.  

If you would like help with managing behaviours in the workplace, even if it’s just a quick consult to test your thinking, we are here for you at The Workplace Coach.