The Workplace Coach

The workplace will present you with a number of decision points throughout the day.  Some of these will be small decisions, and some will be big decisions which impact other people, organisational outcomes or future direction.  Of all the various options you could choose, how do you know which is the better option? How do you make the ‘right’ decision?

I’m not talking about an ethical framework for decision making here, although you might find it useful to have a quick read of this article from The Markkula Centre for Applied Ethics. I am talking about making the right decision for whatever your longer-term objective might be.  I know this sounds a little vague so let me give you an example based on some recent work I was doing for a client. 

Here is the scenario.

A junior employee puts in a complaint about their boss.  The boss has inadvertently upset the junior employee with a bit of a reprimand that was delivered in what was perhaps not the most sensitive or empathetic way. To add insult to injury, when the junior employee apologised for her error while also asking for a little more consideration next time, the boss failed to acknowledge her own part in the drama or that she might have dealt with the situation in a more constructive way.   

So, we have a junior employee who is upset and feels like their boss either a) doesn’t care about her feelings, or b) doesn’t have the emotional intelligence to recognise when they have done something insensitive.  The circumstances haven’t permitted the two to sit down and talk it out, but there has been an email exchange in which the boss continued to miss the mark and further escalate the already hurt feelings of the junior employee.

And now, having received the complaint from the junior employee, the organisation needs to decide what to do. There is always the option of doing nothing and hoping the problem goes away but that rarely works out, nothing good ever comes from sticking your head in the sand. The organisation decided to proactively address the problem, which is great. 

There were two pathways that the organisation could take here. 

They could determine that the issue was a performance and capability problem with the boss and address it through coaching or some other development process.  The goal here would be to help the boss better understand the impact of her communication style, and to adopt a more constructive approach to her interpersonal relationships at work.   

Or they could decide to seek resolution through a formal grievance and misconduct process.  The outcome of this process, if misconduct was substantiated, would be that the boss gets hit with a big stick and told to sharpen up or else. This is quite a bit of a process, with investigators, formal interviews and witness statements, complainants and respondents, and all the legal bells and whistles. It takes considerable time and puts quite a bit of strain on everyone.

You guessed it.  They opted for the formal grievance and misconduct process on the grounds that the junior employee, who had been looking for some empathy and understanding from her boss, was now so worked up about not getting what she needed that she was now throwing around accusations of ‘bullying and harassment’.  This phrase sends shivers down the spines of your human resources people so best if we take it very very seriously.  

I appreciate that there is a lot of detail missing here but the point I’m trying to make is that there was an error in judgement made by the organisation in terms of the best way to deal with the situation.  The first consideration ought to have been “What outcome are we looking for here, long term?”. This would have resulted in the realisation that we want to a) repair the relationship between these two employees so that they can continue to work amicably together, and b) we want to help the boss improve her communication skills and leadership behaviours so that she might become a more effective leader.

Instead of taking the adversarial pathway, there was a missed opportunity to adopt a more developmental approach to solving this problem.  Instead of looking to repair the relationship, the decision to pursue a misconduct process has effectively destroyed any chance of these two employees ever working well together. On top of that, they now have a thoroughly disengaged senior leader in the organisation who is aggrieved about being treated in this way.   

The moral of this sad and sorry saga is when faced with a tricky situation, pause and consider the longer-term objective.  Is my decision going to help or hurt the organisation?  Is there a better option than the one I am considering?  That’s where The Workplace Coach comes in. 

If you find yourself struggling with a workplace dilemma, a difficult or complex decision that relates to leadership or management of people, then give us a call. Leverage our extensive experience working with many different organisations, and we will work with you to develop the best solution for your organisation.     

The Workplace Coach