The Workplace Coach

It seems to me that much of the focus of HR in dealing with workplace issues is often punitive. It’s all about investigating incidents, collecting evidence, formulating allegations and searching for breaches of the code of conduct or xyz policy. It’s about hitting people with some sort of sanction for not following procedure, issuing a first and final warning, putting a note on their permanent record. Sometimes it’s about exiting people from the organisation.

Does it really have to be like this though?

What if we looked at everything that is going wrong in the workplace, everything that is not working, every poor decision, every fumbled conversation, every clumsy attempt to manage people and issues and obstacles as an opportunity for development?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m no bleeding heart that thinks that we should all just get along and then everything will be peace, love and mung beans. I do think though that many of the workplace issues that come up might be dealt with in a different way and ideally, if we were proactive enough, if we were all brave enough, we might be able to head some of them off before they develop into something that might warrant the big stick approach.

There is a common thread through almost all of the workplace issues that I have to deal with. Can you guess what it is?

It’s a relationship that was either never formed, or has been broken.

It’s poor communication.

It’s a lack of trust… a lack of respect… a lack of engagement.

And do you know who is largely responsible for this deficit?

In most cases it’s the manager. The manager who was never taught how to manage people, the manager who is perhaps modelling their own experiences over the years with managers of varying capability. The manager who sees people in their team as temporary or disposable. The manager who treats their people as ‘resources’ rather than as human beings.

The good news is that this problem is 100% fixable.

Managers can get better at managing people. In fact, with practice they can get great at managing people. The first step is for the manager to start from the basic premise that almost nobody wakes up in the morning and says to themselves “I’m going to do a shit job at work today”.

The next consideration for the manager then is “If my people WANT to do a good job, what can I do today to facilitate that?” The concept of servant leadership is not new… it’s just rarely practiced.