Stop Pissing Me Off What to Do When the People You Work with Drive You Crazy (16 page)

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08.
  The Managers’ Bill of Rights

change standards and assignMents

Employees frequently balk and become difficult when you try to change standards or assignments: “My previous manager didn’t make me do that.” You may be tempted to reply,

“Do I look like your previous manager?” and perhaps you should, but the bottom line is, you can have your own standards, as long as they’re legal, ethical, and consistent with your organization’s policies.

One manager, Sarah, came to me when she acquired a new team that had very little discipline. Their last manager had been lax. Thus, projects were turned in late, workers pointed fingers at each other, people worked odd hours or not at all, and gossip ran rampant. “How can I convince them to change when they’ve had such bad management?” she cried.

I advised Sarah that she could and should start fresh. They won’t like the change and it won’t be easy, I told her, but you need to make it clear that things will be different going forward and you must lay out specific expectations. One easy way to do this, if you’re a new supervisor or gain new employees who appear to be difficult, is to have one-onones with each employee in which you set forth your goals, standards, and objectives. Then send them away and have them e-mail back to you their understanding of what you said. Trust me, you’ll be depressed. You’ll think that human communication is hopeless, because what comes back will be different from what you think you said. You can, however, use this as the opportunity to correct their misconceptions. It also demonstrates that you bent over backward in trying to communicate with them and be fair. After they’ve been working for you for a while, you should continue to have these one-on-ones with them. Again, ask them to e-mail back their understanding of what you said.

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Again, you’ll despair, and think they’re speaking a different language. However, if you persevere in correcting these miscommunications, you’ll have an excellent documentation trail in which they did most of the work. This also makes writing performance reviews much easier.

reQuire excellence

Employees cannot get away with sloppy, substandard work. You have a right to insist on performance standards, and you should. As long as you’ve clearly explained what behavior (not attitude, or other vague term) you need from employees, they must conform to your standards.

employees’ responsibilities

Just as you have rights, your employees have responsibilities. They must:

n Show up for work on time

n Perform their jobs with reasonable care

n Work well with others

n Give their undivided loyalty to the company

If you have employees who are not doing these things, they’re not just difficult—they are failing to meet performance standards. You have a right to coach, counsel, and warn them. If they don’t shape up, you can put them on a performance improvement plan and ultimately terminate them if necessary.

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08.
  The Managers’ Bill of Rights

Managers’ responsibilities

Likewise, managers have the responsibility to:

n Give employees honest and specific performance feedback n Set expectations and standards

n Follow the laws and company policies

n Be honest and fair

n Document events

n Be open to employee feedback

The first five standards are based on the law; the last is not, but is very good management and will save you a world of hurt.
docuMenting and FeedBack

Of this list, the most difficult are documenting events and giving performance feedback. If you don’t learn these skills, managing difficult people will continue to be difficult. When you’re documenting or giving performance feedback, you should make your feedback and documentation specific and factual, not based upon your conclusions, biases, and assumptions. Here’s what I mean:

concluSionS

fActS

Your attitude sucks

You failed to answer the phone on time

five times and arrived late every day

You’re incompetent

You need to learn the new computer

program and take a class on project

management

You’re angry

You yel ed at a customer and slammed

the door

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The difficult people that you manage may not be able to change who they are, but they may change their behavior if you consistently coach and counsel them in the correct way. Most managers wimp out when it comes to giving their employees honest and specific feedback. You’re not doing them or the organization any favors if you do this, because they’ll never improve their performance and you’ll have the headache of dealing with a persistently difficult employee.

listening to FeedBack

Managers often don’t want to hear this: You’ll never be a successful manager unless you learn how to take feedback from your employees, including negative feedback. You may not like what they have to say, but there’s no way to improve your workplace without listening to employee complaints. For example, I was asked to conduct a team-building session for one of my manufacturing clients. We decided to do an employee survey to find out the issues. The main one was that the manager refused to hear negative news because she saw her team as “the best team ever.” It was an admirable sentiment; however, her attitude ensured that she didn’t hear things that she needed to hear, since everyone was afraid to bring her problems.

As a manager, you have certain legal and non-legal obligations. You aren’t legally required to listen to your employees’

feedback or complaints. However, it’s impossible to get your employees to face their own problem behavior if you won’t do the same.

Many of the other techniques in this book will work for managers dealing with difficult employees, but I hope that this chapter has helped you shore up your own sense that you do

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08.
  The Managers’ Bill of Rights

have a right to manage difficult employees effectively. In the next chapter, we’ll tackle those crabby clients.

your

relationship toolbox

How to Move froM PiSSed off to Powerful

PiSSed off

Powerful

Wimping out

Recognize that you are the boss

Failing to document poor

Asking the employees to e-mail back

performance

their understanding of your directives

Slacking off on your

Being responsible

responsibilities

Hiding your head in the sand

Listening to feedback

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09.

HOW TO AvOiD KiLLiNG OuTrAGEOuS

CLiENTS

Serving a royal pain in the ass.

It was one of those high-maintenance clients: Everyone has one or two. Calling with stupid questions, changing plans at the last minute, asking for advice and then ignoring my suggestions. The latest debacle had been that one of my trainers (Bernice) had been “brusque” with the assistant (Katie) of my client contact (Meredith). The backstory is that I and all of my eight trainers were royally fed up with Katie’s incompetence and slothful attitude. However, keeping in mind that my mantra is “the client is the client,” we had all sucked it up and done our duty. Bernice, in a fit of exasperation and having a bad day to boot, had unintentionally snapped at Katie over how she had messed up arranging Bernice’s travel plans yet once again. Meredith was calling to tell me that she never wanted Bernice to work at any of their locations again.

“Fine,” I muttered under my breath into the phone, “and you can add the rest of us to the list because we’re all fed up with her and you!”

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“What did you say?” Meredith croaked.

I took a deep breath, tried to calm down, and silently repeated to myself, “The client is always right . . . the client is always right . . . the client . . .”

stand your ground without losing the client

How do you negotiate with a client or customer when you know he or she is being unreasonable? Do you take a hard stand, immediately back down, or duck the issue entirely? Learning to manage difficult clients or customers is an important skill, and one you can master with practice.

With Meredith, for example, I knew that the immediate issue wasn’t the real issue. There was a backstory here for both of us, and like a good detective, my job was to find out what Meredith’s was, and skillfully reveal my own. I reminded myself that the real problem was not Katie versus Bernice (even though my natural fighter’s instinct was to go ahead and step into the ring and defend Bernice’s honor). Rather, it was about how Meredith and I were both feeling about deeper issues in the present moment, and how we were treating each other.

Just Breathe . . .

Normally, in a conflict with a client, I recommend that you take a time-out to cool down. However, there was no chance for that in this situation, as Meredith was live on the phone and I couldn’t think of a credible excuse to duck out. So instead, I started with empathy, always a good tack in any conflict if you can calm down enough to pull it off.

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09.
  How To Avoid Killing Outrageous Clients

“I am so sorry that Katie had this experience with Bernice,”

I said. “I’ve never had these kinds of complaints about her before. Most clients love her.”

I pressed further. “Perhaps we could have the two of them sit down and work this out?”

“No! Katie would be mortified; I want Bernice off this project!” said Meredith, now raising her voice. My own backstory at this point is that I really needed Bernice. I also needed a few minutes to calm down and sort out a strategy.

“Meredith, I’m sorry, I really can’t fully concentrate on this right now because I’m in the middle of another project. Please give me a minute to finish it up and I’ll call you back.”

Even though I’m sure that she was annoyed that I’d stopped her without resolving this matter, sometimes it’s more important to take a break and collect your thoughts. Though I risked her temporary annoyance, I thought that was better than saying something thoughtless that I’d live to regret. Many people seem to feel that a conflict needs to be resolved immediately when someone confronts them. Not true. A temporary retreat to mobilize your internal forces may be a much more skillful move.

I had, of course, ignored her very clear request to just drop Bernice, instead acting as if it was a problem to be sorted out. This is a tactful way to buy time, always a good option in any conflict, but especially one with a client. Sometimes, a bit of passive-aggressive behavior can save you!

turning adversaries into partners

Issues like this pop up in everyone’s life. It’s easy to start treating someone as an adversary when you want and need that

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 Pissing Me Off!

person to be your partner. In fact, many conflict specialists, myself included, recommend focusing on turning an
adversary
into a
partner—
viewing the
problem
as a common enemy to be jointly tamed. If you can imagine yourself on the same side as the client or customer and plop the problem on the opposite side of the table from the two of you, and, if you can convince the other person to go along, you’ll have a leg up.

Before you do that, you need to make the other person feel really heard, something everyone craves. Frequently, if you can hear what your client is complaining about, at both a superficial level as well as the deeper one, the problem either resolves itself or disappears.

After repeating the
partner, partner, listen, listen
mantra, I called Meredith back. “I’m sorry that I couldn’t focus before, but I can now. You have my complete attention. I am so sorry that you had to deal with this thing between Bernice and Katie. I know how busy you are and how difficult it’s been to find the personnel to staff this project. I’m sure you need this like a hole in the head.”