Unfortunately there are no directions that fall out of
the womb with a newborn child, and most of us learn to be good parents through
trial and error. Managing people is much the same. When you hire or promote
your first foreman, salesperson and office administrator, there are no
directions with that addition.
Unfortunately there are no directions that fall
out of the womb with a newborn child, and most of us learn to be good parents
through trial and error. Managing people is much the same. When you hire or
promote your first foreman, salesperson and office administrator, there are no
directions with that addition. Learning to be a trial-and-error manager can be
quite expensive and, unlike parenting, you may not have your parents or friends
to turn to for guidelines. Here are some founding principles and guidelines
that can help you through this process.
1. Employee Mentality vs. Owner Mentality: Don’t confuse employee mentality with
owner mentality. Your employees are employees, not business owners. They don’t
think like you. However, you can train them to improve their thinking and be
cognitive of what their job success would look like. As frustrating as it may
be, they are never going to be you.
2. Hire work ethic, teach skill: Many of your employee frustrations revolve
around work ethic issues such as tardiness, haphazardness, poor attitudes, etc.
Attitude and work ethic tend to be developmental values our parents teach us.
Most of these skills are ingrained into people prior to their teen years. Look
for stability and attitude when hiring.
3. Structure is a good thing: Folks sometimes confuse structure with the
military or government environments where everything must be done by the rules
and inefficiency blossoms. Intelligent structure is a good thing and helps
performance. It helps folks stay organized and results in fewer errors and
mistakes.
4. Hire slowly, terminate quickly: The employee you fire never keeps you up at
night and once it is done; everyone wonders why it was not done years ago. Do a
better job of interviewing and finding the right people. When people go sour
and you have warned and tried to work with them, terminate the
relationship.
5. There is no magic compensation or bonus system: Managing people is a pain
and there is a tendency to substitute bonuses, commissions and other pay
schemes for sound management. No matter how you pay people, you still have to
manage them.
6. Terminate attitude problems, train skill
issues: Non-performance tends to fall into two categories: skill problems (the
employee can’t do it) and attitude problems (the employee won’t do it). Skill
problems center on training and information. Attitude problems are about
identification, potential correction and termination. Attitude problems can
sometimes be confused with skill issues. For example, an employee who is
uneducated and has poor handwriting might disguise this by calling “paperwork a
waste of time.” Always ask questions when dealing with an attitude problem and
try to get employees to offer their own solutions. They know they are late to
work and what time they should be at work; lecturing them rarely brings a
change in behavior. Instead try, “You are late. We need you here on time, what
can be done in the future to correct this?”
7. Stick to the facts: Attitude, quality, and other issues can be difficult to
describe. Your 15-year old son’s definition of doing a good job of cleaning up
his room is probably quite a bit different than your definition of cleaning up
his room. Be specific about the performance issues you expect and be specific
when those expectations are not met.
8. Focus on behavior, not personalities: We all are different and have diverse
personalities. Some of us are talkers, others listeners. Some of us thrive on
chaos and conflict, others avoid it. It is unrealistic to think you and each of
your employees will always get along. Your role is to focus on employee behavior,
not to change an employee’s personality. For example, my role is not to make
you want to come to work every day but rather my role is make sure you do come
in on time and are there to work. If we have a good work environment, great,
but that is still not going to force each and every one of your employees to
become a disciple of the “I love my job” club.
9. Set goals and monitor results: Everyone needs to know where they are going.
Employees need both short-term and long-term targets. Short-term targets should
revolve around job performance and learning skills. Long-term goals are more
career path oriented and a little trickier. Don’t make promises you can’t keep
but keep folks happy by establishing what success looks like in their
job.
10. Pre-job communication vs. post-job communication: No matter how hard you
try, sometimes post-job performance discussions can be seen as criticism. Going
over and asking for job input prior to the job starting is much more positive
than asking why something did or did not happen after the
fact.
11. Fire with honor: When it comes time to get rid of people, keep it simple.
It does no good to get into “if you only did this” kind of stuff. Document the
non-performance issues to keep things legal and simply let them go.
12. Offer hope but not optimistic denial: With 24-hour negative news challenges
and other issues, we all need hope. We need to know that we are doing the right
thing and moving in the right direction. Hope is not denial. Hope is to wish
for something with the expectation of fulfillment. Denial is the refusal to
acknowledge an expectation that is not going to come true.