Vicki Anderson

I am appalled to hear about the latest victim of workplace bullying in Virginia where a man committed suicide because of a bullying boss. What is so crazy to me is that his coworkers knew about it and were saddened by it, but it took too long for the administration to do anything about it. The man made 17 calls to administration in the week leading up to the suicide. We do not know what action the administration planned to take, just that it is too late.

The problem with this situation is that it not only affects the person being bullied, but the coworkers as well. It is painful to watch it happening to someone else, wondering if it will happen to you. The tension can be enormous. You want the other person to speak up, but they are often so fearful of losing their job that they just try to measure up the best they can and take it. Unfortunately, this is usually about power, not performance, and unless someone else steps in or the person being bullied steps up, the bullying will not stop.

The tension created in these situations usually results in less performance overall because people are operating out of fear instead of working for continuous improvement and customer satisfaction. Organizations that take care of employees first know that the employee will in turn take care of the customer, which will take care of the business.

Be ever vigilant for people who use their position to wield their power. The successful leaders know that it is the people they help to succeed who will make them look good. In order to do that, you must coach, teach, and grow your staff. This is not possible if you are driving them with a whip. Scared people don’t grow and they don’t look out for anyone but themselves.

Using consistent consequences takes a lot of effort on the part of a supervisor, but it pays big dividends in fewer disciplinary issues. People know their responsibility and what will happen if they decide not to live up to it. It is always advisable to set the stage correctly upfront by clearly communicating your expectations for their performance. Remember that not everyone has the same standards as you or the same priorities in the way they look at their work. If you want them to be on the same page as you, you have to tell them what your standards and priorities are. Here’s a sample approach to a common problem—employees leaving the breakroom a mess.

Have an employee meeting and ask for their help in keeping the breakroom clean. Impress to them that you are happy to provide this common space for their use, especially if you use it too. Since it is for the use of all, it is the responsibility of everyone to be good neighbors and help keep it clean. You expect people to throw away their trash and wipe up any messes they make. You will provide general cleaning service to help maintain the overall cleanliness. Let them know that if they choose not to be a good neighbor by leaving their food and trash lying around creating unsanitary conditions for others, you will remind them of their responsibility once. If you have to talk with them about it a second time, you will assume they have chosen not to live up to their responsibility for using the breakroom and are barred from using it again. Don’t make everyone suffer for the poor choices of a few. Ask people to help each other by politely encouraging each other to keep their area clean.

You may tell anyone who has been barred that they can be reinstated if they come to you and tell you what they will do to earn your trust again and use the facility appropriately. In other words, say that they are willing to take responsibility for their actions and understand the consequences.

Let’s be perfectly clear that threats are not appropriate when talking about consequences. I believe in giving people choices up front. When you tell people clearly what you expect from their performance, express your confidence in their ability to succeed and your willingness to provide resources to help them. Where it is appropriate, let them know what could happen if they don’t succeed. Consequences should start with follow up conversations to determine root causes for failures or lapses in judgment.

Supervisors play a key role in helping people make good choices in their behaviors, so use consequences wisely and consistently for consistent performance results.

I have been reading all the stories and comments running around about the upcoming changes for The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien and Jay Leno’s prime time cancellation. One common point brought out was that both men were put into different spots and their styles didn’t translate well enough to garner the audiences they had in their previous time slots.

I think this is often typical of personnel moves in all fields. You take an outstanding salesperson and make her a sales manager. She knows how to sell and has great people skills, but she doesn’t have leadership skills for coaching, delegating, and planning. She knows how to do, but not how to lead. The skills that made her successful in her previous slot won’t make her successful in her new slot.

Even though the new person wants the new role, there are new expectations that are not often communicated or coached, so when the failure occurs, senior management shakes its head and says, “It’s too bad. They had so much potential.”

Where is the coaching, the mentoring, and the support to make the person translate to the new role successfully? Has the new person been open to the coaching of others or has ego in their new role shut down that opportunity? I don’t know how much of this happened to Jay Leno or Conan O’Brien, but it is sad to see two successful comedians, each with a following and confidence from NBC, turn their new shows into ratings losses and hurt their reputations as well as NBC.

Whenever I talk to people about leadership there always seems to be comparisons with raising children. I guess it’s because we are all still kids at heart and the behaviors we learned as a child tend to stay with us as adults.

Just as you have to be consistently firm, yet loving with your children, you need to do the same with your employees. Children need some structure and they need to know their boundaries. The same is true for adults. The better the leader has maintained an appropriate structure and given people clear expectations, the more effective they tend to be. People can be allowed to use initiative and yet know they have a support available when needed.

When children misbehave they receive consequences of some sort to correct their behavior. When adults don’t do what they are supposed to do, I continue to find it amazing how often there are no consequences. There are a lot of wringing hands and griping about how the employee isn’t performing as expected, but nothing is done or said until the pattern has gone on so long that it is an ugly interaction.

Why is it that we cannot just give people simple feedback about whether they are doing the right work or not, whether they are behaving appropriately or not, or whether they are contributing to the organization or are being a drain? Ongoing feedback is a consequence that is welcome because it lets you know where you stand. It gives you the score. Ongoing feedback addresses issues when they are small, not waiting until they escalate.

Shouldn’t we treat those we lead as well as we treat our children? Don’t they deserve to know what we expect from them? And, don’t they deserve to have reinforcing and correcting consequences in real time, not “wait until your father gets home” mentality where the consequence is stored up for later?

How do I get people to do what I want? This is a universal question from supervisors. My answer is simple:

1) Ask for the outcomes you want.
2) Define clearly what the outcome looks like and why it is important
3) When you see people doing what you want, reinforce it. If they are not doing what you want, correct it immediately.

While this sounds so common sense, it is amazing how many people work with very general instructions from their supervisors. Most people know how to do a job if they have been trained properly, but they rarely know why they do it or what the expected outcome is. Alternatively, many people are told the outcome, but not the process of how to get there.

Being a supervisor today means responsibility for more people than you can truly take care of. I find it typical for people to supervise 30+ people. Under these circumstances, it is even more important that each communication be useful to both parties. That means knowing which information the person needs—process or outcome, or both.

Communicating your expectations clearly takes more time at the beginning, but it saves more time along the way and achieves more positive results. When assigning a job to an employee, use your time efficiently by clearly stating the outcome you desire. The more complex the task, the more important this becomes. However, even simple tasks are often assigned with vague instructions such as, “Get me a copy of the XYZ report when you have time.” The employee doesn’t know whether that means drop everything and do it now, do it by the end of the day, or do it in the next couple days. People generally want to please their supervisors. Give them information to do that.

If you want to achieve consistent results from employees, you must be consistent in your reinforcement. This is the element that takes more time, but has such a big payoff.

When you see people taking actions you want, tell them so. This doesn’t have to be a flowery speech. It can be a simple, “You’re on the right track,” or “Thanks for getting on that project so quickly,” or “Looks like you’ve made that correction we talked about yesterday.” You can also leave a post-it note or send an email.

When people go off-track, get them back on the right path quickly by clarifying your instructions and the outcomes you stated earlier. Make sure they have the resources to get the job done—that means people, knowledge, and tools. Let them know the impact their error has on the product or process so they know why you are correcting them. Give them useful information that will help them succeed, such as “When you don’t get that part sanded smooth enough the first time, it means the next person has to stop and fix it before they can do their part of the process. This causes delays and extra work for others. Please make sure you sand the parts smoothly enough that the next person can fit their part on easily.”

Like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz who had the power all along to go home if she chose, supervisors do not realize the power they hold in achieving the results they want. The majority of employees want to succeed, but they don’t know what the supervisor is looking for, so they try different things to get attention—sometimes the wrong things. You get consistently right behavior when you ask for what you want, define the details as necessary, and reinforce it when you see it.