Build Your Best Workplace Now

Build Your Best Workplace Now

How often do we ask ourselves, “How do I create the best possible workplace where people wake up in the middle of the night disappointed it is not time to go to work yet?” Now that you have finished laughing consider the ramifications of the question. For most of us the answer starts with environmental satisfiers – the tangibles. The actual answer lies with motivators – the intangibles – individual leader behavior, the level of individual engagement, and the ability of people to manage stress, frustration, and conflict in the workplace. As Dr. Henry Cloud as reflected, leaders are ridiculously in charge. They get in results from the people on their teams what they create or allow. Once we embrace that idea, we can start to tackle the tough issues that are preventing leaders from creating lasting performance and success in their organizations.

One of the greatest hurdles to success in the workplace is dysfunctional employees. The sad fact for whatever reason, every work office has someone or group of individuals that hamper the productivity of your workplace environments. Try as we may, even the best screening procedures prevents catching people that will be disruptive, and we often don’t see this behavior until after we hire them. Here is a great adage to remember - hire to value not to technical skill. Be slow to hire and fast to fire.

The sad fact about dysfunctional people is that they rarely coachable or teachable. Human behavior research shows us that functional environments will become dysfunctional as a result of disruptive employees. Rarely if ever does the opposite occur. This is because functional people, in an attempt to be the rational individuals they are, will placate the behavior of dysfunctional individuals to try and create a sense of peace or unity. Dysfunctional people rarely if ever change on their own accord because they don’t think anything is wrong with them or their behavior. They lack the essential skills of self-awareness, self-management and collaboration that prevent them from changing on their own.

Sadly, if you try to challenge their status quo, they will erupt—especially when you decide to create a culture of accountability. The single best tactic is to remove them from the work place or to pressure them into a choice: change or leave. The inability to directly deal with their disruptive behavior will be a major obstacle in preventing you from creating the best workplace possible. The longer retain an individual who is not coachable or teachable in behavior skill, the longer you allow them to undermine the technical skill performance of their team members. You get what you create or what you allow in performance of your team members. You allow a proverbial “jerk at work” to mess with the brains of their team members and they will mess with performance too.

Energy Better Spent 

Don’t misunderstand this point –The Frisina Group and The Center for Influential Leadership believes strongly in the ability of performance coaching and development to achieve optimal performance outcomes. Providing resources and training to people with the right attitude will help them learn and grow, allowing them to be highly productive. But we spend far too much time trying to coach the negative attitudes of problem employees than we do with those employees who want to improve their skills, who desire to contribute to the greater good of the organization, but who simply lack the requisite skill or knowledge to do so effectively.

Virtually all the advice on getting people to engage their work and increase their productivity is predicated on a false assumption, namely that any form of outside influence will result in lasting internal change, stimulating pride, purpose, motivation and a positive attitude. Unlike animals, human beings have the power to choose inappropriate behavior and substandard performance, and willfully do so, even in the face of overwhelming negative consequences. Consequently, the current model for how to manage employees is ineffective. We need to focus our leadership energy into the high- and mid-level performers rather than investing ourselves in those who are choosing substandard attitudes and behaviors.

We would like to believe that the individuals we hire already have an understanding of the values and ethics required to be successful in our workplaces. Unfortunately, some people are working only for their paycheck regardless of their capability to perform tasks to standards and regardless of their pitiful attitude and toxic behavior toward others.

I love the quotation from Ghandi, “be the change you want to see in the world.”  I absolutely believe leaders must lead by example, in their own behavior, to create monumental impact and culture change. However, it works with rational, functional, productive employees. Dysfunction only breeds further dysfunction. Toxic employees who never desire to alter unproductive and harmful behavior lack the ability and desire to change. Even under the best leaders and best circumstances.

No amount of encouragement, incentive, coaching, counseling, positive reinforcement, discipline, or “how-positive-I-am-in-my-belief” that they can change has any impact on these people. Until they choose to become a different person, a more positive person, a more caring person, a less selfish person, a less bitter person, a less angry person, a less “the world owes me” kind of person, we are left with little choice but to remove them from our organizations as quickly as possible. When we do, teamwork will improve within and across department lines. There will be an immediate release of creativity and prudent risk taking and innovation to improve processes and drive performance to higher levels.

If you think for a minute that you have a responsibility to rehabilitate these people, or that recruiting and training a new hire to replace them will be too costly, you are wrong. Unless you have a willingness to hold them accountable, they will remain in your organization far too long, requiring hours of documentation for your human resources department and labor attorney. Eventually, when you are compelled to fire these people, you very well may still face a lawsuit because you have given them time to build an employment history they will use against you in court.

Be the Leader People Want to Follow

In today’s professional world, people are craving effective leadership. Middle level managers and their team members are overburdened and uninspired by individuals holding titled positions of authority providing neither effective leadership nor effective management. The issue is not change resistance. Peter Senge said it well, “People do not resist change. They resist being changed.” Knowledge based workers desire true leadership that capitalizes on collaboration, communication, and connection to accomplish their work related to clear goals and objectives.

One of the strongest ways an influential leader can connect with others is by practicing the principle of followership. Followership is a leader’s willingness to listen to those for whom they are responsible. “Listening to me” is the highest rated attribute for an effective leader by direct reports. Effective listening creates a connection between the leader and the legitimate needs, wants, and desires of team members. By paying attention to members of the team, through active listening, a leader gains insight and information to the factors that drive performance. Peter Drucker said, “Everybody writes books about leadership. Somebody ought to write a book about followership, because for every leader there are a thousand followers.” Although followership is an age-old concept and several books have been written about it, the concept is still a novelty to many in titled positions of authority.

People do not quit their jobs. They quit their leader – the boss. Ineffective leaders breed ineffective followers and performance and productivity suffer as a result. With a positive, emotional connection with your people you send a clear message that you are interested and invested in what your people experience on a daily basis. People in general do not follow just anyone or follow out of the goodness of their heart. They need good reasons—a motivation – to follow. You are responsible for giving them those reasons by understanding what they want and need to fulfill their work requirements and contribute to a mutual and beneficial meaningful purpose in their work. During the downturn in the so-called bubble, many leaders have acquired what the professional literature is calling learned helplessness. Everything is negative, we have a “new normal” and the positive and optimistic qualities of leadership seem to be caught in this self-fulfilling prophecy of scarcity and mediocrity. As leaders infect this mindset into their teams, productivity and other performance factors wane. The team members get caught in a brain-funk - simply do whatever the leader says to keep their jobs and stay out of trouble with the boss.

The reality is that inwardly, people still want to make a difference at work. They want leaders who will give them control and emancipate them to do their jobs and solve problems at their level. For some of you this may seem like a radical idea –giving control away - and a deviation from the historical “top-down” driven approach to leadership. However, if you want to connect, if you desire to become an influential leader, you have to begin to change from the outdated and ineffective practices of the past that limit your leadership capacity. As leaders we should be asking ourselves daily, “Does my workplace environment foster the behavior dynamics to drive performance to the highest levels?” Understanding the elements of what endears our team members to us is essential to understanding the great impact that connection has in driving performance in the workplace. That’s worth thinking about today.