Employees Make Their Own Rules

People make up their own rules. Typically, employees will change their job description or alter the way they should be doing their work. One of my examples is from a company that had a strong insight. I had a very tactical approach to selling. When I sat down with one of their salespeople, I was surprised how much he was doing things in a very cavalier and maverick way. I asked him why he wasn't following the company principles that had been tried and proven, and he began to share with me his discomfort, and that's just not the way he works.

I challenged the young man by saying, "Are you aware that you've actually changed the job description?" He kind of shrugged it off. I then asked him a very tough question, which was, "What are you going to do if your numbers go down, and you're not performing, and they find out you're actually not doing the job as expected?"

He began to have a worried look on his face. Well let's take the teller out of credit union. A teller often will tell you they've tried upselling and cross-selling. But quite frankly, they know their numbers really well. And if they need anything, they just ask. So the fact of the matter is, they will often change the way upselling and cross-selling is done. For example, wouldn't it be funny if we walked into one of our branches and had a teller literally look at a member and say, "Is there anything I, else I can do for you?" And typically a member, 99.9% of the time will say no so they can get out of the branch and go onto their next task for the day.

And the teller then yells, "I tried upselling and cross-selling. She didn't need anything." The fact of the matter is that often we have tribal leaders. And even though we think our message as leaders are being scaled down as they should be, often people will talk the tribal talk. They will talk in the cubicles. They will talk at the water cooler. They will talk in the lunchroom of what are the better ways of doing things. Does not mean that they're bad people, but it goes to the very fact of why we need to coach. We need to understand what they're doing, how they're doing, what they're succeeding with, what they're not succeeding with so we can be in a position not only to learn from them, but also to promote and challenge them to perform better.

Do not make the mistake of thinking that employees do not make up their own rules, as they do.

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