Will One Bad Employee Spoil the Whole Bunch?

Dear Liz,

I've been a follower of yours forever. I'm coming up the Human Workplace learning curve. I supervise seven technical writers and I'm pretty happy with my team and our situation.

We get along well, we get our work done and we have fun, too. Our situation is good - it's not perfect. We work for a medium-sized division of a huge corporation. There are a lot of stupid rules to follow. The rules come down from Corporate because they want every division to do things the same way.

I feel that part of my Manager job is to keep the corporate nonsense far enough away from my teammates that everyone can get their work done.

It doesn't always work but I do a pretty good job at that.

I've implemented a lot of your teaching already. I took a Human Workplace course last year and I've installed several elements from that course into our departmental systems. We re-invented our department staff meetings and they are much more open and collaborative now.

Our planning process is a group process. My one-on-one meetings with the team members have gotten a lot more productive and creative. So, thank you for the education! I feel more capable and confident as a manager now than I did before.

So far I've only employed Human Workplace ideas at the team level - not the individual level.

Now I need your advice on what to do about an individual employee with a performance problem.

Is there a Human Workplace way to turn around a difficult team member, and get him to stop stirring up trouble?

I hired a new employee named Elliott. He's a nice guy and he's smart. He picked up the work really quickly. Elliott is funny. Everyone likes him, but he's high-maintenance, too.

He colors outside the lines, you might way. He makes up his own rules. I don't like some of our standard, tedious processes any better than he does, but we still have to follow them.

I end up having to talk to Elliott at least once a week about something he did in a non-standard way or something he said about a process he doesn't like.

I've told him "You have good ideas, but I have to sell our ideas upstairs to Corporate and I can't propose everything at once. This company moves slowly. You have to trust me to do my job."

Sometimes when Elliott makes a joke about some of the protocols and standards we have to follow (not all of which make a lot of sense, as I mentioned) I feel hurt personally. I feel like he's criticizing the way I do my job.

I feel like he's holding me responsible for the way things work here. He doesn't know how hard I've pushed to get the concessions and changes I've championed before he got here.

I'm not the type of manager who needs people to bow down to her, but I can't say that I think Elliott respects me as his manager. If he does, he doesn't show it. He treats me like any other co-worker.

What's really upsetting is that several of the other team members are starting to join Team Elliott and they're being more vocal about the things they like and don't like here.

I feel like I've worked really hard making a great work environment in our department and I'm getting a lot of flack and complaints for my trouble.

I don't want Elliott's level of honesty about his likes and dislikes to become the standard in our department.

Elliott said something fairly blunt at a meeting last week that my colleague, our Quality Control Manager, also attended. He said that our company is twenty years behind the times and that our publications are an embarrassment. That was harsh.

After the meeting the Quality Control Manager said "Elliott is smart, but he's too bold. He needs to cool it. He's disrespectful. You need to take him down a peg."

What should I do? I like and respect Elliott, but he is definitely an agitating influence on the department. He knows how I feel about him bending the rules and he knows that I'm up against a huge bureaucracy and I'm not the bad guy.

How do I get him to calm down and stop turning my team against me?

Thanks,

Patricia

Dear Patricia,

You are learning to lead with a human voice and as you have illustrated, the path isn't always strewn with rose petals!

Challenges like this energetic disturbance with Elliott grow your muscles. The lessons aren't pleasant when you're experiencing them but the learning you'll get is powerful!

Elliott showed up in your life to teach you something in your leadership journey. He's a smart guy and everyone likes him, but he pushes harder than your other teammates do. What is the message Elliott has to deliver to you?

Maybe Elliott is pushing you to work harder and speak up more loudly for the good ideas he, you and your teammates have to share with the company's leaders.

Perhaps it's time to stop accepting "the way things are" and stop fearing the reaction you'll get when you simply tell the truth.

Possibly Elliott is nudging you to campaign for simpler processes because he knows you are strong enough to weather whatever droplets of displeasure fall down on you from Corporate once you find your voice.

It's a myth that as managers, we have to pick our battles. There needn't be any battles in the first place! How could it be antagonistic for you to say "Hey you guys, we could be serving customers better and making more money - here's how!"

If an idea is good for the company and you can prove it, why not push it upstairs where somebody who can approve it can see it?  

Here's what will happen when you stop accepting the status quo ("We're part of a big company, so, sad as it is, there's nothing to be done!  Just suck it up and deal with the nonsense, and we'll pretend it isn't real"):

You'll become more confident.  Your team will thrive and hit their goals. People will start asking you about the awesome new practices you've perfected in your department.

Your team will see you advocating not just for them as people, but also for your customers and shareholders when you agitate for smarter processes and less red tape. You'll get more respect from everyone around you, not just Elliott. 

One bad apple doesn't spoil the whole bunch, and anyway, Elliott is not a bad apple. He's a challenging apple, and that's what you need right now!

It's fantastic that you can observe your feelings and recount them as well as you did in your letter. You can show that human side to Elliott, too. You can tell him how you feel and ask him how he feels.

You can sit down with Elliott and say "I like having you in the department. I hope you like it too. I want to brainstorm with you about our communication.

"Sometimes I feel that we don't always communicate in the most positive way. I'm your advocate, and I want to make sure you know that. Sometimes I feel that you see me as an impediment or the enemy. I wanted to get your thoughts on that."

I predict that Elliott will be shocked. Many plainspoken people don't know the effect they have on people around them.

You'll grow a new muscle when you open up to Elliott. You won't be using your supervisor might to force him to start respecting you (or pretending to respect you -- the best you can hope for when you use the hammer).

Rather, you'll invite him to rise up to a higher altitude -- the human altitude -- and consider your relationship with him from your point of view. 

This is a great exercise for you at this stage in your evolution, Patricia! You'll invite Elliott to collaborate with you to figure out how the two of you can work together and keep spinning out great ideas without anyone getting frustrated.

Most middle managers are fearful of selling new ideas upstream. That's normal, and at the same time selling good ideas up the organizational chart is part of your job.

It's much more important to send the latest dispatches from The Reality Channel up to corporate decision-makers than to use your energy shielding your teammates from weenie rules.

Why shield when you can name the elephant on the table, get an important topic aired and dealt with, and move on?

Remember that we all have the opportunity to feed Godzilla or to starve him, every day -- and that includes you! 

I know that you and Elliott will both benefit from your upcoming truth-telling session and the one after that and all the amazing truth-telling sessions to follow! 

At your next team meeting, you can have fun going around the table and asking each person to nominate one sub-optimal process or policy to radically alter or to eliminate. This is a great way to get your teammates' "complaints" out on the table without tagging anybody as a troublemaker. 

Your team will trust you more as you lower your defenses and listen to their input without the filter "But I can't change that!" blocking your ears.

Listen with intention and without stressing over which of your team's wishes you can grant for them and which you can't. That's a separate topic entirely. 

I foresee you and Elliott and your whole crew achieving tremendous things together. We are all rooting for you!

Best,

Liz 

Our company is Human Workplace. Our mission is to reinvent work for people.
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WATCH THE VIDEO! Liz Ryan talks about the story "Will One Bad Employee Spoil the Whole Bunch?"