Ask Roxanne!
Dear Roxanne,
I need a pep talk. I'm the manager of an office that includes excellent team members and terrible ones. The bad ones are either self-absorbed or stirring the pot every chance they get. I need to jump on this, but I don't quite know how, and I don't want to make it worse. Please help.
– Mitch R.
Dear Mitch,
Your personal call to action is exactly right: you DO need to jump on this. I know it's hard, and you definitely don't want to make things worse. Fortunately there are a few simple, field-tested techniques to get these folks either in line or out of the parade. I've written this week's column to help illustrate how to take control of a dysfunctional crew. Let me know how it goes!
– Roxanne
Do you have a question about how to handle a situation or a relationship in the workplace? Ask Roxanne!
Building a Culture of Authenticity at Work
Leading your team is the most difficult part of leading your organization. The complexities of regulation, finance, compliance, and opening new facilities pale in comparison to the challenges of managing a team of humans with all their frailties, limiting beliefs, and inauthentic behaviors.
When people are unhappy, they can quickly determine that YOU are the reason they are unhappy, never realizing that happiness is an inside job. If they leave you to go elsewhere, they will be just as miserable there because it is THEY who choose a pattern of misery. Unfortunately, from their vantage point, they can't see that. If they could, they wouldn't be stuck.
Yes, these failings are human, and you don't need to teach your staff to be superhuman. But you CAN help your people to be better humans.
Great businesses are composed of ordinary people who decide to come together to be great people. To make this happen, sometimes it is easiest to define some of the things that prevent us from being our higher selves. And one of the biggest is inauthenticity—living and acting contrary to our own stated values and the team values we have agreed to.
You see it in many forms. Ralph goes home each day and complains about his boss, but never goes to his boss and asks in a professional way for what he needs. Shirley doesn't tell the boss she just stopped doing some monthly report because she didn't think he'd notice. Tom comes late to work each Tuesday because he knows his boss is out on Tuesdays and probably won't find out.
Inauthenticity is made up of those slips of integrity that people rationalize in their minds as being acceptable because "everybody does it."
People justify their inauthenticity with a plethora of excuses that it isn't that big of a deal. If they didn't tell a big fat lie or steal a million bucks, they figure, it's minor. Well it's not. It permeates the workplace and kills the souls of people who do it, not to mention those who are around it.
And the list of ways we are not being our "higher selves" goes on, and on, and on...
Yes, it is the tough stuff... but it is the part that cannot be ignored IF you want to play a big game.
Bringing Out Our Higher Selves—and Helping Others do the Same
How do you help heal a workforce that is desperately in need of healing? Here are a few ideas to get you started:
- Clearly define your own values and acceptable behaviors, then demonstrate them at every possible moment.
- Invite your teammates to clarify their own values and to brainstorm acceptable and unacceptable behaviors in the workplace. Once you've all agreed on norms, post the list.
- Every person must know that he or she is invited to call ANY other person on a violation of the agreed-upon code.
- If a team member has been coached several times on behaviors that are hurtful to their teammates, there comes a time to realize they either can't get the lesson or they won't. Gently but firmly invite the person to find happiness elsewhere.
Are you Ready to Discover Your Impact and What it Really Could Be?
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Online: Event details
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Here's What's New
The Top 10 Distinctions Between Winners and Whiners
 Keith Cameron Smith is a bestselling author and inspirational speaker. His book, The Top 10 Distinctions Between Winners and Whiners, is filled with practical advice and concepts that can be used in the workplace and in everyday life. Buy his book today at www.KeithCameronSmith.com
To get you started, here are the top 5 distinctions between winners and whiners.
5. Winners create positive meanings. Whiners create negative meanings.
4. Winners are focus-minded. Whiners are scatterbrained.
3. Winners think big. Whiners think small.
2. Winners build friendships. Whiners destroy friendships.
1. Winners enjoy life's journeys. Whiners put their joy in the destinations.
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