Clash of Style

Addressing undesirable behaviour at work

Sometimes it seems that we believe that the role of managing people is far more difficult than it needs to be. Recently, I received confirmation that a management style comprised simply of honesty, positive reinforcement, mentoring and early intervention is wholly appreciated.

A senior manager shared with me his experience concerning a receptionist—let’s call her Paige. As a relatively new employee, Paige makes tactless comments, jokingly provides inappropriate nicknames for other staff and offers too much information. She is a good worker and competently fulfills her responsibilities, but others know and remember her for being off-colour.

The woman who works with Paige and trained her believes that she has effectively completed her training function, as Paige knows the responsibilities of her job and completes them as assigned. In her mind, Paige no longer requires training.

I asked the manager if he is assisting Paige to improve her behaviour and to shape her style to be more appropriate for the company. Apparently, neither he nor anyone else has taken on the role of her mentor because his response was:

“But she appears very professional.”

“She is a good-looking, mid­thirties woman and seems to know her job.”

“People surprisingly laugh when she calls other employees by silly names.”

The underlying assumption seems to be that if you are an experienced adult, look presentable and are competent, then you don’t need mentoring. Nothing is farther from the truth! We can all use gentle coaching to assist ourselves to become better, and that is a different tactic than formal training.

As managers, there are times when we make huge assumptions, not realizing that the reality is far removed from what we believe. Often, we don’t realize that the belief we carry is unfounded, precarious and prone to error.

In my experience, we rely too heavily on the formal feedback process. We wait for the annual performance evaluation process to comment on behaviours, and the impact of the feedback is often more severe than warranted, as it’s the accumulation of several months’ worth of observation. Alternatively, we wait for a formal complaint resulting in a formal meeting, which can escalate beyond reason.

Personally, I like to coach employees by focusing on the positive and appropriate behaviours, because I believe that we all have an underlying desire to work well with others. When my staff know what behaviour is appreciated, they continue repeating it, and the undesirable behaviour vanishes.

There are other instances when I believe in being direct. In cases where Paige tells a caller that an employee is not available and is in the bathroom, this is a situation of “too much information”. In this case, Paige needs direct and immediate feedback on what is appropriate and what is not appropriate to say. If a manager makes the assumption that the person answering the phone should intuitively know the correct approach on the phone and, like with Paige, the manager is mistaken, intervening once and with clear communication should quickly remedy the situation.

We don’t know why Paige is exhibiting the behaviour she is and, frankly, it really doesn’t matter. With gentle coaching, she can easily shift, and within a short period of time, become a laudable employee in all regards.

Left unaddressed, this situation with Paige will permeate the culture, and the company could end up with malcontent in the ranks, possibly losing its highly-valued employees, who no longer wish to work in this situation where such behaviour is, through lack of supervision, condoned.

We all make assumptions. We believe that when someone makes a claim, “I know how to type a letter”, then the letter will be typed, more or less, to our typical standards. If it isn’t, we don’t have a problem indicating the requirements we want met. However, with personal behaviour, we are more uncomfortable about voicing our expectations. Paige might claim, “I am good at developing relationships,” yet some of the people she works with do not like her use of informal nicknames. It would be preferable for someone to calmly and kindly state, “I prefer you to call me by my given name” instead of allowing resentment to cloud the possibility of forming a productive work relationship.

You don’t need to be in the role of a manager to coach others. When the person involved is exhibiting the behaviour you want to reinforce, using the positive statement, “I like it when you…” is being a kind bearer of good news… and we all like that.