I had a call from a client who I worked with years ago. We had successfully hired an employee for a very key position in his company. He has called me regularly to share how great of an employee she had become over years. She has been great with his clients, great with her budget, great with the other folks on the team…He could not have been happier.
Then, one day recently, he called to tell me that his “amazing employee” was suddenly dropping the ball. “Beth, I don’t understand it!” he exclaimed. “She is making mistakes on things where in the past she has performed flawlessly! I am actually thinking about firing her because it is so bad.”
Okay. I always advise my clients to first take a big, deep breath when becoming frustrated. Then, I advise them to take another big, deep breath and look at performance issues from various perspectives before firing once high performing employees.
I continued the conversation by asking, “Have you asked her what is going on?”
“Well, no. I haven’t,” he replied.
I encouraged my client to talk to his beloved employee with empathy and compassion to uncover what may be behind her sudden shift in behavior. I suggested he state something like this, “You know, I have noticed that you haven’t been yourself lately. Are you okay?”
As it turns out, she did have some personal trauma happening in her life, discovering someone close to her had been diagnosed with terminal cancer. She confessed to feeling like a total wreck. She also expressed that having a conversation with her boss, my client, was really helpful. And while she continued to have a tough go of it for the next several months, but she was able to get help when she needed and turn her performance around.
So, when you see job performance decline in a great employee, before you discipline in any way, check in with their emotional well-being. As a great leader, you will really be glad that you did.
Last week, I sat on the beach with sand in my toes, wind in my hair, the ocean roaring in my ears, and a peacefulness that I rarely have. I spent a 2-week vacation with my family, exploring colleges for my daughter, walking on the beach and generally relaxing. For those of you that know me, relaxing is not my area of expertise. In fact, I rarely take vacations. After I flew back to town, I realized that my synapses were firing on all cylinders. I have a renewed interest in interviewing and was completely excited to be interviewing all week for multiple clients!
The fact remains that people need time away from work, even when you own the company, like me. Some of my clients get really excited when a candidate will tell us in an interview that they NEVER take vacations. I actually think that this is a negative. Inspiration rarely comes to someone sitting in their office answering emails. Inspiration comes from experiences and usually those come after office hours.
As a nation, we are not good at taking vacation anyway. We feel that we can’t get away, we can’t unplug or we might miss something. I think we miss things when we DON’T take time off.
So, when your employees want to take vacation time, praise them for it. Say thank you. Then ask them what you can do to help facilitate their vacation time so they are not performing work while away. Not only will they think that you are the greatest boss ever, but they will come back recharged, renewed and inspired. Your business will benefit, and therefore, so will you. Maybe then you can take some time off too.
I am back in the saddle doing the work that I love because I had a fabulous vacation. I am inspired and working on new ways to teach you how to interview better. And in addition to that, I have a killer tan!
My daughter, Katy, had exactly one week left to finish her Junior year of high school. As you can well imagine, she was in a mad panic about how she was going to get everything done. She had 4 papers due that week, 6 tests, 2 group projects, teacher gifts, cheerleading obligations as the head cheerleader for next year, graduation gifts for her friends, and she promised to make cupcakes for her friend, Nick’s graduation party. For someone who is uber organized and always has a to-do list a mile long, this was still a ton of work to be done!
Completely overwhelmed with the amount of things to do, one night, she just completely lost it and started crying, worried that she wouldn’t get it all done in time. Once she got it out of her system, she rallied, and finished the work that she needed to get done.
So, what happens when this occurs to your staff at work? Here are some things that you can do to help your staff get through a stressful time of year, and/or a huge project that must be completed:
In the moment, remind your staff that this short term, and it won’t last forever.
Have very clear expectations about what needs to be accomplished.
Help your staff prioritize their duties, so that they know how to get the work done.
Make a plan to celebrate when this period is complete: have a party, give your people an extra day off or plan an outing of some kind.
Encourage exercise, breaks and healthy eating.
Have snacks. “We never meet unless we eat!” is a great mantra in general.
Take a group walk over the lunch hour.
And finally, show your gratitude for their dedication. Say thank you. Often.
Katy ended her school year with grace and style and outstanding grades. I couldn’t be more proud of her than I am right now. We all get overwhelmed. We can only hope to have as much grace as this beautiful teenager.
My daughter, Katy, starts cheerleading practice soon. As the lead cheerleader, she wants to wear a great outfit on the first day. She looked high and low for her favorite pair of cheer shorts, but to no avail. Bitterly disappointed, she bought another pair, but still, she wanted to find her favorites.
Then, it struck her. They might be in the trunk of her car. “My trunk is the new junk drawer,” she exclaimed! “I throw everything back there.” Sure enough, upon searching her trunk, there were her beloved shorts along with 2 blankets, a shirt that had also she “lost”, a curling iron, a pair of shoes, and some Valentine’s Day wrapping paper that she doesn’t remember buying.
Katy took a few hours to get everything back to where it was supposed to be, and life appears to have calmed for my teenage daughter.
Does Katy’s struggle sound familiar? Often, we spend an immense amount of time looking for things we already have, only to repurchase and rediscover the item along with a series of other things you had forgotten about. The same can be true for your office, talent pool and business processes.
You know when it is time to clean up when EVERY little task takes way more time than it should. You look for a document but can’t easily find it due to an unorganized filling system. You look for a colleague’s phone number, but it was not entered into your contact database. All these little tasks end up taking an inordinate amount of time; time that could be spent on business activities.
This time of year, I encourage you to shake out the rugs in your business departments, clean up job descriptions, re-organize the filing cabinets, create new habits to prevent the loss of information and start the spring with a new, ruthlessly organized…trunk. You will be glad that you did.
This past weekend was homecoming for my daughter Katy, a Junior in High School. She is also a cheerleader, and somehow she is now responsible for doing everyone’s hair on the squad before the game.
Katy’s role as squad hairdresser started last year, when she created a beautiful complicated braid for her own hair. Then, all of the other girls wanted that hair style as well. Katy googled hairstyles, watched Youtube videos, and practiced on her hair (and everyone else’s) in order to be promoted to Head Hair Stylist for the Cardinal Cheer Squad.
I asked her “What are they going to do when you graduate?!”
She shot right back “Oh, I am training Jordan to do this job when I graduate.” Of course she is.
This process of having people hire and train their own replacement when they advance is exactly how successful companies grow, develop their staff and how innovation occurs. Those people who are on the front lines do research, they learn, they improve the company’s processes and they teach the next generation to do the same. I would imagine that the Cardinal Cheer Squad will have the best hair styles for years to come, thanks to Katy!
So, when you have an employee who wants to learn something new and take on a new task, let them. After all…
In my early 20’s, I worked as a manager in a retail store, and one of my co-workers was a middle aged woman with three children. After working there for some time, her husband was offered not only his dream job, but also the opportunity to move back to California near both of their families. It was a perfect fit for everyone, and my co-worker and her family were beyond ecstatic.
Our boss, however, was less than thrilled. Rather than share in her excitement, she was furious at my co-worker for leaving the organization. “How could you possibly leave me now?! I depend on you!” This woman gave my co-worker the silent treatment for the remaining 2 weeks of her notice. On her last day, my co-worker hugged me tight and told me, “Don’t stay here for much longer. This is a toxic place to work.”
During that time, I learned one small lesson of what NOT to do as a boss.
I made a vow that when my staff turned in their notices, I would handle it differently. I would tell them how happy I was for their new opportunity and I would ask them how I could help them leave on a good note, with the door left open for the future. Most of all, I would thank them for their service to my business. This commitment to my staff even as they were leaving my employment has served me well in countless ways, not the least of which is the fact that allowing someone to exit on a good note feels good to all parties: you, them, their co-workers, your clients, etc.
Everyone has had a bad boss. Not all bad bosses stay bad bosses; in the case of my former boss, she was under extreme stress at the time, so her behavior had a lot to do with that. (In fact, the business ended up closing several years later.) Today, she and I are on great terms, and I adore her.
Tell me what lessons you learned from your bad boss! Inquiring minds want to know…
Our boss, however, was less than thrilled. Rather than share in her excitement, she was furious at my co-worker for leaving the organization. “How could you possibly leave me now?! I depend on you!” This woman gave my co-worker the silent treatment for the remaining 2 weeks of her notice. On her last day, my co-worker hugged me tight and told me, “Don’t stay here for much longer. This is a toxic place to work.”