Evidence Based Practices for Leadership Development

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presspass on January 29, 2019

Evidence Based Practices for Leadership Development

This post is a report from the December 5, 2018 Forbes.com article Authentic Leadership for Peace and Prosperity. It is the companion to the Voice America Interview to air on January 29, 2019 with Dr. Gama Perruci, Dr. Sadhana Warty Hall, and Dr. Karen Ford, Evidence Based Practices for Leadership Development. This interview is particularly important because companies are investing large amounts of money and time to build strong leaders and some programs provide much better returns than others. Programs that teach leaders to be better leaders rather than those that teach leader about leadership provide different results. Programs that offer 1. strong frameworks (including the knowledge of how context and culture play a role in leading and following), 2. teach leaders to become more self-aware, and 3. perform better using the new frameworks and self-awareness provide the highest returns. The interview is part of our partnership with the International Leadership Association to bring you the latest and most relevant leadership information.

The following section is from Forbes. I am keenly interested in understanding how leaders progress their business agendas as well as the global agenda in times of significant geopolitical shifts. I attended the International Leadership Association’s conference, Authentic Leadership for Progress, Peace & Prosperity, in West Palm Beach, Florida, where keynote speakers, academics, award recipients and leaders across industries and the globe discussed their perspectives on the subject. This article summarizes my key takeaways.

With 39 countries represented at the conference, the focus on the volume, complexity and rate of change in the current climate continued to inform the conversations. So too did the political landscape, particularly the disillusionment with democracy and the move toward populism. The conversation was also impacted by several events happening in the background, such as a bomber delivering 14 bombs to democratic leadersand supporters, who was actually apprehended near West Palm Beach, where the conference was being held. There was also a synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh in the morning of the final day at the conference.

These events called to question what more we, as members of an international association, can do to focus on the intersection of leadership, scholarship and practice at a conference that focuses on progress, peace and prosperity.

The following themes are based on my discussions with thought leaders around the world and sessions I attended.

1. Leadership certification needs to be a strong consideration.

Many professions require certification before performing a job, like realtors, massage therapists, electricians, attorneys and certified public accountants. This is in strong contrast to the number of leaders holding key roles with no education and, in some cases, little experience.

While hiring is always complicated, certification can reduce the risk of costly hiring mistakes. Certification is important for leaders who want to stand out by demonstrating their competence. And organizations will have a greater degree of assurance that the person they are hiring is competent based on an objective standard and a rigorous certification process.

2. Leadership is the interplay between the organization’s internal environment and external ecosystem.

We train leaders in leadership concepts but don’t address the importance of helping leaders understand how they need to flex their leadership approach based on their context and their followers. The most effective leaders “sense” the needs of their followers and adapt their leadership accordingly. They help followers understand their leadership style and set clear expectations as well take into account their followers‘ styles, so everyone can focus their energy on accomplishing goals.

3. Leaders need new tools to solve highly complex problems.

Many of the problems organizations face are emergent, and they may not have faced them before. Therefore, leaders must have the tools to address them. The most effective leaders balance inner knowing with strong analytics and collaboration.

4. Leadership ethics are key.

There are questions about leaders learning ethics versus gaining ethics as part of the process of maturing. Are ethics the guidelines people comply with? Is there a call for leaders to develop a strong inner compass that ensures they follow the spirit of ethics as the rules change? I believe it’s important for leaders to have a strong inner sense of both the impact you want to make on the world as well as the “guardrails” you use to accomplish that impact.

5. Leaders operate in an interconnected system and need to consider the broader impact they make.

Conference participants were clear about the importance of profit as the fuel for the business and that businesses are among the most powerful institutions across the planet. They are positioned to enact important changes that involve issues such as climate change, for example.

During the conference last year, there were many discussions on identifying leadership values. This year, speakers reminded us of the mandate for leaders to live their values and pay attention to how their actions impact their organizations, and by extension, the world.

6. Resilience remains a key concern.

It was acknowledged that everyone is now or will soon be impacted by some level of change to their organization, their climate, their community and their government. These changes require that we deliberately tend to the resilience (ability to absorb change and remain highly functional) of our people, our organizations, our communities and our governments. It is important to ensure these have the capacity to metabolize change without going into crisis mode.

7. Learning to harness the power of women and a diverse workforce is critical to addressing the upcoming talent gap.

Even with artificial intelligence and other forms of workforce augmentation, participants projected a huge talent shortage now through 2030 and beyond. The size of this change is expected to grow from 2020 to 2030.

Companies need to leverage the best talent to thrive. It will be important for companies to find ways to identify the right people and create a work environment that fosters attraction and retention and expands the old norms that caused talented people who wanted to work but not within restricted bounds to leave.

As leaders in this era of turbulence, if we want to create a more prosperous and peaceful world, we need to look at new ways of leading and of identifying and developing leaders of the future. This is a call to action to revisit what you are doing now and how you can evolve your own approaches that enhance your ability to lead from a stance of authenticity.

Are you learning from thought leaders, academics and practitioners? Each holds a piece of the complex solution we all need to thrive in the short and long term.

To become a more innovative leader, please consider our online leader development program. For additional tools, we recommend taking leadership assessments, using the Innovative Leadership Fieldbook and Innovative Leaders Guide to Transforming Organizations, and adding coaching to our online innovative leadership program. We also offer several workshops to help you build these skills and system to create a regenerative, inclusive and thriving organization that will have a positive impact in the world.

About the Author: Maureen Metcalf, CEO of the Innovative Leadership Institute, a renowned executive advisor, author, speaker, coach and consultant.

Team Effectiveness, Brexit and Theresa May

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presspass on December 11, 2018

At C-Level #18: Three Successful Transformations – Evolving Leadership Perspectives

Posted by

Editor on May 31, 2018

Business

At C-Level #18: Three Successful Transformations – Evolving Leadership Perspectives

Mike Sayre is a highly experienced and successful software, e-commerce, and manufacturing services CEO, COO, CFO, and Board Director. He is also the president & COO of Metcalf & Associates, a trusted partner inspiring and enabling perpetual innovation, evolution, and growth in leaders and their businesses. Mike was featured in Maureen Metcalf’s May 2017 Innovative Leaders Driving Thriving Organizations interview on VoiceAmerica entitled “7 Characteristics of Leadership 2020 In Practice: A CEO Story.”

This is the wrap-up of a 9-blog series on real-life organizational transformations, At C-Level #10-18.

In At C-Level #10-17, I wrote about three successful transformations I’ve had the opportunity to lead in my career so far, using a seven-step transformation model closely aligned with the Metcalf & Associate’s Innovative Leadership Transformation Model below.

Prior to this series, in At C-Level #9, I wrote about leadership for an increasingly complex world. I believe the exponentially increasing rate of change and complexity in technologies, our organizations, and the world in general – today and for the foreseeable future – will increasingly require the application of the Level 5 and Strategist leadership competencies discussed in that blog for long term organizational and personal leadership success.

As a reminder, the competencies of Level 5 or Strategist leaders include:

Being professionally humble and focused on organizational, not personal, success
Having an unwavering commitment to right action
Being a 360-degree thinker who takes a balcony view of the organization
Being intellectually versatile with deep interests outside of the organization
Being highly authentic and reflective
Inspiring followership
Being innately collaborative

Now, let’s look at how these competencies were applied in the three transformations discussed in this series, resulting in the organizational successes previously discussed, as well as personal career success. Being focused on organizational success does not mean you have no interest in personal success!

Large Manufacturing Company. Here the focus was on the transformation of basic accounting and financial reporting controllers into financial business partners for the leadership teams in business units across a $2B corporation.

In this large manufacturing company, focusing on the organization’s mission, recognizing my own shortcomings in company history and experience, pulling in people who could make up for my shortcomings and collaborating with them to figure out the best ways to achieve our vision, resulted in

our ability to gain approval and successfully implement our transformation initiatives for the benefit of the company, and
an accelerated education process and a couple of significant personal promotions for me in just a few short years.

Some believe that to get ahead in a large organization you must be very competitive and aggressive at the expense of others. The challenge I had with a previous organization. However, I believe that paradigm is, by necessity, dying a slow death. I also believe that if you focus on getting done what is in the best interest of the company and its stakeholders, and are aggressive in your own self-development and ability to lead and get positive results benefiting your organization, the opportunities will present themselves, even if they sometimes end up with you being in a new organization.

Mid-Size Electronics Manufacturing Services Company. In a $75M publicly-held electronics manufacturing services company, I led cultural, operational, and financial transformations, and an international expansion, as that company’s CEO.

In this, my first, CEO role, I came to realize the importance of understanding the needs of all of our stakeholders (a 360-degree or “balcony” view of our business). They were all taking significant risks in supporting the company. Investors and bankers were putting in their hard-earned money; customers were risking the quality and delivery of their products by putting our products went into theirs; our employees were betting their livelihood and family’s health on our success; suppliers were spending their capacity and resources to fulfill our needs; and the communities in which we operated were depending on our economic success and good citizenship. In any major decision, and even in some minor ones, the team and I had to keep these dependencies in mind and do our best to maximize the success of all five stakeholder groups the best we could. We all carried a small card spelling it all out, and we referred to that card all the time.

In addition, the company culture had not kept up with the company’s early commercial success and was challenging, at best, when it came to supporting all of our stakeholders and growing the company. So we also codified our values on the back of that small card, referred to them all the time, and, more importantly, were unwavering in upholding those values, even in the most difficult situations.

Similar to the large manufacturing company story, focusing on the company’s success and collaborating with the rest of the experts on the team, as well as the combination of 360-degree thinking and our unwavering commitment to take the right actions based on our vision and values, totally transformed this organization, resulting in an eventual sale to a global industry leader who realized the value in the organization we had created.

From a personal standpoint, I was first the company’s CFO, doing whatever I thought best for the company, before being asked to become its CEO.

Global Internet Payments Company. As a consultant, I was brought in to fix a particular control issue that had resulted in some erroneous money transfers. To save the financial team the time to try to figure “the new guy” out, I handed them a list of my values and how I work, and, more importantly, I reflected on and authentically lived that list every day.

While working through the transfer issue, plus several other issues that came up during the engagement, that values list was given by the finance team to others in the company. I also started attending the weekly leadership meetings working on other challenges around the company, and just trying to make the company better. My intellectual versatility is in my interest in learning about different businesses, business models and people’s perspectives in varying industries – it’s curiosity. Learning gives me energy, and the capability of developing new ways of thinking about old and new challenges in different situations.

As several months passed, I was asked to join the company as its President & COO and help the team build more value in the company for its owner. By then, my 360-degree view of the business revealed a highly evolving organization and operating environment, in constant change, suffering from instability, inconsistency, operational silos, and distrust – resulting from a distinct lack of consistent and clear communications. Common challenges in growing businesses.

In my view, the people in the organization needed shared goals and incentives to give them more reasons to communicate and collaborate. So, I implemented a profit sharing plan for all employees, as well as a plan for the leadership team to personally benefit from that value creation, so everyone would gain from our collective successes.

I was a little off in thinking that money would be a strong motivator for this group. But I was still going in the right direction. More than the potential for additional pay and bonuses, these plans created a whole new level of transparency about the company’s financials. Trust continued to build, our Agile implementation resulted in more cross-functional collaboration, we made major improvements in our performance, we coalesced as a team, we had great success in turning the business around, and we had fun!

The company’s value increased 3X in less than two years. In the process, I advanced from consultant to President & COO, thoroughly enjoyed my time with the company, and benefitted from an eventual majority interest sale of the company with rest of the leadership team.

From a Strategist leadership perspective in these transformations, it is important to understand that while I started and/or led these transformations, the bulk of the real work was done by the teams I worked with. More than anything, in all three transformations, people just needed

high level direction (agreed to purpose, mission, and/or vision),
agreed to operating parameters around how we work together as a team, that also gave them autonomy to make more decisions on their own, and work their own magic,
constant communication and reinforcement around the purpose, mission, vision and values (“talking and walking the talk”),
early assistance and support in “walking the talk,” until they were comfortable doing it on their own,
positive reinforcement on the bad days and celebrations on the good days,
understanding, honesty, and fairness when difficult compensation and personnel decisions had to be made,
that when things weren’t going well, to be part of the plan to turn it around, with the specific knowledge of what they personally could do to help, and the empowerment to do that,
goals and timetables they helped set, and
regularly scheduled and adhered-to progress meetings (no longer than absolutely needed) to discuss status and give everyone the opportunity to connect with their needs from the other team members to keep things moving.

I hope you have enjoyed the transformation part of this series. Just writing about these transformations has brought back many great memories. But, more importantly, taking the time to reflect back and write about them has been another great learning experience for me as well.

Thanks for following us! Please look for new At C-Level blogs over the next several weeks!

How to Create a Culture of Innovation and Learning

Posted by

Editor on March 21, 2018

Business

How to Create a Culture of Innovation and Learning

March 20, 2018/0 Comments/in Authentic Leadership, Business Growth, Innovative Leadership /by Maureen Metcalf

This post is from a Forbes article I wrote in 2017. It is the companion to a Voice America interview with Guru Vasudeva, CIO Nationwide Insurance on VoiceAmerica “Innovative Leaders Driving Thriving Organizations” on April 18, 2017 Nationwide’s Journey to Build a Culture of Innovation and Continuous Learning.

When it comes to innovation, companies need to deliver results much more quickly than they did just a few years ago in order to keep pace with the range of pressures they face from competition as well as customer expectations. In addition to the range of product change and customer expectations, companies are looking at a baby boomer retirement rate of 10,000 per day, which is only accelerating technological change and a volatile geopolitical environment.

With this as the backdrop, leaders must create organizational environments that weave innovation and change into their fabric.

There are several different terms we hear when we talk about companies that do this well: agile businesses, “learning” organizations, and innovative cultures are just a few. These environments adhere to five key cultural and structural strategies.

1. Delight Customers

Organizations should seek out customer recommendations and develop a process to evaluate and prioritize ones that have the highest probability of meeting customer objectives and staying ahead of the competition.

This recommendation is drawn from my early work with Malcolm Baldrige Quality Assessments. Though this has been an enduring practice for years, how companies implement it has changed. How are you seeking ongoing feedback on priorities and customer satisfaction first and foremost? Are you creating a relationship with customers that could be most accurately described as a partnership? Have an open exchange with clients on a regular basis. In addition, solicit formal feedback on a periodic basis.

2. Actively Collaborate

Organizations must shift from step-by-step processing to working cross-functionally. All involved departments should remain informed and work simultaneously as a normal course of business. Collaborative organizations create higher-quality prototypes — and they do it more quickly.

In addition to a collaborative structure, it’s important to create an environment where every team member feels safe and encouraged to contribute. They should also feel that they are expected to contribute their best work at all times. This collaboration contrasts with organizations where “special people” contribute more often than others.

My client structures projects to ensure all team members or subject matter experts are included. The teams also conduct vibrancy assessments to ensure they are continually creating an environment where everyone feels included and supported. What are you doing to measure your culture and agreements to ensure all members participate and feel safe to share their insights?

3. Rigorously Experiment

Teams must study problems and put forward well-developed solutions. However, these shouldn’t come in the form of long studies, as many of these can take a year or longer.

By shifting to a focus on the scientific method, teams learn to formulate a hypothesis, test that hypothesis, and learn and refine solutions rapidly.

Note the word “rigorous.” I realize that the idea of experimentation is very countercultural, and if done poorly, can be costly. When teams develop skills in rigorous experimentation, they shift how they look at experiments. One example is a group that structured the work using rapid prototyping. They provided mentors and coaches to ensure people had the support they required while learning the new process.

This mentoring ensures team members contribute quickly and develop both skills and comfort with new behaviors quickly. Do you have challenges and opportunities that could be solved more quickly by taking a more scientific approach, perhaps by shortening the analysis and beginning experimentation?

4. Accelerate Decisions And Learning

In this environment, nimble decision-making is a companion to rigorous experimentation. Team members must make the best decisions possible as quickly as required. These decisions must be open to re-examination as new information surfaces.

This means that decisions should be refined on an ongoing basis. The need to be “right” must be set aside in favor of continual learning. What was once called “flip flopping” will now be called “learning.”

An example of nimble decision-making is an organization that offers training to help participants combine data-based decision-making with intuitive decision making to leverage the power of both. They make decisions at the appropriate point to support the process of experimentation. When experiments are run, participants learn, and prior decisions will be revisited when appropriate and updated.

5. Build Adaptability And Resilience

Leaders and their employees must value adaptability, flexibility, and curiosity. All of these skills and aptitudes support an individual’s ability to navigate rapid change. Employees must remain flexible and focused in the face of ongoing change. They need the capacity to feel comfortable and supported by their colleagues so that they can adapt to planned and unplanned change with creativity and focus.

It is not enough to tell people to be more resilient, then expect them to answer emails for 20 hours a week. I once worked with an organization that conducted training on individual resilience, then had work groups conduct multiple discussions about what they needed to do to support individual resilience.

Does your organization make explicit agreements about topics like expected response time for email, including during non-work hours? Agreements are a great way to examine organizational factors driving and inhibiting resilience.

Evolving your organization to become more innovative and change-friendly requires a structured effort to update your culture and the systems and agreements that support its functions. By clarifying how your organization promotes these five elements, you will make great progress in becoming an innovative organization.

To become a more innovative leader, please consider our online leader development program. For additional tools, we recommend taking leadership assessments, using the Innovative Leadership Fieldbook and Innovative Leaders Guide to Transforming Organizations, and adding coaching to our online innovative leadership program. We also offer several workshops to help you build these skills.

At C-Level #16: Implementing Transformations and Measuring Success

Posted by

Editor on February 19, 2018

Business

At C-Level #16: Implementing Transformations and Measuring Success

February 16, 2018/0 Comments/in At “C” Level, Business Growth, Emerging Manager & Leader, Innovative Leadership, Leadership, Leadership Innovation, Taking Action /by Maureen Metcalf

Mike Sayre is a highly experienced and successful software, e-commerce, and manufacturing services CEO, COO, CFO, and Board Director. He is also the president & COO of Metcalf & Associates, a trusted partner inspiring and enabling perpetual innovation, evolution, and growth in leaders and their businesses. Mike was featured in Maureen Metcalf’s May 2017 Innovative Leaders Driving Thriving Organizations interview on VoiceAmerica entitled “7 Characteristics of Leadership 2020 In Practice: A CEO Story.”

In At C-Level #10-18, I write about three of the most successful transformations I’ve had the opportunity to lead in my career so far, following a seven-step transformation model like the Metcalf & Associates Innovative Leadership Transformation Model below.

Implement and Measure

Preliminary planning is communicated to the organization and transformation initiatives are ready to kick off. Those initiatives have metrics and goals for success that will naturally drive improvement in your overarching transformation metric(s), showing progress toward the mission and vision for the overall organization.

So, now it is time to start executing and your team is ready to go.

But, what about you? As a leader, your visibility, support, and participation are key to the implementation of these initiatives and how your transformation progresses. Your absence would show a lack of resolve and support for the transformation that YOU kicked off! I hope you’ve done some planning for this as well.

The level of your involvement will vary depending the needs of your team and the organization. Your vision, mission and values should drive a lot of decision making at the functional level, so you should not be needed to micro-manage the process. Let your team work their magic, grow, and develop during the transformation.

However, your visible support is critical. Be present, generally aware of happenings at the functional level, and, most importantly, be the main reporter of the major challenges and overall progress to the organization’s stakeholders on a regular basis.

Here is how we implemented and measured progress and achievement throughout the three transformations I outlined in At C-Level #10:

Large Manufacturing Company. In our transformation to upgrade basic financial reporting controllers into true financial business partners in a large and growing company (our vision), we had two major initiatives:
- implementing new automated accounting and financial reporting systems, and
- creating a “controller-in-training” program to prepare up-and-coming and new controllers to be true financial business partners helping to grow the business.

To implement the new systems, we created a formal project team of current controllers serving as project managers and subject matter experts, accountants and clerical people with significant tenure in their jobs, and an internal auditor, using a well-known project management software. The make-up and experience in this team was key to the success of the initiative. The project re-energized team members who were ready to move on in their careers and were excited to contribute their company and functional expertise to making the implementation successful. They were among the most trusted professionals in the organization, maximizing the acceptance and the benefits of the new systems. The implementations were well managed, tracked, reported on, and successful, although they did take 30 to 40 percent longer to implement than originally expected. We opted for quality over speed – not an unusual tradeoff in these types of projects.

The controller-in-training program was modeled after comparable sales and operations training programs and consisted of potential controller candidates spending three months rotating through all the sales and operational departments in their facility, then spending three months in accounting and three months in activity-based costing and financial analysis roles. A team of senior financial people selected and hired the participants and I tracked their progress, but the facility people really made the training happen. About 25 percent of the participants landed their first controller jobs backfilling for turnover or being placed in the large new facilities the company was building at the time.

We were pretty good at implementing these projects and programs. However, I think we could’ve done better in terms of having more definition around what achievement of the vision would look like, as well as the metrics and goals that would validate our progress in transforming our controller group into “true financial business partners.” Our success on vision achievement would probably get mixed reviews depending on who you talked to in the organization.

In your own transformation journey, how will you measure ultimate success in achieving your mission and vision?

Mid-Size Electronics Manufacturing Services Company. In our transformation “to be the best in the world at what we do,” and improve the lives all our five stakeholder groups, we had three major initiatives:
- implementing lean manufacturing,
- putting electronics repair operations in Europe and Asia, and
- developing and implementing a strategy to better leverage our engineering and manufacturing capabilities and earn higher margin work.

Having the right people in the right seats on the bus was key to our execution.

In a conversation with our quality manager about his wanting to leave the company, I discovered he was a Lean Manufacturing expert! He agreed to stay and took on the role of leading that initiative. We also hired an operations vice president with significant Lean experience. Their execution on the implementation, including ongoing measurement and reporting was incredible!

The executive team leveraged the work of our global sales manager in identifying the right acquisitions and partners for us to expand our operations in Europe and Asia.

We also implemented lean in our new facilities.

Not planned, but totally in line with our mission, our first Agile software development resulted in a company-wide repair tracking system across all our facilities and lauded by our global customers.

We hired a new sales vice president with an engineering background who had significant experience growing companies in the embedded computer industry, which leveraged our engineering talent and commanded the much higher margins we sought.

Everything we did had measurement and reporting systems, and our execution was great.

Did we achieve our vision? We decided early on that we would have to hear that directly from our stakeholders – the ones we named in our five-stakeholder mission statement.

Eventually, we did start hearing from them. You can read more about this in At C-Level #4.

Do you have the right people in the right seats on your bus? Is there any unknown or underutilized talent in your organization that could help lead your transformation?

Global Internet Payments Company. In our transformation journey to turn around the culture, improve the operational and financial performance of the company, and increase the company’s value, we had three major initiatives:
- a company culture change driven by a stated mission and operating guidelines, and a change in leadership mindset, communications, and actions,
- the implementation of Agile software development in our company – which requires the involvement of all major functional areas of the company – and
- new strategy development and implementation in marketing and sales.

The culture change was all about leadership communications and “walking the talk.” See more about that execution in “At C-Level #15 – Transformation Communications.”

We measured culture change in the success of the Agile implementation. Agile requires so much cross-functional collaboration and communication that if the culture did not change, that implementation could not succeed.

We measured the success of the Agile implementation,

quantitatively, by the 40 percent increase in our software development productivity, and
qualitatively, by the increase in the usability and functionality of our product.

Our software was easier to use, looked more professional, helped our sales efforts, and benefited from the input of all the major functional groups in the company.

And, we measured marketing and sales success and the achievement of our mission to help sellers sell more by increases in customers and transaction volume.

But were we achieving our vision of increasing the value of the company for its owners? We were. The company realized a 300 percent increase in value through a major financial transaction within two years of the start of our transformation.

Do you have regular reporting and review cycles for all your initiatives and the achievement of your vision?

Key takeaways from these transformations

Discipline and focus are key, as is building repeatable processes that become a way of life.

Metrics and goals were either developed in planning or were built into the implementation processes of lean and Agile. Follow-up reporting, reviewing and analysis for progress and completion were part these processes as well. And where we did not use Agile or lean, we still had regular reporting and progress reviews.

There was so much going on in each transformation, I couldn’t manage it all…so I directed it and left the management to the functional experts and leaders on the team. I constantly and consistently pushed the vision and mission and lived our values to the best of my ability, trusting the team to give them life by making decisions that were similarly aligned. If they were not, we stopped, discussed them, and did the right thing. This is typical of Strategist or Level 5 leadership. See “At C-Level #9: Evolving Leadership for an Evolving World.”

To see more about the results of these transformations, please see my LinkedIn profile at www.linkedin.com/in/mikesayre.

In “At C-Level #17: Embedding Transformations,” we’ll look at what I’ve found to be the most challenging part of transformation work and the key takeaways that you may need to think about in your own organization’s transformative journey.

Thanks for following us! For more information or help, please visit us at www.Metcalf-Associates.com.

Four Common Types of Difficult Employees And How To Deal With Them By Maureen Metcalf

Posted by

Editor on August 31, 2017

Business

Four Common Types of Difficult Employees And How To Deal With Them By Maureen Metcalf

This post is a companion to one or our top Voice America Interviews featuring Mike Morrow-Fox talking about bad bosses and the impact they have on organizations

One of the jobs of managers is to create an environment that promotes employee engagement and produces organizational results. Difficult employees adversely impact the team members who work with them. Managers need to find productive ways to address these difficulties or they risk negatively impacting the entire working team. According to a Gallup article published in December 2016, “Compared with disengaged teams, engaged teams show 24% to 59% less turnover, 10% higher customer ratings, 21% greater profitability, 17% higher productivity, 28% less shrinkage, 70% fewer safety incidents and 41% less absenteeism.” The research clearly suggests that managers who address these difficult employees will produce better organizational results than those who do not.

The following is a guest post written by Jackie Edwards, professional writer experienced in the HR side of finance and banking,. It’s the reality of being an employer that your team might not always be filled with employees who support your vision and work hard for you. At some point you’ll have to deal with a difficult personality in the workplace. As stated in the Journal of Business & Economics, difficult employees can become of the most challenging issues you face, according. Here are four common types of difficult employee that you’ll likely have to come across and tips on how to tackle them effectively.

Dark-Side Dan

This is the employee who’s always negative. When you bring up an exciting project, he’ll tell you why it won’t work. It can be frustrating to deal with someone who’s always raining on everyone’s parade while thinking his way is the only right one. But a good tip is to see him as offering constructive criticism. He might show you the worst-case scenarios of corporate decisions that could help you make the right choice.

But dealing with such a difficult personality can actually be quite straightforward. Hold a meeting with your team and give everyone a chance to talk about their skills and struggles, see what this difficult employee says and coax them for a reply. You want your team members to be vulnerable at times, as it makes for a supportive, cooperative team.

Power-Hungry Pam

This is the employee who wants your job. She’ll take on leadership roles, such as by trying to be seen as holding a position of power with her co-workers, or trying to derail your authority, such as by ignoring your instructions. The best way to deal with highly-ambitious employees is to give them lots of work to do so that they won’t have time to try to manage other workers. Therefore keeping the workplace peace intact.

Mr. Excuse

You asked your employee to have a task completed by the end of the day, but he had something important to do across town or he had to deal with a co-worker’s problem, or he was stuck with a faulty printer. He always has excuses for not doing work or not listening to your instructions. In a global survey of 10,000 adults, 42 per cent confessed to lying about how busy they were at work. Although you might be quick to label this worker lazy, there could be another reason for his annoying behavior. Perhaps they are disastisfied with work? The best thing to do is have an open conversation with him to try to understand where he’s coming from and how you can utilize his best qualities, while minimizing his future games.

The Toddler

The minute this employee doesn’t like something, she’ll lose her cool, make sarcastic comments, or get into fights with co-workers. She also doesn’t deal with constructive criticism, which makes dealing with her a nightmare. If she’s a talented worker you don’t want to lose, remind her that her great work will take her far, but she needs to tone down her defensiveness as managers need to be likeable in order to succeed. Having a real heart-to-heart with this employee will not only show her that you’re willing to support your team members, but it also highlights that you’re after her best interests, which will help her see the error of her ways.

Difficult employees are everywhere, and they might even be part of your team. The key is to know how to tackle them effectively so that you can make use of their skills and decrease workplace drama which negatively impacts everyone’s productivity.

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