by Lee Sumner
Business and Personal Coach
Call 205.870.1877 or email lee@nolimitscoach.com

Dear Coach—

I have ten employees I’m trying to manage, and one of them is getting on my last nerve. She makes the same mistakes over and over and I don’t think she can make a move without my help. It’s gotten so bad I’m afraid to leave her alone, but I don’t have time to manage her every minute. She’s very loyal to the company and everyone likes her. How can I get rid of her?

Mad Manager

Dear Mad,
The old school of management says the manager is the expert. According to that style, it is your job to address a problem by telling employees how something should be done or should have been done. The problem (monkey) is handed to the manager and you accept it. After all, you’re the expert. The employee never owns the problem. By not owning it, she can never effectively deal with it and never learns how to deal with future challenges.

To help your employee(s) take responsibility for making corrections and teach them how to deal with future challenges, try this framework for your conversations:

1. What happened? Or what’s happening here?
   Remain silent and as objective as possible. Give her time to articulate what happened. Be sure everyone involved is clear about what did happen or is happening.
2. What do you see as the impact?
   Sure you may already know. But get her to think about it and come up with what she sees as the consequences. Better from her than you.
3. Anything else?
   Don’t be impatient for answers. Remember she’s getting to know the monkey. Breathe. Count to 10. Whatever you need to do to hang in there with her. Encourage her to think it through thoroughly.
4. What are your (our) options here?
   Don’t let her off the hook with "I don’t know." Let her think of the options. Or make a "top ten" list of things to try. Take turns adding to the list, even if some of the options aren’t good ones.
5. Which of these do you feel/think would be best?
   Have her narrow it down to one or two.
6. Why do you like this one?
   Get her to say why she believes this will be the best course. Talking about it requires her to think it through.
7. What roadblocks do you foresee with this plan?
   If any are likely, it’s better to be prepared.
8. When will you start taking action on this?
   Commitment counts. If she replies, "Next week" you respond, "Why not tomorrow?"
9. How can I support you?
   Be ready to do just that in whatever way you can.
10. What resources do you need to get this done?
    One way to support her is to make sure she has the tools she needs to get the job done.

The case of the smelly leftovers
Let’s look at a common scenario to see how this process applies on-the-job.

"Hey, boss! The employee lounge is a pig sty! "
"Oh, yeah? What’s happening?"
"The microwave door is crusted shut, the sink’s full of dirty coffee mugs, and there’s green stuff growing in the fridge."
"What else? "
"Everybody acts like it’s somebody else’s job to clean up after them."
"What’s gonna happen if it keeps on like this?"
"We’ll have to shut down the lounge."
"Anything else?"
"Then we’ll have to go out for lunch every day and that will get expensive."
"What options do we have?"
"The whole mess is being made by a few people. I say make them clean it up."
"O.K., what else could we do?"
"Hire a cleaning service."
"Anything else?"
"Well, we could rotate kitchen duty. At my last job we had a sign-up list for making coffee and cleaning the pot. We rotated who cleaned the stuff out of the fridge every Friday."
"Which idea do you think would work best?"
"I guess rotating."
"Why do you like that one?"
"The company will never pay some service to clean up after us. Doing it ourselves is fair, so maybe nobody will get their nose out of joint."
"See any roadblocks?"
"Yeah, some people don’t use the lounge and they won’t want to clean up, so we could just leave them off the rotation list."
"Great idea! When will you get started on it?"
"I’ll make up the list and send it out tomorrow."
"Thanks, I’ll look forward to seeing it! What other help do you need?"
"Well, if you’d ask people to sign up for making coffee, I think that would help. And we’ll need some new coffee filters and cleaning supplies."
"I’ll bring it up at our next staff meeting. For now, just make a list of what supplies we’ll need and ask Mary to order them. Thanks for coming up with a great solution on this."

Does all this take time? Yes. Far less time (and aggravation) than if you follow your standard M.O. You want to avoid having to spend your time checking and correcting employees. Put in that time up front, coaching them to do the job right the first time, without you looking over their shoulders. This helps them make good decisions and be confident to make them without you.

The better you are as a coach, the less control you need over your employees. Coach them to play the game well, and watch everyone’s attitude and performance improve dramatically.

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Lee Sumner is a Certified Professional Coach who has helped hundreds of people create high-quality lives. She is President of No Limits Coaching and Vice-President of the International Coach Federation--Alabama. Send your questions to Lee@nolimitscoach.com and visit www.nolimitscoach.com.

Click here to email Lee or call her at 205.870.1877