Do Business Well

“He was so pissed off, he looked like he was going to punch me.’You haven’t given me enough time. You got to let me have another shot.’ All that kind of stuff. But I know my people, sometimes better than they know themselves. I knew that Simon wasn’t a team person. I knew that he would never be able to build the total experience I wanted. Better to pull the trigger now, I thought, rather than letting things drag on, with him beginning to feel more invested and me getting more disappointed.

“Now he’s doing extremely well back at the smaller place, and I managed to find a collaborative sales manager for this place. My brave new world is coming along nicely.”

Harry is universally loved by his employees. He is a pushover when employees need to change their hours, take a day off, or short-cut a process for the sake of the customer. But he is rock solid when it comes to excellence. As he says, “Excellence is my thing. If you don’t like it, that’s fine. Just don’t come to work here.”

The “love” element of tough love is a little subtler. This element still forces managers to confront poor performance early but allows them to do so in such a way that much of the bitterness and the ill will disappear. And it all springs from the concept of talent. An understanding of talent, an understanding that each person possesses enduring patterns of thought, feeling, and behavior, is incredibly liberating when managers have to confront poor performance. Why? Because it frees the manager from blaming the employee.

Consider the manager who believes that with enough willpower and determination, virtually all behaviors can be changed. For this manager, every case of poor performance is the employee’s fault. The employee has been warned, repeatedly, and still he has not improved his performance. If he had more drive, more spirit, more willingness to learn, he would have changed his behavior as required, and the poor performance would have disappeared. But it hasn’t disappeared. He must not be trying hard enough. It is his fault.

This seductive logic puts this manager in a very awkward position. Since she told the employee what to do, and since it wasn’t done, then the employee must be weak-willed, stupid, disobedient, or disrespectful.

How can you have a constructive conversation with someone when beneath the surface politeness this is what you are compelled to think of him? It’s hard. If you are, by nature, an emotional manager, you fear you might lose your temper and let your anger show. If you are, by nature, a caring and supportive manager, you worry that he might see through your soothing words and realize how deeply disappointed you are in him. Whatever your style, a conversation where you have to mask your true feelings is a stressful conversation, particularly when your feelings are so negative. No wonder so many managers try to avoid it.

But great managers don’t have to hide their true feelings. They understand that a person’s talent and nontalent constitute an enduring pattern. They know that if, after pulling out all the stops to manage around his nontalents, an employee still underperforms, the most likely explanation is that his talents do not match his role. In the minds of great managers, consistent poor performance is not primarily a matter of weakness, stupidity, disobedience, or disrespect. It is a matter of miscasting.

If there is blame here, it is evenly spread. Perhaps the employee should have been more self-aware. Perhaps the manager should have been more perceptive. Perhaps. But this is just hindsight pointing the finger. No employee will ever be completely self-aware. No manager will ever know each of his people perfectly, even if he has selected very carefully for talent. So casting errors are not cause for anger or recrimination. Casting errors are inevitable.

When an employee is obviously miscast, great managers hold up the mirror. They encourage the employee to use this misstep to learn a little more about his unique combination of talents and nontalents. They use language like “This isn’t a fit for you, let’s talk about why” or “You need to find a role that plays more to your natural strengths. What do you think that role might be?” They use this language not because it is polite, not because it softens the bad news, but because it is true.

This is the “love” element of tough love. The most effective managers do genuinely care about each of their people. But they imbue “care” with a distinct meaning. In their minds, to “care” means to set the person up for success. They truly want each person to find roles where he has a chance to excel, and they know that this is possible only in roles that play to his talents.

Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)
The Art of Tough Love: how do great managers terminate someone and still keep the relationship intact? part 2

• The Art of Tough Love: how do great managers terminate someone and still keep the relationship intact? part 3
• The Art of Tough Love: how do great managers terminate someone and still keep the relationship intact?
• The Manager and the New Career
• The Power of Self-Awareness part 4
• Career Management, Spend the Most Time with Your Best People，Why do great managers play favorites?
• Master Keys
• Keys of Your Own, Talented Employee
• The Secret of My Success, Tales of Transformation, Why is it so Tempting to try to fix people?
• Performance Management "How do great managers turn the last three Keys every day, with every employee?"
• How competitive are you? How powerful is your desire to win? continue...

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