managing employees

Mentoring Is Part Of Managing

If you hire an employee,
especially a younger employee,
that employee will require
not only training
but also mentorship.

They will want to know
what their career looks like,
what their future
with your company
looks like.

They will need to learn
and grow
and become a better employee.

Because they’ll want
salary increases
that at least keep up
with inflation.

And you’ll be d@mn bitter
about those salary increases
if the employee isn’t becoming
better at their job.

Set aside one hour
per week
per direct report
for mentorship.

If you don’t have time
for that,
you don’t have time
to manage them.
And you should consider
hiring a manager.

Mentorship
is part of managing an employee.

The Queen Bee

A Mom I know
has problems with
ALL her daughters.

Which doesn’t surprise me
because she has problems
working with women.

She’s a Queen Bee.

There is only one
Queen Bee
in a hive.
If another Queen
is born,
the hive splits
or one of the Queens die.

This Mom
emotionally needs
to be the only female
in a group.

If there’s another female,
especially a strong female,
she tries to eliminate her,
either emotionally destroying her
or pushing her out of the group.

A Queen Bee could want to be
the only male in the group,
the only Asian person in the group,
the only creative person in the group,
the only great organizer in the group,
etc.

And they will eliminate
any competitors for that role.
It doesn’t matter to them
how great that rival is
for the group
or
for the business.

If you are seeing friction
between the two ‘only’s
in a group,
one of those ‘only’s
could be a Queen Bee.

Deal with them.

Or they will push away
talented employees or partners
AND
likely customers.

Employees Who Care Are PITAs

There’s a myth
in business building
that employees who care
about the business,
the product/service,
customers
are the easiest employees
to manage.

Because they are driven.
That’s the thinking.
We don’t have to inspire
them to work.
They inspire themselves.

In reality,
self-driven, passionate employees
are complete pains
in the a$$es
to manage.

They don’t blindly do
what we want them to do.
They argue on behalf
of the customers,
the products/services,
the company.
They tend to make decisions
on their own.

These decisions,
these independent actions,
these determined employees
often make
our businesses better.
They are great assets,
awesome sources
of improvements.

But they are NOT
easy to manage.
Not at all.

Embrace that.

(This post is dedicated
to Tom H.,
a quality control expert
whose passion
made him a complete PITA
to work with
but whose stances
are now embedded in a certain
huge beverage company
decades after he left.
He made this world
a better place
and I was fortunate
to have known him.)

Meetings Outside Business Hours

A loved one’s official hours
are 8 to 5.

His new boss
has been scheduling
regular update meetings
at 7 pm every night.

The boss’ reason
for this?

Everyone in his group
is free then.

They are NOT free then.

They are eating dinners
with their family.

They are watching
their daughters play baseball.

They are,
most likely,
completing work tasks
they couldn’t complete
during business hours
because they were fully booked
with meetings.

The loved one
and many of
the extremely skilled people
in his group
are looking for new jobs,
jobs that don’t require them
to attend meetings outside
of core work hours.

Don’t schedule meetings
outside of core work hours
unless it is an absolute emergency
OR
you’re paying people extra
to attend those meetings.

No one is truly ‘free’
at 7 pm.

Banning A Result Isn’t Leadership

A manager told a friend
he will no longer
tolerate her
arriving at the office
after 8 am.

She now lies to him,
telling him
she WAS in the office.
She was merely in a meeting
or picking up supplies
or he must have missed her.

His ‘solution’
didn’t solve the problem.
It made the situation worse.

My friend still has to drop
her child off
at childcare no earlier
than 7:30 am,
which makes getting to the office
by 8 am impossible.

But now, she is forced
to sneak around
and lie about it.

If we’re not
addressing the true problem,
we’re merely making
the situation worse.

Banning a result
isn’t leadership.
Look at why
something is happening.

Stop Bad Behavior NOW

There is a f*ckin’ Nazi rally
being organized
in my home city.

That means I have to
leave my warm house,
take a day off writing,
and counter-protest,
waving a sign
promoting tolerance
and
ensuring the Nazis
don’t harass individuals.

But this has to be done
because if we don’t stop
the Nazis now,
we will be forced
to fight
and kill them later.
I REALLY don’t want
to be forced to do that.

This is the same
for bad behavior
at our businesses.

If we don’t stop
the bad behavior
when it starts,
the problem will escalate
exponentially.
It might spin
out of our control
and it WILL
cause damage.

Stop bad behavior today.