Managing Problem Employees, Are the Managers the Problem or the employees, or neither.

Managing Problem Employees, Are the Managers the Problem or the employees, or neither.

Sometimes we think that we are managing an employee but really we are managing personalities.  As humans, it can be difficult to lead from our objectives-described in the mission, vision and values(MVV)-of our enterprise.  If we are trying to get people to follow our leadership because we want them to conform to our will or our private vision of how people do things then we are engaging in a battle of wills.  This is a mistake for a manager to make as well as an extraordinary waste of our personal energy as we are no longer working with people, but against them.

To get people to take on our leadership we have to have shared with them the mission, vision and values that we create for our company, division, or even our team, and have gotten their commitment to participate in that mission and those values.  Then and only then can we create a leadership style where we coach people’s action in relationship to the mission vision and values…

Then it is no longer a competition between people but a conversation about how the employee’s actions can support what we have established as our common goal.

As the manager it is important to manage actions and not behaviour or attitude, when we focus on specific actions we can compare those actions to how they promote or detract from  the MVV.   This allows you to remove your personallities from the equation and you are no longer the manager of attitudes but the trainer that will allow your employees to excel at their job!

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