If you are faced with a situation like this it is critical to take decisive action. If you look the other way and hope the problem just takes care of itself you will end up harming the other innocent members of your team who are impacted by the offensive behavior. Moral will go down. Work will be done wrong or not at all. Time and money will be wasted and worst of all; the behavior might spread to other team members who notice that they can get away with it.

I believe the Scriptural guidance for these cases comes from Mathew 18:15-17

“If your brother sins against you, go and show him his fault, just between the two of you. If he listens to you, you have won your brother over. But if he will not listen, take one or two others along, so that every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses. If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if he refuses to listen even to the church, treat him as you would a pagan or a tax collector.”
Even though the context here is confronting interpersonal conflicts within the church, I believe that it applies quite well to the workplace as well. Here is how I would interpret this to happen in a workplace setting.

Step 1 - Speak to the person privately

The idea here is to make the person aware that you are concerned about a particular issue but to do it in a positive and constructive manner. You want to raise awareness of the issue without causing the person to feel offended and get defensive. The ideal outcome is for the person to understand the problem and feel good about making a correction so that your long term relationship is not harmed.

A great way of achieving this is to wrap the complaint up in between sincere compliments both before and after the problem is stated. Suppose you are a Sales Manager and you have a sales person on your team who, until now, has maintained a good relationship with a regular customer. The problem is that your sales person failed to show up at the last meeting with the customer and lost a sale as a result.

It could be tempting to blast your sales person with a harsh “You IDIOT! What is wrong with you?”
However, this can be counterproductive. Your salesperson is likely to feel embarrassed and/or insulted and a rebuke like that could damage the person’s moral as well as your relationship with them.

It would be better to find a quiet place to speak to him or her and say something like “I heard from Such and Such client yesterday. They were a bit confused because you have always given them really outstanding service, however, they did not see you at the meeting yesterday. They needed to place an order right away so they had to resort to calling another vendor. I know you’ve got what it takes to win back their trust and their business so what do you say you go out there, win them back and put this setback behind us?”

With this approach you are taking the issue head on and making it clear it needs to be fixed, yet you are doing it in a way that builds the person back up instead of tearing them down. If they are receptive to this approach you will strengthen your relationship with them and the person will be a better performer in the future by learning from this mistake.

Step 2 - Raise the issue with a few witnesses

When you first confront a person privately in Step 1 the hope is that “A word to the wise is sufficient.” In some cases it will be. However, some folks are too stubborn to receive constructive criticism and they will continue to exhibit the offending behavior even after a couple of conversations. At this point, you need to do as the Bible instructs and stage a bit of an intervention. Arrange a meeting between the offending party, a few of the people who are impacted by the behavior and you. State the problem again and have the other parties add their point of view in as constructive a manner as possible. Let the person know that this is more than just your own point of view. Show the person that there is a consensus about the problem and that change is required.

If the offense is particularly serious you should consider the possibility of including someone from your company’s Human Resources Department in the conversation. A Human Resources rep can give you an objective assessment of the situation and can also provide guidance as to how to most appropriately proceed given the nature of the issue, the policies of the company and the potential legal issues that might be involved. It can also help to communicate the gravity of the situation to the offending party when they see an Hr person present.

Step 3 - Termination

In my experience, most people respond well to the gentle guidance in Step 1 if it is done correctly. I have further found that most of the group who don’t respond to Step 1 will come around after Step 2.

However, there are those particularly difficult people with extraordinarily thick skulls who just will not bend even after repeated warnings. If you have the misfortune to encounter one of these folks there is just one answer left. Fire them…..and do it quickly.

A business is not a charity ward. You do not owe a job to a person who can’t or won’t do what is expected of them. Rather, you owe it to the other hard working people who are being harmed by this troublemaker to put a stop to the nonsense. You also owe it to the other stake holders in the company to see that things in your group run smoothly. As long as you have clearly defined the problem, clearly indicated what is required to resolve it and then given the person a fair chance to correct it you really have no other choice but to remove him or her if they refuse to cooperate.

As a manager it is very important to deal with these types of conflicts appropriately. You don’t want to come down like a ton of bricks on someone every time they display the slightest imperfection. On the flip side, you cannot afford to consistently overlook a pattern of offenses that jeopardizes your team’s goals or affects other team members negatively.

The key is to accurately gauge the severity of the conflict and then to respond appropriately. Fortunately, the Bible provides some great advice for handling all sorts of interpersonal conflicts.

Let’s take an easy case first. Say you have a very talented and dependable worker who does most things right but has a weakness in one or two minor areas. Perhaps they tend to come in to work 5 or 10 minutes late some mornings or they dress in a slightly different manner than everyone else or maybe they like to listen to an IPOD while they work. For these cases I take my queue from 1 Corinthians 13 where we are instructed that Love is patient, kind and long suffering.

I might not personally like all the particular habits of all my team members but as long as they do great work and are not hurting someone else, I completely overlook all that small stuff. It is not worth damaging the moral of an otherwise great worker just to force them to conform to your own preferences.

I have found that most people are willing to cooperate if you approach them in the correct manner. Always try this gentle approach first and give it chance to work. In the next post we will look at what to do when you try to a soft approach and it does not work.

Step 1 toward faithfulness - Always do everything you are supposed to do

If I were to ask you whether you do everything you are supposed to do at work would you automatically say yes? Many folks would but don’t be too quick to answer. Stop first and think. Do you really do EVERYTHING you are supposed to do? Most people do the important stuff. You know, the stuff that everyone sees. The stuff that your boss is looking for. But what about the little things? What about the tiny tasks that you really should do but no one will notice if you don’t get to them? If you want a reputation for being faithful then you need to make sure that stuff is covered too.

For example, my company asks that every employee fill out a weekly timesheet to indicate how many hours per week they spend on each of their projects. Most people are salaried employees so the timesheet has no bearing on their paycheck. The data is only used to gather statistics about which projects take more time and which ones take less. There is also no penalty for neglecting to fill it out other than an email to your manager asking that he or she remind you to submit it. As a result, most people see the timesheet as a nuisance and most mangers do not pay any attention to it until the email reminder comes out.

I take a different view. I see this as a golden opportunity to demonstrate faithfulness to my superiors. First, I make it a point to submit my own timesheet first thing every Monday morning even though it is not due until 5:00 PM. Second, I see that all the people below me submit their timesheets first thing Monday morning as well. If anyone does not have it in by noon I send out humorous email reminders to please submit it right away.

I once sent an email to a delinquent timesheet submitter saying that on my way in to the office that morning I found her timesheet on top of the roof ready to jump off because it was feeling neglected and sad. I urged the person to submit it quickly, before it jumped off and it would be too late. It sounds kind of corny, but this type of reminder produces immediate attention without me coming across as harping on a trivial task.

Because of this policy, I have the distinction of being the only manager in the whole department whose entire team has their timesheets in on time, every time.  It is a relatively small thing but it helps build my reputation for faithfulness and it helps distinguish me from my peers.

Step 2 toward faithfulness - Always doing things when they should be done

If there is one thing that kind of irks me it is missed deadlines. I don’t like to deliver my projects late and I don’t like when other people deliver things to me late. Missed deadlines cost money and they damage reputations.

You should strive to deliver every task you have early whenever possible or at very least on time. This applies equally to big, visible tasks as well as to the little ones. Most people do this some of the time. Some people do this most of the time. However, not very many people do it each and every time. You should strive to set yourself apart by being known as a member of that small, elite third group.

Step 3 towards being faithful - Always using methods that are acceptable

This one is absolutely critical. You might nail down the first two principles of doing what you should when you should but you could completely wipe out the benefits if you don’t do things the way you should.

I’m reminded of a Dilbert comic strip I once saw where Dogbert promised to reveal a guaranteed method to turn one hundred dollars into a million dollars with no risk and no work. He charged everyone a hefty admission price to attend his “get rich” seminar and then proceeded to tell the audience to simply put $100.00 into a bank account at 5% interest and wait for 150 years. He then thanked his audience for coming and left the podium…..a clear example of using unacceptable methods!

Step 4 toward being faithful - Always delivering the required level of quality

Doing what you should do, when you should do it and using the right methods is all great, however, it is important to maintain high quality standards as you do all this. As we noted before if you do the other things right but your work is sloppy all the benefits to you, to your organization and to your customers will be lost.

I once heard a story about a wealthy businessman who was good friends with a home builder. The businessman hired the builder to build a great mansion. He told the builder that he would be out of town for several months so he would not be able to supervise the construction. The businessman gave the builder a large check to cover the cost of the home before he left.

This presented a bit of a moral dilemma for the builder. Since the businessman would not be around to verify the quality of the materials and the workmanship there was an opportunity to cut corners.

The temptation proved to be too much. The builder cut costs every way he could. He watered down the cement in the foundation. He used inferior wood for the frame. He failed to excavate the site properly. He used substandard wiring and plumbing. He bought only the very cheapest materials he could find and used only one coat of paint at the end to cover up all the defects.

When the house was finished it looked pretty due to some clever cosmetic work but it was actually a disaster just waiting to happen. It was only a matter of time before the defects would begin to show up and the whole thing would turn into a giant money pit with almost no hope of ever being completely fixed.

Shortly after the businessman returned from his trip he met the builder at the new home to see how it turned out. The businessman seemed very pleased at the appearance of the home. The two men took a short tour of the inside, after which the builder handed the keys to the businessman. The businessman paused for a moment and then handed the keys back to builder. ‘You don’t understand” said the businessman. “This house is not for me. It is for you.” The businessman added “You are such a good friend and I have seen how hard you have worked all these years to build beautiful homes for your customers. I just wanted you to have an equally beautiful home for yourself. May you enjoy it for many years to come.”

As you might imagine, the builder just about wanted to hang himself. All those shortcuts he took were now going to come back to bite him in the form of devastatingly expensive repairs. He learned a very hard lesson that day about the need to always do top quality work.

Step 5 toward being faithful – Consistency

You will notice that in the prior 4 steps I say “always do this” or “always do that”. The word “always” is there for a very specific reason. You can’t earn a reputation for faithfulness by delivering the goods just one or two times. The key to earning a great reputation as a faithful person it to deliver on time, every time. Almost anyone to do a great job once in awhile. The key to being a top performer is to do a great job every time. If you make these techniques an everyday habit and I believe you will find the results to be very satisfying.

Conference Room - This has traditionally been defined as a room with good lighting, adequate seating and a generously sized table which is reserved for staff meetings. Due to increasingly severe space and budget limitations, the definition has been relaxed somewhat so as to include cramped offices, the sides of the hallway, unused tables in the cafeteria and the occasional park bench.

Let’s start by defining what is meant by faithfulness. I see it this way - faithfulness is doing everything you are supposed to do, always doing it when it should be done, always using methods that are acceptable, always delivering the required level of quality and meeting these standards of performance every time. If you think that sounds like a tall order you’re right. But this trait of faithfulness is exactly what can differentiate you from the pack. The people who get promoted are the ones who stand out as top performers and there is no better way to stand out then to be known as the person who can be counted on every time.

You would almost think that this trait of faithfulness is something that everybody should have. The sad truth is that many people do not have it. Most people will come through at least part of the time, but to deliver the kind of results we are talking about every single time is actually rather unusual.

I am reminded of a quote from Billy Joel that is sad but true. He was once asked during an interview how he managed to become such a brilliant musician. He responded by saying “I am not really a brilliant musician at all. I am just a competent musician. However, being competent in a world full of incompetence makes me look brilliant.”

I believe the same principle applies to faithfulness. In a perfect world everyone would be faithful. The opportunity to become a star performer lies in the fact the most people in the real world are not consistently faithful. If you can be sure to follow up on every detail, meet every deadline, always deliver a quality product or service and be sure to never disappoint your stakeholders you will certainly be recognized as a valuable member of the team.

You will make an especially powerful impact when you are faithful in an area that is so universally ignored by most people that there is not even an expectation of faithfulness. It is always in these areas where the expectations are very low that you can really make a name for yourself with very little time or effort.

For example, there is no real expectation of quickly returning an email message when you are on vacation. Therefore, when I am on vacation, I have an auto responder that let’s people know I am out of the office when they send me an email. However, I have a habit of using my Blackberry to scan through my emails 2-3 times per day during working hours even when I am out of the office. I ignore 95% of the messages until I return, however, if one of them is important I send a quick response right away. It only takes me 5 minutes or so each time for a total of 15 minutes per day of effort but the impact I make in terms of perception by spending those 15 minutes returning important messages on my day off is greater than the impact I could make by staying 15 hours in the office on a regular work day. I can’t tell you how many times I get reply back from people saying how amazed and pleased they were to get a same day response when I am on vacation. Since there is no expectation of that I reap huge benefits by coming through in a way that was not expected.

Company Holiday Party - A gathering similar to other Christmastime get-togethers in that there is free food and drinks. It is different in that your company is probably too politically correct to call it a Christmas party. Also, your boss and co-workers are all there watching you so you can’t have any real fun.

Budget Cuts - A cost cutting strategy where a company reduces or eliminates spending on critical items needed by lower level workers in order that wasteful spending on the perks and pet projects of senior management may continue.

It is important to note that these are not necessarily the same thing. I have seen people who were extremely talented top performers who were also a real pain in the neck and were widely disliked. These folks might advance at first but their luck usually runs out at a certain point. During downturns when companies start laying off workers these folks are sometimes the first ones who find themselves on the curb. After all it is normally tough to justify firing a person for being a pain if they also do good work. But when a mandate comes down from senior management that X number of people need to be let go it can be tempting to include a troublemaker in that unfortunate group.

On the flip side, it is not much better for a person to be liked personally but to also be known as incompetent. This type of person might get invited to all the company parties and might have a certain amount of job security since everyone likes having him or her around. However, it will be tough for a person like that to really move ahead.

Therefore, the real secret is to have both favor and a good name. This leads to the obvious next question. How does one go about getting these traits? This is where Proverbs 3:3-4 comes in:

‘Let love and faithfulness never leave you; bind them around your neck, write them on the tablet of your heart. Then you will win favor and a good name in the sight of God and man.”

It really is that simple. We have two verses (verse 3 and verse 4) which identify two characteristics (love and faithfulness) which in turn produce the two desired results (favor and a good name).

Let’s drill down a bit now and look at how this applies in the workplace.
We’ll start with love first. The good news is that this verse does not mean you need to run over with sweet emotions towards every person in your workplace. Comforting, isn’t it? If that were the criteria I know that, speaking for myself, I would have a very tough time indeed.

Rather, I believe that love refers to Paul’s definition of love. It refers to treating everyone in your workplace with kindness and patience. It means not being boastful or demanding your own way all the time. It means having tolerance for others and being very slow to anger. You might not personally like everyone you work with but as long as you exercise the discipline to treat them in a loving way no matter what your feelings are then I believe you are operating in love and you qualify for the rewards that come with it.

When we define love in this way it becomes easy to see how we would benefit from walking in it. If you are kind and patient with people it is just natural that they will be inclined to like you. Now throw in a tendency to help any way you can, a resistance to quarreling and a willingness to respect other people’s opinions rather always insist on your own and you are just about guaranteed to win the favor of those around you and those above you.

I once observed a young associate who joined our company and was tasked with acting as a liaison between the marketing team and the product development team. His job was to collect information from the marketing team about what new features would be desirable in our products and communicate that information to the product development team to help them come up with improvements that would make our products more marketable.

Now there was a certain engineer on the product development team who was notoriously impossible to get along with. He had the attitude that he was superior to everyone around him and he would openly argue with anyone whose opinion differed from his own.

Since nobody in marketing wanted anything to do with this rather difficult engineer the new marketing associate ended up being stuck with him. This posed quite a challenge for our new associate. This was to be his first project and the initial opinion that his colleagues and his superiors would form would be based largely on how he performed on this first task.

The good news is that our young associate was blessed with a very pleasant disposition. He always had a smile on his face and was friendly toward everyone. He was an excellent example of acting in love in the workplace. When the engineer would get upset about a particular request from marketing the associate would patiently hear him out and document each objection carefully. Then our associate would go back to marketing and very diplomatically translate the engineer’s complaints into quite reasonable follow-up questions for marketing.

In some cases the thoughtful way in which the questions were presented caused the marketing folks to reconsider the requests. This would score points with the engineer because he began to see the associate as an advocate for his positions rather than an adversary to defeat.

In other cases, the marketing team would hold the line and insist that their ideas be implemented. When this happened the associate would gather some additional facts about why the change would be beneficial. Then he would go back to the engineer and very patiently explain that he fully understands the engineer’s objections, however, he has gathered some additional information that changes some of the original assumptions and he would request that the engineer reconsider in light of the new facts.

This diplomatic and respectful approach gave the engineer a face saving way of reversing his objections without the need for an argument. The engineer would typically just say something like “Well, you should have told me that before, of course I’ll agree with Marketing in this case.” Then our very wise associate would overlook the insulting part of that remark and instead of getting offended he would simply thank the engineer for his help.

This approach turned out to be wildly successful. Most projects with this engineer were behind schedule due to communication breakdowns and deadlocked arguments. However, our associate managed to orchestrate the entire project on time and on budget. Furthermore, both Marketing and Engineering were pleased with the final outcome. It was nothing short of a miracle.

So far, we have seen how acting in love leads to favor and a good name. Be sure to watch for Part 2 of the series where we will see how faithfulness picks up where love leaves off and boosts your reputation even higher.

Internet - An office  worker’s link to the outside world which allows him or her to email friends, pursue outside interests, run a part time side business or just casually surf the Web right from his or her cubicle. It has the added benefit of generating a lot of typing and mouse clicking, thereby creating the appearance of diligent work.