12/14 2011

Posted in:  Communication Behaviors, Corporate Culture, Leadership

Our words are very powerful tools for a leader. Our words and our communication set the vision and create the culture for your organization.   I just received an email from a training organization and they are promoting a class titled, “The Leaders Guide to Managing Problem Employees“.  I have to admit that I cringed when I read this.  What kind of message is that sending to leaders?  It is reinforcing the message and the thought process that we are dealing with “problem employees“.  What impact does this kind of language have on your culture?

• With this kind of message, leaders go into coaching sessions with preconceived ideas about the type of employee that they are meeting with.  When we have preconceived ideas, we bias ourselves and may overlook things that indicate that this employee is NOT a problem employee.  A strong leader is open minded and non judgmental and this language does not encourage leaders to be open minded to their employees.
• With this kind of message we are segmenting our population- there are problem employees and then there are non-problem employees.  Does this go against the concept of respecting diversity and being inclusive of everyone?  By promoting the fact that you have “problem employees” you are basically segmenting your workforce in the minds of your leaders and not encouraging the building of a close community in which everyone is equally included.
• Labels influence how we treat people.  Bad reputations precede people and bias them.  Can you imagine being on a promotion committee for an employee who is applying for a leadership job and someone on the committe saying that this is one of his problem employees?  You are limiting your options and again not keeping an open mind to all the strengths that this employee brings to the table.
• The term problem employees takes the responsibility off of the leaders.  It is as if we are blaming our employees for not being the type of employee that we need.  Whose responsibility is it to grow and groom our employees?  It’s our leaders responsibility to prevent situations from getting to the point where we have problems.  But by labeling our employees as problem employees, we are removing accountability from our leaders.

Sometimes our greatest problems help us to grow the most as leaders.  I do not look at people as problems.  I look at SITUATIONS as challenging and I challenge myself to see what I can do differently to change the situation.  I encourage you to look within your organization and see how your language is impacting your perceptions and your culture.  Another course I recently was asked to attend was called, “Eliminating Difficult Customers”.  As you may imagine, I cringed at that one too.

MOMENT OF REFLECTION
What language are we using within our organization that is biasing us away from being one cohesive community?  What language do we need to begin adopting to change our culture?