How do you understand employee’s strengths and weaknesses?
Take time to engage and understand the employee and be patient over time, because time shows you what someone can and cannot do. Be patient. Be Understanding.
What do you do to really understand?
People would tell me, ‘Oh my gosh; this is horrible advice,’ but let me tell you it’s not horrible advice. I wear my life on my sleeve, and I share with my employees and my staff and my contractors that is who I am. I open myself up to be criticized or judged by them if they so choose. My life is, for the most part, an open book to them.
So if I share with them, they share with me. You build a friendship with them at work to let them know that you actually care.
And there is a fine line. One day they may not be doing something quite right at their job, they’re making mistakes. And you care about them as a person. Yet they’re late every single day, they’re upsetting everybody else, or they have a negative mindset and they’re coming in and basically poisoning the group. So you have to let them go. That’s painful. That’s why people say maybe you shouldn’t know personal things.
I look at it as it’s OK to care about the people who work for you and it’s OK to let them know that you’ll help them along the way — help them make a better place in their own life. Then they end up sharing.
At the same time, there’s a balance. As much as I care about them — and I genuinely feel that we have friendships here within our organization — there comes a time when I feel like I have to crack the whip. I come down on them and say, ‘What happened? Why didn’t this go well?’ It’s a respect factor, too, because they actually know I’m also the other person where I care and I’m passionate but this is about business.
The employee has to have the understanding that there is business to be done, and yet you can build a friendship through that business. But when push comes to shove, we have to separate that. We can and will, and we always have to respect each other for it.
How do you communicate the need to, at times, separate friendship and business?
I absolutely make employees do that during the interview process. Interviews go both ways. The interviewee should be interviewing my staff as well as my staff interviewing them. They need to know if we’re a good fit for them.
So what I have them say is, ‘We work really hard. At times it’s hectic and you have to drop everything you’re doing and fly right. In the mix of that, there can be a lot of tension. Just know at the end of the day, we all genuinely really care about each other and we’re here to encourage.’
That is something that I have them talk about right out of the gate in the interview, it’s not all peace and love all the time.
How to reach: My LifePlan Inc., (866) 297-0995 or www.mylifeplaninc.com
