This week we encountered a management situation that probably occurs within many companies across the country. Our manager suspected that an associate had dropped the ball on one of their duties. They had no evidence, but they had already decided it must be this employee.
Now there are a couple things wrong with that, and we’ll address them shortly, but another situation arose this morning in my office. We have a cat and a fish. You might not think these two are a good pair, but the cat leaves the fish alone, aside from constantly trying to drink its water. This morning we couldn’t find the fish. There was water outside the bowl, and a cat nail laying beside it. So we suspected the cat finally ate the fish. All the evidence was there.
We were wrong.
The fish had gotten stuck beneath some rocks, which is why we couldn’t see it. Sadly, the fish doesn’t look to be doing so well. Even though the cat doesn’t understand us, we still apologized to him for suspecting him in the first place.
Now to the manager and the suspected employee. What can we learn from our response to the fish and the cat?
Do not voice unfounded opinions
You may believe you know who is responsible for some “wrongdoing”, but until you have evidence…keep it to yourself. It should go without saying that you should never discuss your feelings about one employee with another, but we’re going to say it: DO NOT discuss the performance of an employee with anyone but that employee. If you have feedback to give an employee, share that with that employee alone and in private.
In this situation, if you believe that this employee did something wrong, gather your evidence and deliver feedback as necessary. Until you have all the facts, do not take any action. You may end up taking the wrong action, and make a situation worse. If this manager accused the employee of something they didn’t actually do, they could risk alienating the employee. The employee would no longer trust the manager to be impartial, and morale would suffer, which in turn harms productivity.
If wrong, admit it
Since the manager voiced this opinion in front of other associates, they should admit to others that they were wrong (if that turns out to be the case). By leaving the idea out there that this employee did something wrong, they (the manager) have put in these other employees’ minds that this employee is a “problem” employee. As a manager, it is your duty to ensure your team works well together. Turning employees against each other is the opposite of that.
If you accuse an employee of something and they didn’t do that: apologize sincerely. We all make mistakes. It is when we refuse to admit them, or qualify our error, that we lose the trust of those we must lead. If you sincerely apologize and work to make amends, you can gain that trust back.
Focus on solutions, not blame
Back to our fish. We’re afraid it won’t make it through the day. We’re looking at the things we could have done better and have resolved to improve going forward, either with this fish or our next. That’s all you can do in management in general. It is impossible to go back in time, so blame and finger pointing don’t serve a purpose. It is necessary to find what errors were made, but the discussion should be on what happens going forward. If it turns out the employee did do something wrong, it does not help to say, “You did this wrong. Don’t do that again.” What is more helpful is, “When you do X, this happens. Let’s try and do Y and see if we can prevent that.” It’s a subtle change, but one that is very effective.
Let’s use this on our manager: “When you discuss employee behavior in front of other employees it can hurt morale. Let’s try and only deliver feedback to the appropriate employee so we can fix the problem and keep the team unified.”
While it may be impossible to avoid jumping to conclusions, we can take actions to avoid unnecessary fallout from having done so.
Joe Robles 