Peer to Peer Magazine

way. Counseling can usually nip that in the bud. But when an employee is maliciously, continually and knowingly undermining the team’s work or the direction of management — when it’s regular and vindictive, and certainly after some level of counseling, is hindering the team — we managers are obligated to take definitive action, for example, replacing the dissenting team member with someone more willing to align himself with the team’s goals. Sean: I’ve certainly seen instances when some folks weren’t into the team vision. Maybe they weren’t intentionally trying to undermine the team but were just not participating at the same level as everyone else and therefore not contributing toward team goals. Sometimes, this might be because of a person’s insecurity about his own skill set, something mentoring and education can help. Skip: I’ve found that you need to tackle undermining situations head on, not by throwing the employee under the bus, but by addressing him privately in hopes that he will respond to your input and return to the team fold. Be sure to stress that whatever his concerns or complaints may be in the future, he needs to vent upward to his manager, never horizontally to his peers or to a client. Judi: Three instances come to mind. In one, I intentionally allowed that person to alienate himself from the group by continually reinforcing the team to the other members, telling them how well they were working together and how important their work was. Ultimately the person quit. In another situation, I coached the person around some of his behavior, stressing how disruptive it was to the group and how he might better himself professionally by conducting himself differently. He listened and actually became a very effective member of the team. And a third time, I did have to terminate someone who simply wasn’t able or willing to cooperate with the group. In what ways do you strive to continually motivate your staff toward excellence? Scott: I try to lead by example. I approach my job with a very caring attitude and work to instill the fact every day that I care about the work we do and its quality. Confidently reinforcing the firm’s standards of excellence in daily interactions with staff is an absolute must. When employees hear from your lips on a daily basis that quality is job one, they tend to make it their mantra, too. Let me add that in order to have the knowledge he needs and the respect of his team, a leader must to be plugged into the daily interaction and workings of functional areas. That’s a critical success factor in motivating excellence. Sean: Direct, timely and honest feedback when there are performance issues is the key to getting someone to strive 26 www.iltanet.org Peer to Peer to personal excellence. By the way, I don’t view excellence as the goal per se; rather, it’s the outcome from striving for effectiveness. In other words, excellence is something that occurs because of what you’ve done, not something you strive to get. Joy: Good, smart people like lots of meaty work that fulfills them. And I mean work that keeps them busy — not busywork. Additionally, I think that anything you can do to provide them information they need to do their job — training, coaching, mentoring — is an enormously important motivating factor. Judi: Attitude is of utmost concern to me. Sometimes our internal customers become extremely frustrated, which can spill over to their interactions with my staff. So I do two things. I coach my team on how to cope with those situations, and I speak with that customer individually. I suggest how that interaction with my team could have gone better and assure him that we’re there to work with him and support him, but that when he displays an overly aggressive attitude, we immediately go into a defense mode trying to figure out how to keep him from getting angrier rather than focusing on what the problem is. My counsel is that if he could approach my team less antagonistically, then likely we’ll be able to solve his problem more expediently. If the economic downturn of the last couple of years impacted morale at your firm, were there specific steps you took to mitigate the damage? Joy: It’s just a fact of business life — people worry about their jobs in hard economic times. So when they come to you asking what they can do to help protect their job, make sure you’ve thought about it and can give them a good, reasoned answer. And remember this: when the economy isn’t robust, people feel better when you keep them busy. Sean: I’ve always tried to be open and honest with everybody as to what I did and didn’t know about what was going on, the impact on them and what their roles were. Once we got past the morale part of, I tried to give everyone challenging and fast- paced work to keep them from wallowing in their concerns. And finally, all, if you were advising someone coming into a staff management role for the first time, what are some dos and don’ts for building a strong, motivated team. Sean: I firmly believe in hiring people smarter than you. If you’re always trying to be the smartest person in the room, you’re going to have a tough time leading an effective team. Scott: First, get the right people on the team. Set clear goals,

• Cover