Author Joseph Grenny shares crucial conversations tips to ask for vacation time from work. Watch and hear his tips for succeeding in this hard-to-hold discussion.
Joseph Grenny is the author of three bestselling books, Influencer, Crucial Conversations, and Crucial Confrontations.
Dear Crucial Skills,
Our employee, “Mr. Ned,” will turn 70 in September after working for us for 17 years. He has been one of our most productive employees and a model for the younger technicians to aspire to. However, in recent months he has started to slow down and the quality of his work is declining.
While we care for him and appreciate his years of hard work, how can we tell him that we must let him go?
Signed,
Shy about Retiring
Dear Shy,In order to get this conversation right, you will need equal measures of respect, firmness, and clarity.
1. Respect. There’s a good chance Mr. Ned will find this conversation terribly unpleasant. However, you can reduce his suffering immensely if you make it plain that he is talking with someone who regards him highly. If he walks away concluding that he is not respected, your message about his performance will be lost. Share specific expressions of appreciation and recollections of important contributions he has made over the years. Use these compliments judiciously throughout your conversation.
2. Firmness. If you’ve concluded that he needs to retire, do not string him along by turning your conversation into a performance review. If you fail to communicate that this is not a motivation problem, but an insolvable ability problem, he may try to bargain with you for things that are not physically possible.
Now, I’m assuming in this situation that you have followed proper HR procedures and documented concerns over some period of time so that it is your prerogative to require retirement. If you have not, you will need to step back and begin that process.
3. Clarity. This is one of the most common areas in which people under-prepare for crucial confrontations. You need to be crystal clear on the facts. What evidence do you have that his performance has slipped to unacceptable levels? Can you demonstrate that it is a pattern? Do you have enough examples persuade him that this is not a motivation problem? If he is desperate to hang onto his job, he may try to refute your examples. To avoid this, you need to do two things: 1) refer regularly to the recurring pattern; 2) provide enough data points to establish the pattern.
For example, if he says, “But the customer kept feeding us new requirements on that drawing, so of course it would take longer!” You need to say, “I understand there may have been special circumstances. The issue is that over a period of months, with over a dozen drawings like this, your turnaround time has more than doubled. The pattern is the problem.”
Now, he may have noticed the same problem and is relieved to have it in the open. I watched this happen several years ago with a very senior engineer who was losing his hearing in a way that impeded his performance. He was too proud to wear a hearing aid until a colleague had a crucial confrontation with him in a wonderfully respectful but firm way. This storied engineer was grateful the issue had surfaced as the burden of pretending there was no problem had become quite taxing. The conversation helped him acknowledge he was moving to a different phase of life and take steps that prepared him for retirement. If your colleague tumbles to the conclusion, stop sharing data and simply move to a supportive conversation to explore next steps.
Finally, let me suggest an alternative option. I have seen many instances when companies are prudent enough to be creative and retain the wisdom aging employees have to offer. For example, could he move to a part-time role? Could he become an advisor? Could he mentor younger employees—even on a contract basis? Or could he simply be invited back now and again for project reviews?
It’s easy to underestimate the immense tacit knowledge senior employees have and later regret letting all of their experience walk out the door. One of the most sincere expressions of respect—and wisest HR moves you could make—would be to find a creative way to not “put him down,” but keep him up!
I can tell you care deeply about Mr. Ned and am confident he’ll know that as you hold this very crucial confrontation.
Joseph
Kerry Patterson is the author of three bestselling books, Influencer, Crucial Conversations, and Crucial Confrontations.
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I’ve often heard that on our death beds, none of us is likely to look back on our life and lament, “I should have spent more time at the office.” To be frank, I’ve known several people who should have spent more time at the office, but this doesn’t negate the point that one day, we’ll look back on our lives and assess what we did.
Research on the topic of happiness reveals that most of us have no idea about what actually causes it. In Stumbling on Happiness, author Daniel Gilbert suggests that most of us are pretty bad at predicting what will make us happy and what won’t. For instance, when you ask people which will make them happier—a bigger salary or taking a daily walk with a loved one—people generally pick the money. However, when you measure people in both conditions, more time with a loved one typically yields more happiness.
When it comes to my own happiness, I do know a couple of things. First, happiness is not a constant state that one hunts down, tackles to the ground, and possesses. You never achieve happiness; you just experience happy moments. Second, we often assume receiving recognition for our labors will bring happiness. Not to say that it doesn’t, but sometimes, it’s surprising what kind of recognition truly matters.
Last week, as I drove my nine-year-old granddaughter, Kelsee, to our house for a short visit, she asked me what kind of job I had. For a couple of minutes I talked about training and consulting while Kelsee sat quietly and listened. Eventually, I mentioned that my partners and I also wrote books. Now this got her attention. Books she understood.
“You’re an author?” she asked.
“Yes,” I explained, “that would make me an author.”
“Can I see your books?”
As soon as we arrived home, Kelsee rushed to my office to examine the books. She touched each as if it had been retrieved from a sunken treasure chest.
“Can I have some to take to school?” Kelsee asked.
“Why would you want to do that?”
“So I can put them in the school library.”
This library Kelsee spoke of, of course, would be a grade-school library. I smiled as I imagined children dressed in three-piece suits, carrying miniature briefcases, and checking out books that explain how to wield influence over challenges such as world-wide calamities and corporate failure.
“I doubt that kids your age would enjoy the books,” I explained.
It took me a while to talk Kelsee out of the idea of placing our books in her grade-school library, but eventually she accepted my advice with quiet resolve. However, she wasn’t done. A week later, when I once again drove Kelsee to our home, she struck up the following conversation.
“Grandpa, during show-and-tell last week I told my teacher that my grandfather writes books.”
“Really? And what did she say?”
“She asked who you are.”
“And what did you tell her?”
“Your name. I said that my grandfather is Kerry Patterson.”
“And then what did she say?”
“Well,” Kelsee continued, “before she could answer, Hannah—another girl in my class—shouted real loud: ‘NOT THE KERRY PATTERSON!’”
To be honest, I was a little surprised that a nine-year-old girl had ever heard of me. Surely she had me confused with somebody else.
Kelsee enthusiastically continued her story. She was obviously enjoying the moment.
“So I asked Hannah how she had heard of you and she explained: ‘My mom reads everything he writes.’”
“And what did you say to that?” I asked.
Kelsee paused for a moment, smiled wide and then said: “So—you’re familiar with his work.”
Now, that short interaction with Kelsee will never make it onto my resume. There you’ll find a chronological list of accomplishments in which I will have taken satisfaction, but you won’t find the secret of happiness. The secret of happiness lies not in the act of creating joy. The secret of happiness lies in recognizing joy when it comes.
With this in mind, here’s what I desire to have stated in my eulogy—better yet, I want it carved in bold letters at the top of my tombstone:
“So—you’re familiar with his work.”
This one moment of recognition from my granddaughter brought me happiness.
In most organizations, the result of the recent recession is an environment brewing with the right mix of stress and concern to breed an unprecedented amount of conflict. Employees lucky enough to keep their jobs are burned out and overworked. Leaders reeling from blows to their bottom line are doing their best just to stay afloat. Everyone is on edge.
Unfortunately, while the conditions are perfectly suited to breed conflict, human beings are perfectly incapable to deal with it.
According to our recent study, 95 percent of a company’s workforce struggles to confront their colleagues and managers about their concerns and frustrations. As a result, they engage in resource-sapping avoidance tactics including ruminating excessively about crucial issues, complaining to others, getting angry, doing extra or unnecessary work, and avoiding the other person altogether.
But while unresolved conflict is never a positive thing, our research revealed the ramifications of conflict go far beyond inconvenient. In fact, avoiding conflict is extremely costly.
We found that employees waste an average of $1,500 and an 8-hour workday for every crucial confrontation they avoid. In extreme cases of avoidance, an organization’s bottom line can be hit especially hard. In addition, a shocking 8 percent of employees estimate their inability to deal with conflict costs their organization more than $10,000. And one in 20 estimates that over the course of a drawn-out silent conflict, they waste time ruminating about the problem for more than 6 months.
The research confirms that those who know how to speak up and hold crucial confrontations waste significantly less time complaining, feeling sorry for themselves, avoiding problems and getting angry. As a result, these people are significantly more productive and influential.
The good news is that speaking up and resolving conflicts is a skill set anyone can learn and master. Here are four tips for confronting your colleagues in a timely and effective manner:
Dear Crucial Skills,
Do you have any resources related to the Influencer model for dealing with racism in the workplace?
Dealing with Racism
Dear Dealing,
This year alone, employees from four organizations approached me about handling racist incidents including nooses hanging over lockers, swastikas painted on doors, hate language written on bathroom mirrors, and racist epithets used during large meetings.
I’ll use our Influencer model to show how an organization can set and enforce a “zero tolerance” standard around racism.
Determine the results you want. In dealing with such a nebulous problem like racism, it’s important to focus on one result. I recommend your result be to create and maintain a safe and productive work environment that is free of intimidation, threats, or harassment.
Identify vital behaviors. Focus on the behaviors that drive your desired result. I recommend two vital behaviors:
1. Eliminate racist actions, including behaviors that any member of the organization finds intimidating, threatening, or harassing.
2. Promote inclusive actions, including behaviors that support diversity in the workforce.
Build a six-source influence model. Racism is supported by a set of beliefs, behaviors, norms, and structures. The solution must be similarly comprehensive. Our research shows combining at least four, and preferably all, of the six sources of influence creates a solution that is ten times more likely to lead to success. Below are four sources of influence organizations combating racism might choose to target.
Structural Motivation: Reward respectful behaviors and punish racism. For example:
Social Motivation and Social Ability: Use formal and informal leaders to enforce social norms of zero tolerance. For example:
Personal Ability: Build awareness, share experiences, and teach skills related to eliminating racism and furthering inclusiveness. For example:
Personal Motivation: To change behavior, make racism a moral issue. People must cringe when they witness or learn of situations involving intimidation, threats, and harassment. Here, the most powerful strategies are those that demonstrate the personal toll of racism. For example:
I’ve used the six sources of influence to brainstorm a wide variety of strategies. Now I call on you to build on the ideas I have here. What have you seen that worked in combating racism? I look forward to learning from you all.
David
Joseph Grenny is the author of three bestselling books, Influencer, Crucial Conversations, and Crucial Confrontations.
Dear Crucial Skills,
I just read the latest newsletter and find myself very frustrated with your response to your reader’s question about how to “motivate” apparently unmotivated teachers. You appeared to agree that a lot of teachers just don’t care—or are “morally asleep” about the need to improve education for their students.
Perhaps the person who wrote the question is not aware of the many responsibilities shouldered by teachers. As a veteran educator, I take offense to the classification of teachers as people who don’t care or are not interested in helping students improve. If this were true, we would not continue in a low-paying, poorly respected profession. Before you talk about motivating teachers to make change, consider whether their failure to attend these new meetings could be because of:
· Time: They may be overloaded with other meetings, tutoring, professional development, meetings with parents, prepping materials for the next day, or grading. Is the meeting scheduled after their contractual hours? (We do have family responsibilities.)
· Reform in place: Has the school, district, or state already initiated educational reforms that are non-negotiable?
· Observation: Before passing judgment about teachers not being interested, ask what is going on in the classroom?
· Communication: How was the invitation phrased and how much notice given?
· Shared responsibility: What are the other stakeholders asked to do?
Rather than consider these issues, you threw teachers against the wall. Maybe the concerned parent should drop the stereotype and do a little research first. And perhaps you should have addressed the negative assumption in the person’s statements.
Concerned Educator
Dear Concerned,Thank you for writing in and sharing your thoughts.
I asked our editors to publish your note because I think today’s “advice” is more contained in your letter than in my response.
You were absolutely right to point out my negligence to address the “story” this person may have told him or herself about his or her teachers. He or she attributed a lack of participation to a lack of motivation—and I bought into it thoughtlessly.
Equally important, I failed to offer advice for addressing the “ability” issues teachers face when trying to find time to improve—or implement improvements. Your note was a whack on the side of the head for me to use the very model we teach. Thank you for providing that wake-up call—and please forgive me for any offense I offered in my negligence.
So let me frame your critique of my response in terms of our own model. Another way of saying what you wrote is, “Joseph, you’re assuming this is exclusively a motivation problem. Could it also be an ability issue?”
Not only would I agree with that question—but I would also assert that ability problems are frequently disguised as motivation issues. When people seem to “not care” it could be they are burned out from pushing against bureaucracy and have concluded they are simply not able to win. I suspect some teachers just do their best to master their own classrooms and give up on the larger institution because of the structural ability barriers they continually face.
As you point out, structural ability barriers for these teachers might include overloaded schedules or limited tools and resources. For example, at Lakeridge Junior High, Tim Stay discovered that the school’s schedule made it nearly impossible for teachers to attend council meetings, implement best practices, and properly evaluate students’ progress. When Lakeridge changed the schedule from seven periods to four, teachers were enabled to attend to these additional responsibilities. What’s more, they wanted to. In this instance, ability barriers, not motivation, were stopping them from performing to their full potential.
Similarly, you point out there could be social ability barriers—barriers that result when others (including peers and district leaders) don’t provide the information or resources required to perform to potential. For example, teachers may lack support from administrators or meetings aren’t communicated properly. In this case, all the motivation in the world will not influence teachers to attend council meetings or help them improve the overall level of education.
In conclusion, I would be less than honest if I didn’t add that motivation is still a very important part of our model. I made reference to Tim’s work because he is a phenomenal example of using the Influencer model to turn around his children’s school. The work he and his community council—comprised of teachers, administrators, and parents—did, addressed both motivation and ability barriers. Ultimately, Tim’s success was the result of a full six source approach that addressed both sides of our model.
The bottom line: until you address both motivation and ability—until people are both willing and able to change—you won’t move the needle toward influencing new behavior. In Tim’s case, there was more emphasis on increasing ability than inspirational motivation tricks. And as you suggest, this is probably the case in most of our nation’s education systems.
Again, I thank you for bringing your concerns to my attention. I feel as passionate as you do about the good work our teachers do each and every day. And I am deeply sorry for having offered offense to you and so poorly representing our own beliefs about influence.
Sincerely,
Joseph Grenny
Steve Willis is a master trainer and vice president of professional services at VitalSmarts.
So you sign up for a course—one that furthers your development plan, one that offers skills to tackle the challenges you face, or maybe just one that fulfills your learning quota. Now you’re enrolled, and your first thoughts are about the training itself. “Will it be any good? Will I like the instructor? Will I have to role play?”
Often, our satisfaction with our investment in time and money is determined by the answers to these initial questions. If the answers happen to be “yes,” “yes,” and “little-to-none,” then we immediately feel we’ve made the right choice. However, while these answers are good indicators of a participant’s experience during the class, I believe what happens after the course is actually more important. So what can you do to make sure the after isn’t neglected? Here are some ideas.
Target specific applications for the skills both during and after training. We worked with hospital managers in Florida who surveyed participants three months after the training to test whether or not they were using what they’d learned. The results indicated that while employees loved the training experience, they rarely, if ever, used the skills on work-related issues. As they probed a bit further, they found that most had only used the skills at home. Apparently, employees were clear on where and how the skills applied at home and not so familiar with application to their jobs.
So, leaders identified four specific, work-related applications. They provided employees with a “when you see, hear, or experience this . . . use your skills.” Subsequently, people started using the skills at work (go figure). Leaders also incorporated these applications during the training so participants could use them as their “acid test” while learning the skills.
Build skill evaluation into formal processes. Another group we worked with added a couple of discussion items to their formal project post mortem process. This meeting was designed to evaluate the success of their project. They simply added questions to evaluate how successfully or poorly they had used their newly-learned skills while working on the project. This evaluation forced employees to consider the degree to which they were practicing their new behaviors.
So there are a couple ideas to consider. If you’d like to explore this idea in further detail, please join me on April 30 for our next Master Trainer Live Chat. I’ll be answering questions on a wide range of topics, including (but not limited to) rollout and follow up.
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