YOUR BUSINESS: David Lee

Help staff be winners, not whiners

Copyright © 2006 Blethen Maine Newspapers Inc.

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DAVID LEE Founder of HumanNature@Work, an internationally recognized authority on organizational and managerial practices that optimize employee performance. Contact him at: www.HumanNatureAtWork.com David@HumanNatureAtWork.com To top of story

When working with managers, the most common frustrations I hear include:

"There's so much negativity here. People complain about everything, nothing is ever good enough. They always see things in a negative light."

"My people are so immature, they argue over little things, they sweat the small stuff. It's like we're in high school."

"I have to baby sit my people and it drives me crazy. They don't think for themselves. They wait for me to tell them what's next rather than see something that needs to be done and do it."

In short, many managers I work with wish their people acted less like whiners and more like winners.

If these frustrations sound familiar, I have a question - and a challenge - for you. Could you be contributing to the very attitudes and behaviors that drive you crazy? Are you willing to look in the mirror and ask yourself if you do the things that lead to whiner behavior instead of winner behavior"

Now, before we get to the look-in-the-mirror part, I want to make it clear I don't believe that ineffective or inappropriate employee behavior is completely caused by a boss or employer. Everybody brings his or her own personality style and emotional baggage to the workplace. Some employees are just naturally negative, difficult to deal with and troubled. Some are just plain toxic. Part of being a good manager is responding clearly and decisively with these people.

That being said, every normal person - that would be you and me - can think of places we've worked where we were more like whiners than winners. Even if we didn't overtly complain or exhibit a negative attitude, we didn't feel or act as motivated, interested and engaged as we did when we worked for employers that brought out the best in us.

Even more importantly and relevant to you, I bet when you look at the bosses you've had, you can see how - depending on what your boss was like - you demonstrated varying levels of confidence, initiative, interest, maturity and even intelligence.

In seminars I do an exercise on this where managers describe their attitudes, feelings and actions when they worked for their worst boss ever and then for their best boss. We then create two lists: "How I was when working for my worst boss" on the left, and "How I was when working for my best boss" on the right. Participants shout out how they felt, how they acted and what their attitude was when working for their worst boss and then their best boss.

We then look at the two columns. In the left column, we see words and phrases like angry, negative, resentful, "Why should I care about you, you don't care about me"""Didn't feel respected,""Couldn't wait until Friday" and "Did the least possible required to get by."

In the right hand column, we see words and phrases such as motivated, "Want to help," "Gave ideas," confident,"Went the extra mile" and "Looked forward to going to work."

These two columns provide psychological composite pictures of our group under two different situations: who we were when working for a lousy boss and who we are when working for a great boss. These two pictures reveal two truths about human nature. First, different people and different contexts bring out different versions of ourselves. Second, an employee's boss has a huge influence on their attitude, behavior and performance.

In fact, according to Gallup's landmark research, an employee's boss is the most powerful factor influencing that employee's performance, morale and loyalty. In the words of Gallup's researchers: "People join companies and they leave managers."

While it would take a far longer article to fully cover the many managerial behaviors that lead to a culture of whining, not winning, here are a few of the most damaging ones. I've framed them as questions, because I don't want you to respond "Oh, yeah, I know that's bad to do". I want you to ask yourself "Am I doing this""