Supervisors - Difference Between Enabling and Helping

You are correct that changing behavior (and attitudes) is often more difficult than a challenging technical problem. Most people only change when they understand the benefit for them. People will only listen to and follow you to the proportionate degree they believe you care about them.

Most, if given respect and training/direction with an explained cause, goal and reward, want to achieve and improve. Only a fool would spend 40 hours a week and not want to make the best of the opportunity. The few who don't, need your assistance in motivating them to find another job they can respect.

I have to agree with Apothicus to some extent here. Having supervised a work force for 25 years I can say with some assurance that I have never been able to turn a poor worker into a good one. I will say that I have retained some poor ones to my discredit because I liked their general attitude if not their work ethic, and they seem to be more skilled at interfacing with customers. But they never became good workers, learning, adapting, manifesting efficiency. My best workers and the ones most willing and anxious to learn came in the door that way. And some of them are not so adept at social skills, and so I limit their customer interaction. It is a subtle game to play, but inspiring any employee to the point of changing their work habits? Not a frequent occurrence in my experience. Perhaps some of the answer lies in my lack of ability to inspire, but I suspect not a great deal of it.

This certainly advanced the conversation!

Thanks for contributing!

Milo

Thanks for the topic to contribute to. This is one of my favorite workplace topics. You often bring up another one of my favorites--I'm a LSSBB as well as a guy transitioning into counseling.

Agreed. An excellent contribution. Now I'm going to have to go and rethink a bunch of stuff.

Is there a way to remotivate someone who flat out tells you "I don't care, I don't want to learn, I just need my pay cheque every month"?

Thanks, I appreciate the positive feedback, and yes, it is possible to remotivate someone who flat out tells you, "I don't care, I don't want to learn, I just need my pay cheque every month."

When you say "remotivate," it sounds like this individual has been motivated in the past, but something changed. If that's the case digging into that change is critical. I'd picture a conversation something like:

"I want you to get your cheque each month too, especially when I remember [specific contributions here] that you have made/done. I get the impression you aren't enjoying the work that earns that cheque as much as you used to. Is that true?" Your tone of voice is critical. If the employee acknowledges the change, you follow up with, "Tell me what changed that you aren't enjoying work as much as you used to." This is your raw data. The "reasons" may seem silly to you, but you have to be able to communicate to the employee that you understand him/her and how the reasons are important to that employee. With the employee seeing that his/her perspective really matters to you, the door is open to share what you want from the employee. Reiterating that you want the employee to keep earning the cheque and add 'I would also like to see you enjoy this new [whatever it is you'd like to see the employee learn]. Then ask the employee if he/she sees ways you can both have what you want from the work relationship. Use these points to form a specific plan of action, and set a follow-up date. Make sure each of you has specific actions that can be clearly seen as having been done or not done.

If there never really was a spark of motivation in the employee, and you see a specific request of yours as the trigger for the employee's "hostility," it helps to confirm that you understand the trigger. "Ever since the company started _____" or "Ever since I asked you about ________ I've had the impression you are less satisfied in you work. Would you tell me about that?" If the employee does not open up, it's harder to get to a collaborative solution, but you can still proceed. "Well, when I asked if you would __________ you let me know you didn't care about that, and that you only cared about earning your monthly cheque. I know __________ is hard to do/learn, and not very many people are up to it (this little zinger is meant to 'get under the employee's skin'). I want you to keep earning your cheque too, what do you see as having to happen so you can keep earning the cheque?"

You want to keep the language on earning the cheque instead of just getting the cheque. You emphasize what you see as right in the employee's list, and mention any additions to that list that you see as important to continuing to earn the cheque. Discuss with the employee how realisitc the list looks and (very important) what does the employee need from you to be able to accomplish what is on the list. Set a follow up date to review how well the employee is doing with the list and how well you are doing with the "support functions." This a the traditional "documented verbal warning" but is delivered less as a threat and more as a goal setting session.

No matter which kind of conversation you are having, it is important to document the key points that come out of it. What did the employee identify as a barrier to changing, what performance points were discussed and agreed to, what follow up date was set, etc.

I realize these are general approaches, and I'm offering them without having met the employee. It comes out of the sense that when a person is expressing anger/defensiveness/hostility, that person is telling me about him/herself and not about me or his/her environment. Using these situations to understand the person and communicate to that person that he/she has been understood and that his/her wants/needs are acknowledged and important often opens the door for collaboratively forming a plan to address both that person's needs/wants and my needs/wants. If that does not happen, plan B is calmly setting boundaries, verifying the other person understands the boundaries, and setting a follow up to make sure the boundaries are being respected (e.g. is the person doing what he/she knows is important to earning the cheque and am I doing what I knew was imporant to support/respect the person in the tasks we discussed?).

I hope this is useful, and thanks again for the feedback.

GKC, thanks for bringing up some very good points. I agree that relying too heavily on popular psychology such as using the Meyers-Briggs
yardstick often muddy the waters and allow for oversimplification of the issues while masking or ignoring other problems that may be reducing efficiency
and quality. For the record, I was not trying to say that the personalities of my employees were mutually exclusive in their abilities to be both
social animals and good workers. Quite the opposite, I often find both traits together in many of my employees. I was only stating that they
sometimes did not go hand in hand as a way of excusing my negligence in letting poor employees go. But you may have begun to open my
eyes a bit to the fact that I may indeed be to blame for more of it that I have shouldered in the past, because I do seem to see my employees
as being set in their ways and not subject to moldability, and that may be just because I do not wish to abandon my thinking on the matter.
It can be difficult to want to change management thinking and practices after using them for so many years but I may be cheating myself out
of a better adapted and more cognizant workforce in the process. Our mistakes are one of the few things we can truly call our own, our
stubbornness is another. My eyes are a bit more open now, I thank you.

For the record, I was not trying to say that the personalities of my employees were mutually exclusive in their abilities to be both social animals and good workers

I figured there would be more to your thinking on this topic than you coud squeeze into a one-paragraph answer. There is a reason that personality theories remain so popular--there are a lot of valid truisms in them. It sounds like you recognize how to use the useful information without becoming a personality-type fanatic.

I do seem to see my employees as being set in their ways and not subject to moldability, and that may be just because I do not wish to abandon my thinking on the matter

That's a huge insight! One of the things about the approach I use/teach is to be able to keep my way of thinking and feeling about a topic, to understand others' ways of thinking and feeling about a topic, and to find a plan of acting that respects both. If both parties involved have an attitude of respect for the other party, and at least one of the parties has good skills, such a way of acting can almost always be figured out. When one or both parties lacks respect for the other, your in a situation that either results in repectful boundary setting (one party, at least, is respectful) or a situation that is more a fight than a disucssion (neither party cares about the other).

Thank you for your feedback.