The discussion she and I had came on a different day. It came on a day after she had spent the day walking around in a daze. When she was walking around in a daze, no discussion about returning back to productive work would have served a good purpose. Like I said, pick your battles carefully. It is one of the invisible rules to business. I waited until she had pushed through whatever was weighing her down before I opened the door to some lessons about work and the rules of the business road. To my surprise, she was very receptive to listen. It turned out to be a good discussion. She actually asked some questions about the lessons and offered some insight as to why she gets so overwhelmed with personal stuff. It was not a threatening exchange on either part. Good timing is another business rule to follow.
I like to talk about the subject of fears when an employee goes south with regard to respect for the rules of the business road. Personal issues are a very serious part of life. This is more true today than ever. We live in a complicated, carelessly managed, and falsely empowered day and age. Your employees are buried deep in debt and worried about how life is headed. They likely do not manage their personal lives well with regard to appropriately governed high standards. Most of your employees live a life that has some terrible bumps and bruises occurring. With so many life distractions flashing around in society, working to protect high standards of living is nearly an impossibility. Your employees are compromising their high standards more now than ever. The junk happening to them in their personal lives is growing. Some of that junk is packed to and from the places where they work. That junk they are packing is a by-product of our 21st century lifestyles. It gets stirred into the time they spend doing the business rules at your place of business. It lives with them at work. Some of their focus on the rules of business production take a back seat to the emotions they carry caused by the mismanagement efforts that come from their home life. Good employees can be packing some very bad personal loads. It can show up at work...and does.
The home life mismanagement style of your employees is not your business. It only becomes your business when the fringes of their actions interfere with the production rules of your work plans. When they react to their mismanagement efforts of home life issues by ignoring the rules of your business production process, you must step in. Their personal life is not your issue, however. That is none of your business. Your business is your business. There is a definite difference. Know where those lines are and stick strictly to them. It is a very fine line and your business rules will determine where that line is drawn. Open your policy book, open the unwritten rules about of how to operate a small business properly and you will not find any language that gives you the permission to interfere with the personal home life of your employees, unless the law permits it. None. Do not go there. It ain't your business and you should never go there. Avoid it. Instead, find a different method to teach them about the rules of business production. Do not try to do the three M's. Make your mate move. I love that one. How many people have you met that tries hard to change the behavior patterns of the other mate? It does not work but I see so many people try to make their mate move. I call it the three M's. I have watched many people fail to win that game.
We want our mate to be what we want our mate to be. We try to manage our mates. We insert the three M's techniques and watch our relationships suffer and blame the other mate for not getting it. Hello, stupid! Your mate is who they are. Period. Accept it or find a new one. However, sooner or later you will need to get along with one of them. I found that if I was having trouble finding a great mate, maybe my next date should be a mirror. Fortunately, I did not need to use a big mirror for too long. A great mate came along. I do not try nor want to change her. I go to work every single day with harmony at home. It makes a huge difference in the respect I offer to the rules of my business production. If you are an owner, get good at managing your home life. It is one of the best business rules you can follow. I could write seminars on this subject for hours upon end. A home mess is a destructive ill that can immobilize success opportunities. I have watched this type of destruction kill everything a good business deserves. Make this business rule rise to the top. Get it together at home. It is the heart of your business rules. Get it together at home.
Sometimes it will prove true that doing nothing is the right treatment. Recognize this truth. Sometimes you just need to allow the issues of personal interference to wander off into the dark all by themselves. In fact, that is usually the most common treatment that is needed. Time will heal the production wound at work and the mending process will naturally respect you for letting it go. Ignoring the spit-up at work is usually the most common solution that provides the best results. I recommend it the most. Let it go. It will more than not be the correct treatment.
The ones who bring ugly personal junk to work from their mismanaged lives at home will usually have one or two spit-ups here and there. As long as those spit-ups do not wag the dog, you are best to let them go. Follow those moves as unwritten business rules. They can become part of your management style, not part of your written employment policies. Be flexible, tolerant and understanding. Productivity will disappear once in awhile. It comes with the territory.
However, sometimes it is good to insert some lessons into the process of employee spit-ups that interrupt good production rules. If productivity gets interrupted on a regular basis because of personal issues at home, you have a right and the responsibility to step in. You need to follow the business rules. When that kind of time arrives, I like to have a discussion with that employee about the subject of fears. I never directly refer to the problem at home. I do not want, nor need to know about the personal issues at home they are wrestling with to do my work well. I start my discussion with them when the time is right by asking a simple question. I ask them if they know what the six basic fears are? I shut up and wait for their answer. They usually respond with a no. I keep quiet until they ask me what they are. Sometimes, they never ask. They just are not ready to chit chat yet. Let it go. They are not ready. You want them to be ready to move on. It is a silent business success rule. Do you practice it? You do not need to attack ever single challenge. Did you know that? That is another silent business success rule.
If they ask what the six basic fears are, the door is open. They are ready to learn. I ask them to get a pen and paper. I wait until they get one. I make sure I am standing next to some before I ask the question, however. You need a good plan when you go to some serious teaching. It is another silent business rule. Do you practice it? Or are you the type of leader that shoots from the hip and hopes everything will turn out alright? Plan how to help your employees respect what they are doing at work. Productivity is not an accident, it is the result of a very good business effort. You are going to have to earn it. It is another one of those silent business rules. Do you follow the business rules?
I ask them to go get paper and a pen because I want them to participate in the "discovery" process. I wait until they get the pen and paper before I move on. I describe to them how there are only six basic fears in life. It does not matter what kind of fear a person can discover, it will line up with only one of the six basic ones described. I describe how it seems strange how so many people deal with life and its challenges yet have absolutely no idea what those six fears are. Nobody can list them. I ask them to list them on that piece of paper. They cannot do it. I have never had one person successfully list the six basic fears. They have no idea what they are. This simple step opens the door to my leadership efforts and allows me the permission to continue to teach them about managing fears better. When they begin to understand how the junk in their lives comes from the fears they harbor, they will tend to quit bringing that junk in front of you at work and consequently improve their productivity with less personal garbage interference. They become more afraid that you will jump on the first chance to delve into their hidden fears. The first step to this business rule is to make sure they understand what those six basic fears are and how those six basic fears dominate their decision-making skills. You do not need to know about their personal life problems to accomplish this task. It is a simple but effect step to perform. It works every single time.
With pen and paper in hand, I describe to them how fears dominate our thinking and drive us to do the things we do. I describe to them how we make decisions based upon our fears. I give them some examples. It is easy to do. I use me as an example. It is a safe place to teach. I am the goat in the teaching. I am the one in the examples of weakness. It is an effect way to draw them closer to the truths we often try to avoid. It is safe to listen when I am the goat. This is another one of those silent business rules. Do you follow them when you guide your employees to better productivity?
We live at home and at work managing a lot of fears we cannot describe on a piece of paper. We cannot specifically describe what the six basic fears are, but we can describe how some of them work. For example, I am afraid of speaking in a large crowd. I get nervous on a big stage. I can describe the experience of the fear. I just may not be able to define what the source of that fear really is. I may not be able to specifically list one of the six basic fears as the source to my fear on stage. I ask them, "How can you win at life if you do not understand how the fears inside your sole control what you decide to do? How can anyone win at a game like that?" I repeat it another way, "How can you win at playing a game you cannot describe how it works? Are you waiting for luck to show up?" I repeat it another way, "Do you think the people who make better decisions in their lives are the ones who have a better understanding of the fears they need to address in order to make better life decisions?" Wait for the answer. It will usually be, "Yes." They are now ready and waiting for you to describe what the six basic fears are. Their personal problems are no longer in the lane of threat. They are ready to learn about managing fears.
I start my next step by giving them the most dominating fear...the fear of criticism. I tell them that this is the most dominating fear. I tell them I own this one. They cannot have it. It helps to neutralize the rest of the lesson. The fear of criticism will gut most people from making good life decisions. It will show up a lot and will remain for the most part, stealth. It operates silently. I wait and watch how they respond. I wait and watch for their eye to eye contact. When that occurs, I remain silent for a few seconds. The silence delivers a very effective message of needed respect. You now have their undivided attention.
This is the perfect time to ask them to list another fear. Make sure they write down criticism. Have them write it before you move on. The will try to list the next one they can think of. It is usually the fear of dying. I hear that one more than any other. The fear of death. I give them kudos for the ones they get correctly. I make sure they write them on the list. I give examples of them as they write them down. I wait to see if they can guess the rest of them. When they pause and go blank, I give one to them to add to the list. I will say, "The fear of lost love." I usually try to list the third fear on their list when it is the closest one that caused them to bring personal junk to work that deeply interfered with their productivity. In this girl's case, she had a terrible night of fighting with her significant other, her mate. She came to work the other day in tears, stayed in tears, skipped to the employee area for about two hours to get herself together. Two other female employees got involved with her during that time to help her get it together. The serious project we were working to complete got put on hold. The personal mess interrupted the production of a work project. She went home early to get whatever solved. She is typically a very productive worker. When we reached the point to list number three on her paper, I said, "The fear of lost love. This is the one that tagged you the other day." Once I point out the one that dominated this lesson in the first place I quickly skip to the fourth one on the list. I quickly avoid going into detail on the subject. It has already served its purpose. The lesson is deeply entrenched by now. Your student is more than ready to learn. You are now painting some very good art in the business of leadership. Keep the paint flowing.
The fourth one on the list was the fear of ill-health. I continue to make sure they write them down. It is vital to have them write them down. They need to participate to help this lesson become more effective. Do not waste your time here. It is one of the silent business rules. Make sure you practice it. Add the last two, the fear of old age and the fear of poverty. Once they finish writing them down, reach over and slide the paper closer to them and tell them they can have this list. I usually end the discussion there and ask them to try and find another fear in life that does not fit one of these six and I want to know what it is. Remember, we all have these fears. All of us. Also know that we also protect some of these fears so deeply that we do not even recognize how they work in our lives. They govern some of our decisions and our actions. I ask each one of them, if we do not know what they are how do we expect to manage them well? It matters greatly. As I leave the discussion, I close by saying this, "Here at work, I expect you to manage them well. Study the list. I will test you on them next week." I smile and walk away.
Do you follow the business rules? Or do you accidentally get involved with their personal lives? Be very careful. It ain't your business. Your business is your business. That is the rules.
I need to successfully manage my business affairs and do it compassionately, but with a clear understanding of the responsibility it holds. Your leadership is at risk here with the rest of your staff. They are watching how you address this challenge. They are not interested in seeing you permit someone else to 'get away with' bringing home challenges to work and causing them extra effort to cover for the problems others are having. Trust me, you are at risk in your leadership with the other staff members. How you handle this spit-up is more closely watched than you might expect. It does matters to everyone. Stay out of the personal stuff, make sure you teach them how to respect your business model and above all avoid bringing your personal stuff to work, yourself.
I suggest you stick to the subject of fears. It works every single time. In the meantime...get a pen and paper out, write down the six basic fears. Carry them around with you for a little while. Check them out. You will discover some stuff about you that has been causing you some additional challenges in your decision-making efforts. We all carry fears. Fears motivate our decisions. I own all six of them.
Until next time...
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