Unhappy Employees Will Destroy Your Efforts

Your Business Model Should Not Be A Disturbing Scene

Unhappy employees can creatively destroy your success efforts.  They can and they will if given the opportunity.  I used to carry some mixed emotions about this subject.  At one time I had a whole set of thoughts streaming through my mind that supported the idea that I was the boss and they were the employees.  I used to think that what I said goes and what they should do is to make sure whatever I wanted done gets done.  I used to have no gray area in my mind on this perspective.  If you worked for me you needed to do exactly what I wanted you to get done and that was it.  It was not a clouded subject.  I made it very clear that anything other than that would not be appreciated.  I had a strong sense that if you worked for me you were privileged to have this job.  I felt that way and meant it.  I did not hide those kinds of streaming thoughts.  This was how I used to develop my employee/boss relationships.

I operated from the stance that you were the hired hand and I was the guiding boss.  Since I was the one who ponied up the money to risk building the business, you do what I wanted done.  I would often remind some of my employees that if you wanted to do it your way, pony up your own risk money on your own business model.  Don't try it your way with my risk model.  I would make that perspective very clear.  It was not kept secret.  I even included that kind of profile in the way I walked.  I had a hard stride that exhibited how I felt about owning my own business.  You know the one.  The one that looks like the walker just finished first place in a beer chugging contest.  Exuberant, confident and loaded with arrogance.  You can still see some of those remains in some of my writing.  That was how I used to manage my employee relationships.  It was more like expecting that my employees should do as I say and quit questioning how I wanted it to be done.  I was the director and they were the staff.  Any questions?

I could write a series of funny books describing all of the damaging and very funny experiences that kind of leadership promoted.  At the time those experiences occurred, very few of them seemed to be funny.  Most of those noteworthy experiences were of the wrong kind to report with pride.  The damage I would constantly be mopping up from the wrong things my staff would perform was also a constant stream of challenging and unwanted stuff.  My earlier years of employee leadership was marked with constant issues of wrong doings.  The issues that involved my employment staff was always filled with garbage and challenges.  Each day was an adventure.  I have a business associate I communicate with once in a long while.  We connect occasionally to share what is going on in each others lives, about three to four times per year.  Whenever he calls I ask him how things are going.  He usually has the patented reply, "High Adventure."  His personal life is a mess.  It always has been.  His business model is a jewel.  Somehow he gets one of them right.  It is always the same, however.  At home, his life is "High Adventure."  At work, his model is kicking well and growing with new ideas all of the time.  My business life used to resemble his personal life.  It was always stuck in the lane where high adventure lives.

I was a troubled business leader.  I had a great disrespect for the people who worked in my employ.  I was a tyrant and an owner who did not necessarily care how they felt about what they came to work to do.  My view was this...if you do not like it you can always go work somewhere else.  I had the 'have at it' position of view.  As far as I was concerned, they could go work for someone else and destroy their model instead of mine.  That was my true view.  I not only had that view, I promoted it and was proud to parade it around.  I made sure every employee understood my view so they can become more productive.  That is exactly how I thought.  That is exactly how I led my gang.  That is exactly why I had so much employee turnover in my furniture retail store career.  At one time, during a ten year stretch, I had employed 180 people.  My full compliment of steady employees during that period of time was 5 people at a time.  My retail store could not support more than 5 employees at one time.  Yet during that ten year period of my operations I had hired 180 people to do those five jobs.  I was turning employees over at a monthly rate and proud of it.  I thought the world was filled with a bunch of lazy people.  None of them wanted to do the work I wanted them to do.  It almost destroyed me.

I grew very cynical.  I become very nasty with how I treated new people.  I did not trust anyone.  I made that position very clear.  I set up very stringent written rules on how my employees were supposed to behave.  I posted those rules all about the facility just far enough out of the sight of my customers.  I had labels posted in the delivery truck to remind the drivers how to use the turn indicators, the brakes, the speed they moved and the safety issues I wanted them to respect.  I had notes of this nature posted on the wall of the restrooms and all around the shop and storage areas.  Every desk had a note of the controlling type to remind the staff what they could and could not do.  I micro-managed every single step my employees took.  I performed that kind of controlling method with a high level of cynicism.  I made it clear that I did not expect them to actually be able to do their jobs well.  I was filled with this kind of resonant behavior.  I was not a good boss and did not even care if you felt that way about me.  Just get your work done.  That is what I pay you for, that is why you earn what you earn.  Get to it.  Quit complaining.

You Might Consider Changing How Your Business Model Reflects On Camera 

That was exactly the way I operated in my business model for many years.  I struggled hard during those years, however.  They were not the best producing years of my business career.  They were littered with long lines of troubling things.  Every single day was filled with high adventure management requirements.  Issues within our operation were always getting out of hand.  My management time was spent dealing with the constant flow of irritations, junk and personality flare-ups.  I thought this is how a regular business performs what it does.  I thought this kind of stuff was normal.  Since it was considered normal, I could see no reason why to change it.  It appeared fine to me.  I have changed how I manage my business models.  I no longer behave in that fashion anymore.  The results are tremendously different.

I actually look forward to meeting up with some of my previous employees from that past.  They tell me stories that are wild enough to shock even the most skeptical leader.  They usually mention how they notice a huge difference in my intensity now.  My personality stance is so much more enjoyable.  They pick up on that change immediately.  Many of them have shared some difficult stories that they encountered during those years.  I usually ask them for forgiveness.  Almost without a skip most of them mention they noticed I have changed.  Many of them have great jobs doing well for the outfits they are employed.  Many of them enjoy working where they are employed.  Most of them have been employed by the same employer for many years.  They have become steady producers for those organizations.

I share this profile as a means to wake up a few business owners out there who do not believe that your employees can help or destroy how well your model succeeds.  They will only help it when they feel like their efforts are respected with honor, nurtured, recognized, appreciated and enjoyed.  Any shortcomings in those areas of respect will only serve to limit how well your model can perform.  Your success is centered around how well your employees perform what they do.  It has nothing to do with how well you perform their duties.  It has all to do with how well you respect them and how well you allow them to perform their own set of responsibilities.  Your leadership will determine how successful your model will allow them to make it become.

It has all to do with how you lead them and nothing to do with how you do what they are trying to do.  Get your hands off of their work.  Permit them to do what they were hired to do.  Give them true leadership.  Give them good direction, good plans, healthy respect for the kind of work they need to perform to reach your business goals.  Learn how to dovetail your business goals with their career goals.  Learn how to make sure both are being served in the best fashion that time can buy.  Get to know who your employees are and how they tick.  Become more tolerant of the things that they find worthwhile to do in life.  Help them to nurture good citizenship.  Be a good steward of how you manage your planet, your environment, your life, your business model and the life they respect of their own.  Get deeply involved with this process.  It will have a profound effect on the positives your business model will consistently generate.  Do not shoot over the bow of your ship.  Errant bullets can produce permanent damage to the business model you manage.  Erase bad management.  Get help in learning how to perform your leadership more effectively.

I was blessed to bump into my business mentor back when I was operating my business model so poorly.  He was intelligent enough to know that I needed larger help than what he could provide.  He encouraged me to become active in a business leadership school.  I not only become a great student to the things they worked to provide, I eventually became one of their leaders teaching others how to improve upon the skills they needed to develop.  I have come to recognize that our leadership walk in the business models we own will never quit being a great school of learning.  Every single day brings a new lesson for improvement needs that we all have hidden inside the paths we lead to walk.  Our employees carry a huge responsibility to help us get to where we want our models to go.  Our leadership is vital in that effort to help them help us.  It is a true partnership.  For the leaders who ignore this truth, your walk is likely littered with all of the wrong stuff that drives you crazy.  My original business career was filled to the brim with that kind of heavy load.  It eventually became too heavy to carry.

I am not promoting that you just go out there and try to make your employees happy.  You cannot provide that role.  It is not your responsibility to make sure your employees are happy.  However, it is your responsibility to provide the best running model to offer good people the best chance for doing the right kinds of things that will help them find where their happiness resides.  Your business model can and should be designed to provide that kind of opportunity for good people to thrive.  The rest of your success will end up in the bag as a by-product of that effort.  Your business model will grow into something worth parading when this kind of leadership respect hits the top of your game on a consistent basis.  Get help.  Work on improving your leadership skills.  Change how you destroy what your employees could be doing.  Become more tolerant of the things they find challenging to do.  Help provide an environment for them to learn more about how they can expand what worth they are searching to own.  When your model learns how to do this in its process of work, your model will provide you with a lifestyle that is hard to reject.

Unhappy employees will destroy your efforts.  Make sure they are not unhappy because of the disgusting things you do from the lack of understanding you possess for the important demands your leadership requires.  Improve your ways.  Work to change them well.  Get help.  Ask questions.  Run your decisions by a vested and integrity-minded business mentor.  Clear your business air with a serious attempt to improve how you lead.  Give your employees a good steering wheel to manage.  Then step back and allow them to drive your model where it can really go.

Until next time...