Do You Employ Someone You Dislike?

Group Dynamics Can Infect Productivity

A long time ago my wife once asked me what I wanted for dinner when I got off work that night?  She asked me that question when I was just getting ready to leave for work that day.  I usually respond with an 'I don't care' kind of answer.  This time, however, I said meatloaf.  I told her she had made a really good cheese-type meatloaf one time and I liked it.  That would be good, she can make that for dinner tonight.  We said our good-byes and off to work I went.

That evening I came home a little later than normal but we gathered around the table with the kids to sit down and eat.  As we were eating I noticed it was chicken.  I was quiet for a short bit but after a while, I asked her this question, "Did I guess wrong?"  She said, "What?"  I repeated it, "Did I guess wrong?"  She said, "Guess what, I don't understand what you mean?"  I said, "Before I went to work this morning you asked me what I wanted for dinner and I said meatloaf.  This is chicken.  Did I guess the wrong answer?"  She was shocked and said, "Oh my gosh.  You did.  I am so sorry, I forgot."  It was quite fine with me, the food was good.  It did not need to be meatloaf.  I just thought it was kind of cute how she asked me for my opinion and my choice was not the one on the table that night.  We were raising three little girls at that time and I am sure her days were filled with enough activities to help her mind drift away from a planned dinner menu.  It was no big deal to me.  I was glad to have a good, warm home cooked meal.  I was satisfied.

For many years that story became one of our repeated funny stories about how a marriage can drift around.  It provided good fodder for making some minor marriage points to people we would visited in our travels.  I even used it on stage when I was speaking.  It was funny stuff.

We all do these kinds of things in our business career.  We have employees and once in awhile we come across the opportunity to ask them for a serious opinion about something we are doing in our business.  Sometimes those questions come out of nowhere and are not a planned discussion.  They just drift into a more serious conversation about likes and dislikes.  This is an opportunity for the owner to learn more about what is truly going on with the rank and file of the business model.  I have learned a lot about stuff I could not see in my business group dynamics when these opportunities surface.  I become more aware of some of the things I did not know.  I recognize some new things about how the employees view their job environment.  Even if I do not agree with their view or understand it, at least I get an opportunity to see what it truly is.  They will tell me about how they like meatloaf if I am listening closely enough.  The only way I do not learn about how much they like meatloaf is if I do not really care what they like or dislike.  I will not hear meatloaf and bring to their daily table, chicken.  I will just be doing my job and in the end, I will be just expecting them to be doing their job.  Who cares much about chicken or meatloaf?  They have work to do!

Getting to know your employees more deeply is not such a bad thing if you practice some good leadership rules.  Your employees are going to work at a place they take very serious.  It is where they go every day of their life, they think.  It is what they do.  It is where they live how they live.  It becomes who they are and how they project their lives to others around them.  Your employees become the workplace and protect the things they like to do at that job.  They take possession of the work they do.  They take possession of where they do the work they perform.  It becomes a lot about how they define who they are.  Trust me, their workplace is important to them.  They become very attached to where they go to work.  They use their work as a place for defining who they are.  It is very important stuff.  Do not minimize these truths.  Your employees want to be respected for the work they do where they have learned how to define who they are.  Pay very close attention to this perspective.  It will offer some very nice opportunities for you to develop some great teamwork models in your operation.  You can easily learn how to serve meatloaf when they mention how much they really like it.  It will reflect how much you respect what they do.

That brings up a good subject.  Do you employ someone you dislike?

Be Smart With Who You Do Not Like

If you employ someone you dislike, for whatever reason, you employ a person that makes you feel uneasy.  You will not be able to comfortably have a meatloaf discussion with that person.  Your other employees will notice that truth.  They will witness how much you protect your backside when you have any conversations with the person you do not like who works in your organization.  You will not be able to perfectly disguise how you feel about that employee.  Your leadership will be tainted a little bit.  The others will have enough insight to recognize how you feel.  If you dislike an employee, it will not be a secret.

This is a good and bad thing.  It presents you with a small dilemma.  You will be faced with the decision to decide how you want the dynamics of your organization to pan out.  Do you want to examine all of the work your employees do knowing full well that one of them is someone you do not already like?  Or do you want your organization to function well with respect for the diversity you have employed?  These are wholly two different kinds of managerial approaches.  You get to decide which one is your preference.  Will it be chicken or meatloaf...or do you care?

You are the one who will lead this group of employees.  The bigger the group, the less you can control who they are and how much you do or do not like them.  The smaller the group, the more you will spend time with the people you employ.  This kind of arrangement makes it more difficult to get along with employees you do not like.  Your productive side of their work may be tainted if someone you do not like remains still employed.  The rest of your employees may judge your leadership incorrectly on this subject.  They may incorrectly think that you are keeping the disliked employee around because you are not strong enough to take decisive action when it is needed.  You may also discover that some of your other employees find your leadership refreshing when you express the ability to allow someone you do not like to work their job duties anyhow and produce the work they do.  Welcome to group dynamics.  Welcome to leadership.

Did you know you can employ someone you do not like and they can actually produce a good return for your company?  I have seen this happen a lot of times in my career.  Liking someone who works for you is not always the best judge about how well they can produce.  I have seen very productive employees do well in my business world and I can assure you that I would never select them as one of my friends.  On the other side, I have seen people who I consider good friends perform poorly.  They have taken advantage of the friendship and worked their way around the needs to become more productive.  I have discovered this position one of the most trying ones to regulate.  It is tough to 'sit on' a friend.  It is easier to 'sit on' someone you do not like.  In fact, I see many leaders play favorites and as a result kill their best potential for improved productivity.  They play favorites hard enough that it eventually kills their business model profitability factors.  I have watched how easily that move is to do.  The leader usually compromises too much when a friend is involved.  If they do not like the employee, the compromise is very short.

Do you employ someone you dislike?

Trust me, if you do it is recognizable.  Be aware of the damage this can do to your profitability factors.  Play your leadership role very carefully.  Play your leadership role to make sure your organizational health is protected at all cost.  Watch out closely for favoritism, impatience, quick to judge, aggravation, anxiety and stress.  Watch out for opinions dominating your decision models.  Work harder on using the laws of evidence to place judgement's to your employee evaluations.  When you employ someone you dislike, you will need to dial up a stronger level of good leadership behavior.  If you fail to do this step you will eventually destroy the productivity from the rest of your group.  The dynamics they will play will eventually consume a good deal of their productive time slots.  Your business model will notice this shift.  Productivity will become compromised.  The group dynamics will eventually become in charge of the operations.  You will no longer be recognized as the true leader.  You will eventually become ineffective to be able to lead your staff through some increased pressure for producing more favorable results.  That kind of extra effort within your organization will not be able to happen smoothly.

Do you employ someone you dislike?

If you do, it shows.  The only way it does not show is if you have developed some great leadership skill sets.  Your leadership clarity needs to be spot on in order for you to protect the productivity of a whole group that is faced with the fact the you do not like one of your employees.  If you think you are not witnessing a lack of productivity in your organization from the fact that you do not like one of the employees, trust me, you are not seeing the picture clearly.  The ones you like the most have developed the best skills for maintaining the fact that you like them.  They will not telegraph to you the non-productive things that are occurring in the other dynamics you do not see in your organization.  The energy produced to protect this pattern can grow into a large force that infects the overall productivity of your organization, and you may not notice it.

Get to know if your employees like meatloaf or chicken.  It might help you become more sensitized to what they prefer and what they do not desire to do.  This will help you keep them pointed in the most productive ways.  It should not matter whether or not you like or dislike someone you employ.  It should only matter how well you work your leadership to gain the most productivity from the model you lead.  In the end, everyone should be able to recognize how much you respect productivity over the dominance that friendship can destroy.  Watch your leadership skills more closely.  Pay closer attention to productivity than you do about how much you want meatloaf or chicken.  Last night we ate beef stew!  My wife makes the best beef stew.  Think more about the productivity factors and less about how the friendship is working, while at the same time respecting who likes meatloaf.  Welcome to leadership.

Until next time...