Diagnosing The Workplace: Not Just An HR Podcast
Join James and Coby from Roman 3 as they diagnose issues and prescribe solutions to today's most important workplace challenges.
Diagnosing The Workplace: Not Just An HR Podcast
Why Do Managers Feel Powerless and Disrespected?
Send us a Message! (But we can’t respond, so feel free to email us at info@roman3.ca)
This episode touches on the themes of Strengthen Culture and Developing Leaders.
In this episode, we explore the types of cultures and workplace norms that leave supervisors and managers feeling that they are powerless and/or their employees do not respect them.
Our prescription for this episode is to create strong, clear, and nuanced policies, then train your leaders and managers to effectively and consistently implement them.
Past Episode Referenced:
S2 E12: AI VS Automation, Toxic Employees, Wellness Accommodations
S4 E6: How Do You Confront Passive-Aggressive Behavior Professionally?
Statistics Referenced:
When it comes to predicting a company’s employee turnover rate, Culture is 10X more effective than Compensation. - Massachusetts Institute of Technology (2023)
59% of managers report having no training at all. - West Monroe (2018)
To talk more about Policy, Practice, and Perception, reach out to us at info@roman3.ca or through our LinkedIn page at https://www.linkedin.com/company/roman3
Don't forget to sign up for our New Quarterly Newsletter that launched in the fall of 2024!
About Our Hosts!
James is an experienced business coach with a specialization in HR management and talent attraction and retention.
Coby is a skilled educator and has an extensive background in building workforce and organizational capacity.
For a little more on our ideas and concepts, check out our Knowledge Suite or our YouTube Channel, Solutions Explained by Roman 3.
Breaking down everyday workplace issues and diagnosing the hidden sickness, not just the obvious symptom. Our hosts, James and Coby.
[COBY]:Did we lose a patient?
[JAMES]:No, that's just my lunch.
[COBY]:Hey, thanks for joining us. I'm Coby, he's James. And let's get started with a question. Why do managers feel powerless and disrespected?
[JAMES]:Yeah, yeah. so we've legitimately heard this question, like, three times in the past two weeks. we have heard it in conversation with a new client whose staff feels very comfortable letting the executive team know exactly what they're doing wrong in great detail and yet are somewhat less, open to any type of reciprocal feedback. We've heard it from managers and leaders who feel disrespected and powerless. That language coming from them, and we've seen it firsthand with team members feeling like they are entitled to monitor and report on their managers every action. So what I want our conversation to focus on today is where does this come from? And how can we begin to shift our culture away from incivility towards more respect and psychological safety for everybody, not just for the staff.
[COBY]:Yeah, because, like, you know, we think back over a lot of our past conversations. We, we do talk about the power dynamic between, you know, managers, like leaders, people with like, you know, like given authority with an organization and the staff that report to them. And usually our conversations are heavily geared. How can those leaders, supervisors, managers, have the skills to be more supportive, more kind of like, you know, more encouraging? Building, building people up and providing people what they need to bring their best, their best self to work. But it is an absolutely accurate thing that sometimes in some organizations, it's kind of the reverse, that we have people in management leadership roles that do not. That do not have the respect of the people that they work with. They feel powerless, that their word doesn't necessarily mean anything, or that their actions are going to be overly scrutinized, or maybe they, you know, the staff don't feel like they should be in that role, so they don't feel they have to listen to them or all these different things. So I'm really glad that we're going to dig into this side because you're right, it is something that we have been hearing about a lot recently. but it also is something that does absolutely exist out there in the workforce. So it's important for us to not make sure that we're looking at all aspects of that power dynamic.
[JAMES]:Well, and power dynamics are important. I mean, we're not going to get away from the fact that there are power differentials in the workplace, there are power differentials in our society, there are power differentials in virtually every relationship we have. Right. Like it is part of human nature. And I mean, it makes sense why we are discussing it from an organizational perspective and focusing because, I mean, our work is very, employee focused. Right. That's because typically when those power dynamics are not, well, managed, it's the employees who tend to get the short end of the stick. But what's, I mean, part of it is the, the nature of the work that we do, the nature of the leaders and the organizations who seek out our help. We get an opportunity to actually work with those who really care and who are really trying to make differences. And sometimes. So we're seeing more of this. How did we get to this place of. My staff don't listen to me or my managers feel, are frustrated that staff, with the actions that they have, they don't feel like they can actually, address the issues head on. Because then staff feel attacked and you know, will be up in arms. Like there's, there is a complex web of stuff going on that we need to kind of try to pull apart and unpack.
[COBY]:Yeah, yeah. Because I mean, like the, Again, like, we're going to talk a lot about where this comes from, what kind of conditions are, you know, have put people in this, in this situation. because I mean really, this at its core is a cultural issue. There are, I mean, again, there are individuals and managers who are in their role and maybe are ill equipped to do their job. And maybe that's why they don't feel respected by their team because they legitimately are not in a position where they can actually do the job properly. There are people that are put into roles due to even perceived nepotism or favoritism or those types of things that immediately kind of undercuts the seriousness of, of them in their role and causes, them to be a bit more disrespected. So there are those isolated incidents around people. But the thing is, is that how that's addressed and how that's normalized and how that's handled is 100% a cultural issue. Regardless of why someone may be particularly in a situation where they feel particularly powerless and particularly disrespected because of the, of how they got their job or their role of it. That's something that we're not really going to get into those pieces. But even people that were perceived to have gotten the job due to, say, nepotism for example how the culture normalizes its leadership, its policies around behavior and practice and conduct, how it handles incivility and even passive aggressive behavior is far more effective or far more telling about the, the kind of conditions that someone will work in that would that make them feel both powerless and disrespected.
[JAMES]:Yeah, I think it's, it's always helpful to try to illustrate with a couple with examples. and what immediately springs to mind is one of the. So diving right into where does this feeling or where does this incivility or where does this culture kind of stem from? One thing that I see quite often is when there's a mismatch between leadership ability, natural leadership skills and management skills. We've seen this with some wonderful people who are incredible leaders. They have the ability to rally people. They m. Their teams oftentimes will respect them for their leadership ability but their ability to manage the day to day, their consistency in how they make decisions, the, the way in which they manage the operations. They could be a, a ah, wonderful human being. And we often hear it phrased this way of I love them, they are a great person but. Right. Which kind of negates everything that comes before it.
[COBY]:Right.
[JAMES]:But we, we do we hear it in this way very often of I have this manager or leader, I like them as a human being but I can't respect them because they're bad at their job or the perception is they're bad at the job when really they're, they don't have the management skills necessary to be able to effectively manage the people and the operations in a consistent manner. And I think that the key in this to a lot of this conversation is going to be the element of consistency because inconsistent actions are one of the quickest ways to create job dissatisfaction. When you are inconsistent in how you approach things, when you are inconsistent in your behaviors, when you say one thing and do something differently, that is what causes a lot of the underlying issues that then get compounded and build upon.
[COBY]:Yeah. And I mean you're right. I think his consistency is going to be an essential key like thread through this whole conversation. But I think it's also kind of good to give a little bit going back to your example about people. What you know we have people in management or leadership positions that have the leadership skills, the people, the, the personality skills and the personality to kind of be someone that's there for people to rally people but, but it doesn't have the actual like management Operational skills to be consistent and follow through and handle things directly and those kinds of things. But I mean, let's be fair though. We don't see that. I think, I think we see that a lot more in some types of organizations than in others. In organizations that are not highly competitive. Like again, like, again like highly competitive, fast moving private sector. We don't see that nearly as often. Just because that kind of thing doesn't.
[JAMES]:Last, it gets weeded out much more quickly.
[COBY]:Yeah, we see it in governmental roles like whether municipal or provincial or we see it in nonprofits, that are kind of more grassroots laid. We see it in small businesses where the kind of, the people that are in the role kind of are part of the core startup team or have that kind of familiarity or that friendship or that family relationship to them. So their shortcomings are overlooked because of either a lack of competitiveness or, or kind of a, kind of, or kind of a personal connection to people that were, that put them into that role. Right. So again, that is something that we do see. So, so some people might be like, well why would someone in that role be kept in that role? Well again, not every business does that exist, but it exists in a lot of them. Right?
[JAMES]:Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you're right. And I mean part of this context, is, I mean some of the more recent conversation, conversations that we've had have been in that arena. but I think the consistency lens is going to carry through a lot of our conversation regardless because we've talked about on this podcast many times about.
[COBY]:How.
[JAMES]:When people are frustrated, when they are dissatisfied, that tends to be the root of a lot of the other behaviors that you are seeing. So the, the, the feelings of frustration and that negative feedback that you're experiencing that you're hearing. If kind of going back to the, the first example that I had in that little intro around the executive who you know, their staff feel very comfortable bringing issues to them. I mean they've done a good job of trying to create an environment where people think, feel that they can actually raise concerns, which is something that we talk about all the time. And it's an apps, it is a good thing. But there's obviously an underlying issue there of it's not just that staff feel comfortable bringing issues forward or safe to bring issues forward. It's that there are underlying factors in the workplace that are actively causing dissatisfaction. So the feedback that they're bringing forward is from a negative perspective. It is their frustrations. It is Their dissatisfaction satisfaction that we're hearing and because of, I mean in this case there's could be a number of different issues going along with it. Institutional betrayal, other concepts that we've all talked about many times on this podcast. We're seeing the frustrations bear out because of the dissatisfaction. So I don't want to lose that dissatisfaction, thread throughout our conversation because I think that's where a lot of the root like again going back to our hierarchy. If we can begin at the foundational stage of trying to address job dissatisfaction, that is going to be how we can sustain some of these improvements long term.
[COBY]:Right? No, you're right. So I think it's important for us not to, not to forget about that as we talk about this stuff. Because I mean even with this first one that we're talking about, you know, the kind of, the first place that it comes from is about people that have leadership skills but not necessarily management skills. How that impacts job dissatisfaction is usually these people, again with good personality skills. People say I love them as a person, but those kinds of people, it's often their lack of follow through, their lack of addressing things consistently directly or sometimes it's even a matter of the person in the role maybe has their efforts undercut by those above them which weakens their credibility. Right. So the idea of like these situations where someone's you know, is just doesn't have the ability is not consistently providing that those management expectations to make things run smoothly. So everything feels chaotic, everything feels like it goes to this person to die. or there's just like, you know, no kind of respect that anything, any works can actually happen because this person doesn't have their own stuff together. So, so those are all the kind of things that definitely kind of feed into that.
[JAMES]:There are a lot of challenges when kind of trying to nail down this particular element around management skills because there's so many or a lack of management skills because there are so many pieces there. And for for those listening, there's a lot of self reflection that has to happen. Right? Because I can think of direct scenarios of hearing staff feedback and frustration around a manager. because very enthusiastically and wants to really get things going and moving and presents very energetically and cares about the staff but sets unrealistic expectations and then because the expectations are unrealistic, they and the team fail to live up to those expectations. So everybody kind of feels let down by it. Right? You have so many. So much of this rests on how we as leaders not only talk to people, not only build relationships, you know, positive working relationships with our staff, but how we engage with them, the consistency in our actions, in our speech, in our. If I say that I'm going to be at this place on Monday at 10 o' clock and I'm not there Monday at 10 o', clock, that's an expectation that I've set that has been broken. Like there's. We really have to be intentional as managers, as leaders to make sure that we, I mean, we've talked about this before. The most important management skill you can learn is how to set and manage expectations, right? How to clearly articulate what you want from people, what they can rely on you for. Because if you are, if you get to a place where people can't trust your word. That's a really challenging spot to work your way. That's a hole that you, you're gonna have to find a way out of.
[COBY]:Right. M. Because, because the thing is, is like, you know, so let's, let's just talk briefly. But what are those management skills that if you don't have them, causes you to feel powerless and disrespected and a big one is following through on stuff. If you do not follow through, if you don't have that ability to see something to its end, then that's one of those things where immediately you're losing disrespect. If you're not organized enough, you don't have the time, management enough to deal with things kind of quickly and you know, within a reasonable time, then people are going to start coming to you because, because it's going to come to you just to die. Right. Or by the time you get around to it, the. It's too late. Right. There are things, you know, when it comes to having difficult conversations directly. Right. These are all, these are the kind of skills that if you don't, if you are, if you're not able to kind of live, live them, then these are things that make you far less effective as a manager. Which again hurts your ability, hurts your credibility and weakens your sense of like respect and kind of sense of authority. Because you just again are not living up to what people need you to do to do your job effectively.
[JAMES]:Yeah. And there's a. Here's the thing, there's a lot of reasons why this is going to happen. I mean, stuff comes up that you are not going to be able to anticipate and you're going to set an expectation and there's going to be an external Factor that impacts your ability to follow through. M. That is fair, that happens. But a reason is different than an excuse. We've talked this language many times because. And really understanding the difference between that is one of the elements, one of the, the pieces of feedback or one of the suggestions I would have for somebody going through this. You talked about follow through. Right. Really important, the most important things if you. From a relationship management perspective, from a. How do I build positive relationships? Let's focus on work. But in general two things. Follow up and follow through. 100 percent if you say you are going to do something, do it right. If you are unable to do it, at least let people know why you were unable to do it. Like there's communication is such a foundational element that we get wrong all the time and there's a bit of a want on a personal professional level to not show that vulnerability. But there is staying on the, the train of relationship management humility and showing that you are like not pretending that you're infallible are really good relationship building tools as well. The follow through piece is absolutely essential to your credibility if you are feeling powerless or that people don't respect your opinion or respect you as a leader. One of the places I would start with is with some self reflection of how have I been setting expectations with my team, have I been following through consistently in those expectations with my team and what can I do to begin to rebuild some of that trust? Because broken expectations damages trust. Yeah, right. Even simple things like yeah, I'll I will get back to you with an answer by Friday end of day and it's the following Wednesday and they still haven't heard from you. Yes, it could be a relatively minor issue. Yes, it could be that 47 fires popped up between Friday morning and the following Wednesday. That doesn't change the fact that you set an expectation and you broke it. So communication around that is going to be absolutely essential.
[COBY]:Well and the thing too is that it's the, it does. It's often not the big letdowns that are where those feelings of again disrespect and lack of any lack of credibility happen. It's actually on those small let me get back to you tomorrow or leave this with me and I'll look into it and let you know. Or are those kinds of. It's those small little moments that if you fail those then it's death by a thousand cuts. And that is so much more. Almost like the weight of that is actually a lot larger Than a single instances where you had something really big to do. But because of the nature of your work or the nature of the situation that you're in, things fell apart. But you had, but you can explain the context to it and take ownership for it. But that's a rare instance that won't damage you nearly as much as all those little ones lined up. Right. So it is really important to just be aware of. It's the small little everyday things that have some of the greatest impact on, on your credibility and how people view you.
[JAMES]:Yeah. And I know we've been there. I want to shift a little bit in our conversation because yes, the individual manager and how they interact with their team, the consistency piece is absolutely one of the ways in which this whole issue around feeling powerless or disrespected or incivility in general can creep into the organization. But it's not the only way.
[COBY]:No, that's fair too. You're right. So we should move on to the next one which is really talking about, well, it's actually about follow through, when it comes to policy. So when we go into organizations, one of the things that we do for initial investigations, so we've got a few different investigation and diagnostic tools. But one of the things that we look at right off the bat is we look at organization's policies. We review them for the quality of them, the depth of them, if they exist, all those kinds of things. But having that information is helpful. But then we compare that to what is the everyday practice, of how those policies are used. And to be honest, that's one of the most telling things is when the policy exists. But there's no follow through, there's no use of them. They're written down but no one knows about them or no one looks at them. And that's one of the things that completely undercuts a manager's ability to do their job effectively.
[JAMES]:A rule that's not enforced. As a suggestion. Yeah, yeah, right. Like, and we, we what I really like about that initial, so we, we talk about in terms of policy practice and perception. Right. we and the, the intersection between those three elements gives us a tremendous amount of data to work with how we, we can have really effective policies. And we've seen this many times where we've gone into an organization and they've had really well designed policies. Like they are structured, they are clear. They are actually in many cases designed not only just, they're not only just written down somewhere and kind of left on A shelf, but actually designed in a way that's supposed to support the operations and ultimately support employees. Yeah. So we evaluate the policies and they're great. M. But managers don't know how to use them. They've never, sometimes they don't even know that these policies exist. They're created in isolation and they're, you know, I don't want to pick on any particular department or teams, but we've seen it where the, you know, there's issues that are raised, to the HR department. and HR is like, oh yes, this is an important piece we need to build. We need to have a. We need to beef up our policy around X, Y and Z. And they do so.
[COBY]:Right.
[JAMES]:And then they let people know, hey, policy around X, Y and Z have been updated. Great. And that's where it stops. Yeah.
[COBY]:I mean going back to our conversation that we had about silos. Right. The idea of a solution or a problem is isolated. So the solution can be isolated too. This is ah, the way that HR department is a common way where we see it builds this policy based on this isolated view of how to solve it. So they create the policy there, box checked, problem solved. Because I solved it for my department of hr, not realizing that it needs to be. It's not just that lives with you, that's. And that reinforces that silo piece too. Right?
[JAMES]:Yeah, yeah. And it's, it's. So I want to focus on the practice and perception elements to this. because how we engage with policies, how we use them in a. On a regular basis, how we consistently apply them is how we as managers are going to build credibility. Right. It's. We have rules that are in place and we apply those rules equally and equitably to everybody. Right there. Whenever we create, whenever we draw a line in the sand, there's always going to be somebody who's just on the edge of that. Right. We can never create a policy or a rule that is going to be 100 perfect 100 of the time. There are always going to be areas where we're going to have to look at. You know, are, is this worthy of some sort of exception? Right. That's the equitability part. But we need to be treating people, the rules need to be implemented equally. they need to apply to everybody the same and the consequences for breaching it needs to be the same as well or at least equitable. These are how we start to like, how do you actually start to rebuild and gain some trust? Is the long road Back is consistency. Consistency in how not only having good rules and policies in place, but making sure that we are using them consistently and effectively. Because on the other element that we haven't really talked about is the perception. Sometimes we've actually seen it where you have good rules and managers generally understand how to use them and say that they use them effectively anyways, don't need to go down that rabbit hole. But the perception of employees is that these rules are not what is needed or these rules are not. We're not treated equitably. You know, there's favoritism or there's. So all of these elements play a role in kind of creating these conditions, around why managers may feel powerless or disrespected. Because if you are, if you have these great policies, that are, if you don't have policies, you need them, full start. If you have these great policies but your management team doesn't understand how to use them effectively to build trust and to build a, productive working relationship with their staff, they, that is a problem. That's where you need to start. If you have the policies and you have the managers who understand how to use them, but you are dealing with high levels of dissatisfaction or you're dealing, you're dealing with institutional betrayal or there's the perception from employees that this isn't going to make any difference or that there's favoritism or whatever that perception may be. It doesn't even need to be true.
[COBY]:Right.
[JAMES]:It only needs to be believed. Because what people perceive shapes their reality.
[COBY]:Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And the thing too is like sometimes it's a matter of like what, what has, what has been normalized in your organization kind of going back to perception.
[JAMES]:Right?
[COBY]:Because I mean, I know that because again, when we often go into organizations, we often are helping them through a transition. That's kind of the main thing that we do in organizations is to help them through a transition. And one of the things that always ends up happening is new policies need to be created like that. And we always hit this point where if the organization is, has a reputation of not commonly following through on policies, or policies not being anything having any real teeth or any real impact, then when new ones are written down and then the managers and the supervisors are trying to act on, act on them, staff don't believe them because they've never had to follow policies before. Right. So there is whole idea like there's a lack of this lack of consistency in application or, or policies are something we take seriously. We Put them in a binder and then that's what. And that's, that's where they live. And that's, and that's what they're for is to be filling up a binder. But I mean it's also the fact that sometimes it's a matter of or so the question is what is the history of these organizations that made it normalized that policies aren't really a thing that follow through isn't required or that they, they don't apply to you employee and we're right. I mean sometimes it's a matter of they've never been enforced before or, or they're not consistently applied up the chain of command that you know that they may exist at one level but not at another. So these are all the things that we try and investigate when we're looking at policy practice and perception to try and identify some historical context is helpful. But like this is a reality when policies weren't in force before then there's a bit of a, of a learning curve and a change management process to get these policies now these are taken seriously now. They will follow through. You will. If you don't realize you're going to be the, you're going to be the case study that, that this of these new policies, you're going to test them out because of your behavior. That's something that may be the case but you have to be able to like understand what it is that's holding people back from following them. And sometimes it's just been the historical context that we never had to before. So why, why do we have to now?
[JAMES]:And this is why it's so critical that leadership, the leadership of the organization, whether whatever that form that looks like has to be bought into the process.
[COBY]:Yeah.
[JAMES]:Because what will kill this whole initiative, any change that you're trying to implement faster than anything else is if so what we've seen many times unfortunately and that we've had to try to go back and course correct is when this work is done and the new policies are rolled out and you have perhaps a long serving staff member who's been with the organization for a very long time who may have relationships with those they try to. They will go, they will go around their manager. Right. They will go to their manager supervisor or they will go to their friend or they will, they will find the weak link in the chain and they will exploit it and they will play one person off another and they, and then if the leadership team is not cohesive and on board and implementing these things together, you're going to ruin your credibility. Because if when somebody runs, goes around their manager to somebody else to try to get a different answer, that needs to be shut down immediately.
[COBY]:Absolutely.
[JAMES]:And that expectation needs to come from the leadership team because if that is not shut down immediately, that leader, whoever is ultimately responsible for that person needs to shut it down. Like this is where communication, where performance management, where clear expectations, where accountability all come together to actually reinforce what we are doing. Any link in that chain, if broken, is going or even weakened, is going to cascade throughout the entire effect.
[COBY]:Right. And actually brings us to kind of maybe the, that's a good tee up to the, the third reason why or the third thing that where this comes from, this feeling powerless and respect it comes from is when these types of like uncivil, kind of behaviors are normalized in the organization. Right. Because one of those things that is, you know, so when someone feels that they can go up, that they can go around someone or they can go above someone or the rules don't apply to them, these are all kind of the things that are just the sign of a normalized instability or, or normalize of two tiered expectations or all those kind of pieces. Which is why one of the things that we tend to do and it's not, it can kind of be seen as a negative, but it's needed. We go into organizations and we're helping update their policies is we really try and update their professional conduct policies, their managing conflict policies and the progressive discipline policies as some of the first ones that we do. Because those are the things that have to be in place to allow for staff to know this stuff is taken seriously. This is what's expected of you. If you don't follow this, then if you don't follow the conduct then we have to talk about as a conflict. And if that conflict can't be resolved, then move to aggressive discipline. So those three things together are usually how we start letting people take this stuff seriously. One of the most important things that we do is we put in language into these discipline policies and these conduct policies around workplace incivility. We talked about that, I believe with the episode, we talked about strongholds, because the idea about you need to kind of clarify not just what kind of big picture large obvious conduct is unallowed, but what are the smaller everyday, you know, like harder to kind of nail down pieces around. Again, disrespect and dismissive, and passive aggressive behavior that has to be addressed so that way people understand what conduct, what behavior, what, you know, what types of. Of actions in the workplace are not allowed because it undercuts the ability for people to do their jobs and it makes other people feel disrespected and ultimately can be the downfall of having managers feel powerless.
[JAMES]:Yeah, the. The incivility piece is. And this is where from an. From a cultural change. If we are trying, like, if we can fix something, that one thing that will cascade and make a difference around managers not feeling respected. the incivility piece is probably the biggest. Right. And we've kind of talked around this and we know it comes from a lot of different places. Having that clearly defined is critically important. Following through on your policies is what's going. Like, again, consistency, consistent application. People need to know that there are consequences for their actions. M. They also need to know that. So why do you want this? You want this not just for those who are a pain in your rear end. I mean, the people who are going to butt up against these policies. Yeah. They. They need this policy because they are constant source of frustration. And this is going to be a tool that we will use to try to mitigate that frustration that we. They cause. Fine, that's great. That's a good purpose for it. But the more important demographic, the more. The. The. The group that needs this more than anyone else are your high performers.
[COBY]:Yeah.
[JAMES]:They need to know that working hard, being dedicated, behaving professionally is not just the expectation, but is actually rewarded. And that not performing that, not behaving professionally, that creating incivility is actually going to be addressed because your top performers are not. I hope they're not your problem. But typically, like the.
[COBY]:Your.
[JAMES]:The vast majority of your staff are probably not the problem. Right. It's usually a smaller subset that are causing the issues, but the larger group that needs your support, that needs you to follow through, that needs you to be consistent. When these behaviors crop up, are the staff who aren't causing the problems because they need to know that this behavior is unacceptable because they want to act in a way that is consistent with their own values. All right. Most people show up to work wanting to actually be able to get through the day without constant headaches, managers and staff included. Right. And having to constantly fight against incivility or deal with the. The impact of incivility caused by one or two people is draining, and it is exhausting, and it is not how you motivate and keep good people.
[COBY]:Right. I mean, we did an episode a while ago. I'm trying to Think of what number it was. I'll try and find it. And put into the show notes we talked about toxic behaviors. Because the thing is, is like that idea of you're right, one of the biggest problems with a having toxic behaviors in employees, whether they're high performers or not is, is the impact they have on everybody else. Right. And the fact that you're right, it's the, the people that are your most valuable assets are the ones that want structure. They want to know that stuff will be handled. They want to know that the behaviors that are robbing them of their ability to perform based on their co workers or whatever like that are being addressed and being taken care of because it is that piece of, you know, like honestly, even if it is a high performer that is showing toxic behaviors, sometimes that, you know, people are like, well, do I get rid of an employee that, that has these toxic behaviors even if they're really high performer? And I'm like, well to be honest, usually they're damping down everybody else. So it actually is a net positive to get rid of that. To get rid of or to address that, whether that is getting rid of them or not. Right. But these are such dangerous performance productivity, productivity robbing behaviors. When they are allowed to fester, when incivility is allowed to just live in your culture and be normalized, when the passive aggressive situations or actions and behaviors are just accepted and allowed to live without being addressed. When this stuff happens, this is how managers and employees feel that disrespect is just what the workplace offers. But your high performers will not stay in an organization where managers are powerless and disrespected because they can't do their job. They don't see any progress or any opportunity for them to move up if they're going to move up into a job or they're going to be powerless and disrespected. Right. So this is.
[JAMES]:And they're the ones with options. Yeah, the ones who are going to leave are the ones with options. The ones who are high performance, who can show that, who are highly qualified, who are good at their jobs. They're the ones who are going to be poached or are going to start looking. I mean the people who are a constant pain in your rear end, the people who are constantly causing problems. The they are. If you can get them out of your organization, great. if you can fix the behavior, even better. But if you let it go, you are inviting that behavior to fester. And that's how we get these Cultures of incivility. And you are inviting your top performing people to look elsewhere. Right. You're just. This is how we also, I mean we've also heard it referred to as like businesses being frustrated that they feel like they're just a training ground. That people come in, work, get trained for a couple years and then they bolt. Well, why is that? What is it about your organization that is causing people, as soon as they have a better option to run for the hills? Probably has to do with your, with your workplace culture. May have to do. You know, you may just pay people absolute garbage and we need to fix that as well.
[COBY]:But more often than not is, is. It is almost culture. People will stay at a culture for a lower pay than.
[JAMES]:Stick with pay is a great way of getting people to look at your new opportunities. It is a pretty bad metric for strictly for retention. It plays a role, no question. And it is an important factor to consider. But culture is much more, is a much higher indicator of retention than just pay.
[COBY]:Absolutely. And yeah, so again, like tenfold is culture. I think there's even a study done by MIT that verified that that culture is 10 times more effective with, with predicting employee retention than compensation alone. Like, it's, it's.
[JAMES]:I just, I couldn't remember the actual stat, so I didn't want to cite it. But you go ahead and cite a stat. Sure, yeah, we'll find the actual stat and put it in the, But I think you're right. It is a 10x multiplier.
[COBY]:Yeah, I believe so. So I think we talked about. So again, I think we did a good, good explanation of where this kind of comes from. Again, leadership skills and not management skills in our people in authority, not, following through on policy and normalizing workplace instability are three things that are, really common. So let's talk about the really important next piece, which is how do we address this? How do we make managers not feel powerless and disrespected? And one of the things that we didn't touch on, but before we get into that, I do want to just kind of loop back to a little bit was we talked about passive aggressive behavior. That's something that we just did an episode about two episodes ago, I think, where we talked about how do you deal professionally with passive aggressive behavior. So if that's something that you're seeing a lot in your workplace, I strongly encourage you to follow up that conversation because we're not going to really have time to dig into that. But that's something I just want to make sure that people are aware of. Because that was a great conversation where we dug into some really helpful, tangible pieces with that too. But how do we fix this situation? I always say the best place to start is with policy.
[JAMES]:Yes, it is. let's. I think we've got a different strategy based on which of those three scenarios we're looking to address. Right. If it's a lack of management, skill, then we need to train our managers. Right. Policy is critically important, but it's not necessarily.
[COBY]:I agree. But at the same time policies can be done rather quickly.
[JAMES]:I mean in terms of ease and yes. Speed.
[COBY]:Yeah, but I mean like, but the thing is that having those policies, in my opinion, Feel free to disagree, but having those policies first, I'm sure you will have those policies first. Work on those first. That's an easier thing to do right off the, off the top. But that's something that standardizes expectation across organization. Whether or not managers are good at using them or not is something that you can work on in management training. But giving them the rules, the guideposts, the expectations, the what they're supposed to do, that's essential first in my opinion.
[JAMES]:Okay, that's, that's fair. Right. If you don't have those in place. Yes. Clear expectations on how we are supposed to be engaging with our teams. Those processes, policies. But those. If you then don't have the people who can, who are skilled enough to use them, who have these large gaps in their ability to engage with people, to manage both the operations, the outcomes and manage their teams effectively. We. You need to invest in them. Right. You need to invest in building their skills. I mean it goes back to the fact that what was it, something like 59, 60% of all managers have never received management training.
[COBY]:Yeah, something like that. Yeah. Yeah.
[JAMES]:Right. Just the, we'll say the majority like ah. A staggering number of people are put into management roles because they were effective in doing the job previously. So because they were effective in doing the job previously, we move them into a role where they now no longer doing that job. They are responsible to support the people who are doing that job, but they are not supported in and of themselves on how do I make that shift? Because going from doing the work to supporting others who are doing the work is a big mindset shift, not to mention a big skill set shift.
[COBY]:Yeah.
[JAMES]:Invest in your managers have standardized management training. There are lots of resources out there that can help you develop some of these pieces.
[COBY]:We even have content in the podcast that is very helpful for new managers. We have a couple episodes we're talking about, you know, about you know, managing former co workers or idea about managing expectations as one of the overlook management skills. Again, we're not saying listen to a podcast is the same as formalized management training, but these can be places that you can start today is refer some of our past episodes or other podcasts to people to listen to, get some ideas because again it's about a lot of it is you need to challenge their base assumptions. Have them as you mentioned a couple times, reflect critically on their practices to be open to. Maybe they're not approaching it the right way or maybe there are things that they could do better on that is making their lives more difficult and almost reinforcing their own sense of powerlessness and feeling disrespected by their team. So there are things that can be done. I mean one of the things that we do when we step into organizations is again one of the first things we do is we do start with those policies, especially around professional conduct kind of managing conflict and around progressive discipline. And then we do engage in pulling together the leadership teams, whether it's like the senior level managers and separately the middle level managers depending on the side of the organization and providing them some of these management skills training. Again, learning the differences between some things like again like leadership skills and management skills or kind of like you know, or how do the rules that empower and rules restrict and those kinds of conversations get people to think critically and be more reflective and open to their train to training it.
[JAMES]:But even just simple things like simple concepts, like the difference between being nice and being kind, the difference between like if we're reading in this case. Yeah, right. Like there's, there's a lot of you can, there's a lot of mileage you can get out of starting with some pretty basic foundational pieces. I mean we make a lot of content freely available through our podcast, through our YouTube channel, through our knowledge suite. Use it.
[COBY]:Yeah, exactly. And so again you don't have to think, okay, I have to train our managers. I need to get a big budget and we the buy an element. There are lots of stuff available. Again, like we have some, we even have partners that have great podcasts and great resources that we're always happy to share. I mean like send us an email saying, hey, what would be a good list? We're happy to curate a list for you based on our content. Some of our partners that we know is impactful. If this is something that you're wondering, just free show and ask because our email address is right in the show notes. But so, and so going back to kind of how how we handle things, our process is typically again starting with policy and then we do kind of initiate with the supervisors around building a better management skills. But we also try and create clear and consistent standards across all levels of management to ensure that they follow, to ensure there's consistent implementation. So when the policies are developed we make sure that the expectation and the training around what they are and why they're important is cascaded down to the organization and the expectation of everyone is to follow this. And if you are not following this then that's a breach of the professional conduct policy and can require progressive discipline. That's why those three are so helpful because it's about if you're not doing this basic thing, you're breaching this. So we do this and it's so.
[JAMES]:Clear expectations and accountability.
[COBY]:Yeah, absolutely, yeah.
[JAMES]:we need mechanisms and we can't hold people accountable for things that we haven't told them first and foremost. Right, right. So tell them what the expectations are. That's our formal written policies or formal expectations. Then hold them accountable for implementing them properly. I mean not every time, every time you hold somebody accountable it doesn't mean that you can necessarily going to fire them. Right. not all progressive discipline leads to termination and not all performance conversations necessarily need to lead to progressive discipline. But what we need are clear expectations and a ah, clear understanding of how are we going to get back on track when we don't live up to those expectations because everybody's going to miss the mark at some point. Yeah, we, our goal is to so report them to get better, back in line, back on track if they continually miss the mark. That's when we start with our progressive man, progressive disciplinary procedures. Yeah.
[COBY]:And again one of the things that's the most, is often one of the most impactful conversations you have is when someone steps out of line. It's you pull them aside and have a non disciplinary meeting. Just be like hey, just so you know, this what this breach to professional conduct issue, it wasn't severe enough that it's going to be, need to be escalated really quickly. Right. But you know, let them know that they breached it and say just so you know, this is, this is a non disciplinary conversation but if it happens again, this steps into our the first stage of progressive discipline which is leads to this, this, this, this and this. So I'm sure you and I both want this to be the last time we talk about this. But I want you just to know what the next step is. But I want to be very clear, we're not having a disciplinary conversation right now. That conversation I've had a number of times in my interim roles and we've coached clients to have that conversation a number of times. It works like 80% of the time. That's all that is needed when these new policies come into place is to remind people, okay, they were serious when they implemented these policies. Good to know. Now it's clear in my mind. So again, that's often what they amount to.
[JAMES]:Follow through on what you say you're going to do.
[COBY]:Right.
[JAMES]:It's not complicated, but it's also not always easy. Like we, we, we will acknowledge that, there are relatively simple strategies that you can put in place. But just because something is simple doesn't necessarily mean that it's easy to do.
[COBY]:Okay. I think this has been a great conversation. So the question was why do managers feel powerless and disrespected? Largely it kind of comes from behaviors that are, in situations that are normalized in our workplaces. Like sometimes we have good leaders that are good personality skills, and good at supporting people, but don't have the management skills needed to follow through, to address things directly, to kind of manage things on a timely basis. And then it undercuts their credibility and weakens their, and weakens their, their authority in, within, within the context of their role, making it very hard for people to feel like they're supported and that their managers have a lot of, you know, are worthy of their authority and of their, and their respect. Sometimes it's that we don't have, we don't follow through on our policies or we don't have policies that make any real difference. Maybe they're written down and they live in a binder, but no one ever uses them or they're not consistently viewed as further importance, kind of up the chain of command. Which makes it really difficult to know about when stuff is going to make a difference and who actually cares about these kinds of things. Things sometimes it's about we normalize workplace incivility and things like, passive aggressive behavior. That's just something that we just accept as part of, as part of the work here. So we don't act on them and we don't deal with them. All these things make managers and supervisors and team leads and everyone and Executives, all of them feel like their authority, their ability to do their job is hampered because they don't have the respect of the people that they work with. And a lot of this lives in the realm of job dissatisfaction and is festering with inconsistency. So how do we fix these things? Well, we first should start off with policy creating policies that we look to consistently apply to address these issues head on. And again, that doesn't have to be big formal discussions. They can often be the small conversations that people know that this policy is here, it matters, and everyone agrees to it and all levels of management are following in suit. But we really need to be training our managers, supervisors to have those skills so they can fall through on things and address things directly and have hard conversations because, because that has to be happen if you want these policies to really be effectively utilized. So it is about investing in our people, but also investing in the structures around them. So where they do feel empowered and they do feel that they can their work, that they can have respect in their role and people can see a future career in their organization. All right, so that about does it for us. For a full archive of the podcast and access to video versions are hosted on our YouTube channel, visit Roman.3ca/podcast. Thanks for joining us.
[ANNOUNCER]:For more information on topics like these, don't forget to Visit us at Roman3.ca. Side effects of this podcast may include improved retention, high productivity, increased market share, employee noise breaking out in spontaneous dance, dry mouth, aversion to the sound of James voice, desire to find a better podcast…
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