It could be the employee.

It could be the employer.

It could be both parties.

But it’s never easy to fire someone.

It doesn’t feel good for the person doing the firing.

It SURE doesn’t feel good for the person getting fired.

So what’s the secret to firing someone?

Two words: Be human

Treat the other person in a humane way.

Let the other person respond humanly.

There may be some yelling,

Some screaming

Some anger,

Some crying.

Don’t take it personally.

Be human

And let the rest take care of itself.

What’s YOUR secret to firing people?

Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/pinksherbet/3561662932/

P.S. Tomorrow is my last day writing Slacker Manager. I hope you’ll join me at my new home at The Management Expert starting November 2nd, 2009!

Post from: EveryJoe

The Secret to Firing Someone

What’s your one thing?

The one thing you need to do?

That if you do,

Will make a difference?

That if you don’t do,

Will make a difference?

What’s your one thing,

That only you can do?

You can’t delegate it,

You can’t avoid it,

You can’t ignore it.

You have to do it?

What is it?

Why are you still reading this article?

GO DO IT!

Image source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/walkn/2057381520/

Post from: EveryJoe

What’s Your One Thing?

One of my employees was out of dress code today. He had his shirt untucked, and our dress code clearly states shirts must be tucked in. When I asked him to tuck it in, instead of complying, he went to the associate handbook to find where it said (I had already shared with him the exact quote) and he took a screen snap of the handbook, and sent it to me with a note that said “Gotcha!” and then he tucked his shirt in.

How should I respond? Is this disrespectful or am I making a mountain out of a molehill?

Signed,

A manager who needs advice

Your turn:

Dear readers – what should be done? How would YOU respond to this?

Image credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/simondee/3172044306/

Post from: EveryJoe

Dear Slacker Manager Readers

The Manager’s Keeper Test

Question: Which one of your employees, if they left for a similar job in 2 months, would you want to keep on your team?

Wow! That’s a truly tough question.

Rather than provide an answer, I have some questions that may help you arrive at the right answer for you.

Ask yourself these tough questions:

• What do I value in employees?
• What do customers value in my team?
• What does my team need to do to get the day-to-day job done?
• What will my team need to do in the next 3 years to get the job done?
• What skills do the people on my team have that I have not seen in anyone else?
• Have I encountered others that do this job that are currently unemployed that fit the best answers to my previous questions?

Obviously, you can’t keep everyone. However, if if you ask yourself these other killer questions, and you answer them honestly, you should be able to boil your team down to a select few.

What other questions would you ask to find out your management keepers?

Charlie Keeper (Waterloo) photo credit to <<graham>>

Post from: EveryJoe

The Manager’s Keeper Test

Outcomes

Behaviors

Actions

Inactions

Intensity

Determination

The bottom line

The top line

Fun

Teamwork

Timeliness

Production

Customer service

Analysis

Statistics

So many things you could possibly focus on.

But choose just ONE.

What are YOU focusing on?

Leave a comment. Share the ONE WORD you’re focusing on.

Determination photo credit to Randy Son of Robert

Post from: EveryJoe

What’s Your Focus?

Trust matters.

As a manager, it means your team believes you have their best interests at heart.

That you’ll help them achieve their goals.

That you’ll point them in the right direction.

That you won’t ask them to do anything immoral, illegal, or that might hurt their career or more importantly, their family.

Trust matters.

You have to trust your team BEFORE they can trust you.

You have to believe they have the best interests of your team at heart and that all the things that you want them to trust about you, that you trust in them.

Trust is a two way street. It must be given, then you can get it back.

It doesn’t work any other way.

Trust matters.

There’s a new book out called Trust Agents. It’s by 2 guys I trust, Chris Brogan and Julien Smith.

They need us to buy a few more copies so they can sit at the top of the best seller list, and get this message about trust out to everyone who needs to hear it.

Trust matters.

While the book isn’t about management trust in the traditional sense, it is ALL ABOUT management trust, because soon, your team will be virtual, and you’ll need to build trust with your team online.

You’ll need to learn these lessons sooner than later.

Trust matters.

Learn the lesson now, and buy a copy of Trust Agents.

I’m going to get my copy now.

Join me in buying Trust Agents?

Post from: EveryJoe

Trust Matters

Any more information, and you’ve waited too long.

Any less information, and you haven’t taken enough time to do your homework to make a good decision.

My best advice for new managers: Just do something.

Don’t get analysis paralysis, just make a decision.

Then make another one.

And another one.

It doesn’t have to be a decision about the problem you’re working on.

It just needs to be a decision.

Get used to making decisions now, and the harder ones will be easier in the future.

Example: I have 10 people on my team. I occasionally buy them lunch for a job well done, because we’re short staffed, whatever. The question comes up: Should I buy the team Chinese or pizza for lunch? I send out an e-mail to the team, and 7 people respond: 5 with Chinese and 2 for pizza, and to get the food delivered by noon, I have to place my order in 5 minutes.

What do I do?

I order Chinese, and let everyone know we’ll get pizza next time (if that’s what they want). Nobody’s hurt, and it’s good practice in decision making. Is it the right decision?

Does it really matter?

Free food is free food, and getting food when folks are HUNGRY is more important than getting folks the right food. Sure, if I had any dietary restrictions on my team I might behave differently, but they don’t, so I just make a decision.

When I started managing, I worried a lot about making everyone happy, so I’d wait on a decision. I’d wait for everyone to weigh in before making a decision.

And it crippled my team and me. We’d wait until we had more information, and people would be upset because we didn’t share what we thought the problem was. My manager would be annoyed because I didn’t share what we found, and we couldn’t move into action to fix things sooner.

Making the little decisions about silly things like lunch have helped me gain the confidence to make the bigger decisions about hirings and firings, about what to do about emergencies, about a lot of things.

Now, I wait for 60% of the information and then I make a decision.

That’s my encouragement to you!

Just make a decision.

Head scratcher by maggiejumps

Post from: EveryJoe

Just Make a Decision

We block text messaging on your cell phone, and we don’t allow you to access your personal email on your corporate owned Blackberry.

My company also says I can’t share my company name with anyone unless I ask for permission first.

I’m OK with these rules because when I’m not at work, I can do whatever I want…as long as I don’t say anything stupid about the stock market or about the company I work for.

Simple rules to follow.

We’re not going to unblock new because one study shows folks are 9% more productive when they use new media at work.

We don’t block new media because of productivity or wasting time or anything like that.

We block these because we have no way of monitoring all the stuff people might say while they are using their work computer. I work for a financial services company, and we are required to keep a copy of EVERY piece of electronic communication our associates might send to their clients. And it’s not possible to do that right now, at least not easily, if we allow access to these sites.

I am all for blocking all new media at work for this reason.

But that’s the only reason I think you should block new media at work.

We log every website folks have ever visited, and while I look at total numbers my team is surfing a few times a month, I know if they are slacking or not LONG before I see the numbers. The numbers are a lag indicator, not a lead indicator.

If you don’t trust your people enough to let them use the cool tools that are out there, to take a mental break a little bit of the time, then you don’t deserve to be a manager.

You won’t be a better manager if you block all new media.

You also won’t be a better manager if you allow all new media.

It’s all about WHY you do what you do.

Please share: What do YOU do and why do YOU do it?

New media photo credit to jeremyvaught

Post from: EveryJoe

Block New Media At Work

It’s Monday morning, and you’re not feeling that great. You had a long weekend and you feel a little bit under the weather. You’re not contagious, and you have time off you could use. Your shift starts at 8 AM and it’s 7:13 AM.

Do you:

1. Call in sick and hope your boss can find coverage for you.
2. Go into work and whine about how you’re not feeling so great, in hopes your manager will send you home early, potentially not costing you any time off but showing you as the tough guy/gal in the office.
3. Go into work and don’t let anyone know how you’re feeling, then go home and go to bed early.

What frequently happens is either 1 or 2, or worse, folks come in to work and complain to everyone EXCEPT me, and then get bent out of shape when I send them home AND take time off their PTO.

Phil’s 4 Rules for Being Sick

If you’re really sick, stay home…but let me know as soon as you know you’re not feeling well. Don’t wait until 47 minutes before your shift is scheduled to start. Give me some time so I can find coverage for you, or so I can go in early.

Don’t whine about being sick – again if you were so sick, you should have stayed home. Once you get to work, you’re here for the duration, unless you are suddenly and unexpectedly vomiting (or unless you took one for me and came in for 2 hours while we got through a particularly hard patch of the day or had a very important can’t miss meeting)

Go to sleep – If I do send you home, please try to get some rest so you can come back to work tomorrow. Unless you are deathly ill, you should be able to get better by sleeping an extra 4 hours. Get some rest and try to come in tomorrow.

Call me as soon as you know you’re not getting better – If you couldn’t get the extra sleep, or you slept 4 hours and you feel even worse, or you could to the doctor and he diagnoses you with the ebola virus, please call me AT HOME so I can ask someone at 9 the night before to adjust their schedule, or so I can adjust mine. Don’t wait until 7:13 the next day and call in sick, or we’re back where we started.

What are YOUR rules for being sick?

Sick, courtesy of Leonid Mamchenkov

Post from: EveryJoe

Come to Work Sick

But today, I got a new comment, with a question that I felt was worth answering, and seeing what all the smart people who read this blog have to say.

Slim shared: “Our recently new (about 1 year) boss brought 2 people over from his old department with him. There were already 4 of us in the department when he got here and we all 4 have a strong work ethic. The 2 he brought over are, in a word, worthless. One surfs the net and plays with her iPhone all day. Everytime she is giving an assignment, she grabs one or two of us to help. She’s been doing admin setups on our package for over a year and was trained well, but she still does not understand the most basic concepts of it – she asks me the same questions over and over.

The four of us are here by 7:30 – she comes in around 8:10, takes 1:15 – 1:30 lunches (we’re only allowed 45 minutes). They both worked on an AS400 in their old job and still do some. But she refuses to learn VB or SQL and shows absolutely no motivation to improve her knowledge. The other person basically is never at his desk! He must walk for miles a day around the office building in order to not have to sit down and work. No one seems to know where he goes!

They were both brought over ostensibly with the idea of helping but that’s been far from the case. I personally think they would have been let go if he had not brought them over. I have talked to my boss about this, he knows about these issues, but it’s obvious he does not like confrontation – that seems to be his only weakness – he’s really a pretty good manager. These 2 extra employees are affecting our morale….they just show up and collect a pay check and that’s about it.

Plus, they never seem to be held accountable for what they do, while we are. They are probably two of the most anti-tech people I’ve ever seen in a tech job – no interest in technology whatsoever. I don’t even want to think how much these two are getting for doing nothing! I am not sure what to do at this point. Go to my manager’s boss?”

What do you do when you’re dealing with a REAL Slacker Manager? My thoughts:

Mentally prepare yourself to be fired or to quit your job over this. Some managers do not welcome this type of behavior, and if you’re not willing to deal with the worst, you may want to keep your head down and just do your job.

Make absolutely sure you’re doing what you’re getting paid to do. The old saw about people in glass houses not throwing stones is very true here. If you’re not exemplary, it’s time to focus on YOUR performance and YOUR behavior.

Document what you observe, and what the impact of this behavior is. Ultimately, if the works gets done and customers aren’t complaining, then there isn’t a big problem. If this is truly impacting you and your work, then most likely it is impacting your customers. Take some time to gather feedback from your customers and document what you say.

Schedule a one-on-meeting with your manager. Talk to your manager about the documentation you’ve gathered, and explain the impact to you and the feedback from your customers. Focus on the impact to you, and the information you’ve gathered that impacts your customers.

Present solutions on how to improve this situation, don’t just focus on the problems. Whiners present just problems without solutions, and nobody likes a whiner.

When you’re done with these 5 steps, be patient, and let your manager deal with the offensive co-workers. It’s your manager’s job to deal with this situation, not yours. Let the process work itself out, and keep working hard. This slacking didn’t happen overnight, and it won’t get fixed overnight.

What would YOU do with this challenging situation?

Image source: http://www.streetsigngenerator.com/

Post from: EveryJoe

5 Ways to Deal with a Slacker Manager