The Real Reason Your Employees Are Being ‘Unreasonable’

When you are hiring new team members in your business. There are a number of factors you need to take into consideration from day one.

You need to make sure they are onboarded, and their performance is managed effectively, to ensure a healthy, ongoing win-win relationship with them.

If you don’t understand and apply the concepts in this video, which I illustrate with a real-life example, you could risk unnecessary tension and difficulty in your relationships with even your best employees.

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Prefer to read rather than watch and listen? Below is everything in the video in text form!

Avoidance is not an option for business owners, and this is even more true when you're hiring new team members in your business.

To make sure that this new person is inducted well and the performance is being managed effectively there are certain factors that you need to be mindful of from day one.

Today I actually want to talk about a real business situation which is quite a sensitive situation and how to deal with these situations to make sure that your people get the right start and that they perform at the best level possible.

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My Client’s Team Problem

So, a few days back I got an email from my business client and this is what he wrote.

So, I'll actually read out the exact email content and my response to that.

This is what he wrote:

"Shweta, it's about my new branch manager. Our opening hours are 7:30am to 6:30pm. We discussed his travel to and fro from the office and the expectation.

He's now saying he's happy to work 8:00am to 6:30pm but cannot easily get in for 7:30am.

We are worried, knowing the business requirement and the level of his role, and that he is already asking for adjustments and are unsure how to proceed.

Finding the decision quite difficult what do you suggest?"

Now you just need to imagine this situation. It's not an easy one, right? You want to fill this position, you have the right candidate in front of you but there is this little bit of mismatch, so how do you go about this?

The 3 Elements of Responding to A Request From Your Team

Obviously, I responded to the client and I will read out exactly what I wrote to him but when I'm reading out the response I want you to pay attention to different components of that email.

The first being that how important it is to explain the context of the approach that you're suggesting to your team member, so they get the perspective.

The second thing is to have humility to acknowledge that you might be having a blind spot, so actually trying to see the whole picture.

And finally giving the ownership to the team member to come up with the solution, which should be win-win and we can actually move forward with that.

What I Told My Client

This is what I wrote:

"With regards to the branch manager, I would suggest that you explain the requirement to him and the objective reasoning behind it.

Also, ask him if he sees any alternative solution to ensure you're not having a blind spot.

But assuming that this is what's required from the branch manager then he'll have to figure out a way to make it work for himself and his team.

In my experience, it's better to be honest in a respectful way from day one than to set unrealistic expectations or ways of working which put pressure on the business.

Finally, just in case he can't be flexible then please be prepared to rehire. People need to adapt around the business requirements and not the other way round.”

And this is the key learning I want you to have.

When you look at your business and if you feel that there is a strain in the relationship that you have with a particular team member or that they're not performing at the right level, most probably you are trying to adapt the business around their requirements. It's not a healthy win-win situation.

So, please, look at it carefully, identify those situations, those adaptations have a very honest and respectful discussion and set it right. Because that's really important for a fast-growing, a healthy growing business.