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From IMC of St. Louis, http://www.imcstloius.org Team Building Three Reasons to Fix “Attila the Hun”
When one of your top performers is flawed, coaching is better than sacking.
Here’s the dilemma: A senior or other key person in the organization has great experience and industry knowledge, but unfortunately, also has the “people skills” of Attila the Hun. Employees as well as customers are complaining. They say that they don’t want to work with this individual. The hassle of dealing with it all is getting to be a drain on your organization.
The easy answer is to let the person go. After all, why deal with a problem when you can eliminate it?
A better alternative might be hiring a performance coach to help the talented, but flawed employee improve. Through performance coaching, the individual can be guided and encouraged in a process of learning, practicing and mastering new relationship skills in order to achieve agreed-upon performance objectives. With the right motivation and support, coaching can result in a dramatic turnaround. Here are three good reasons to make the investment:
Whether this person was an external hire or promoted from within, the selection was likely based on qualifications that you saw as a valuable asset to the company. Surely, if you knew in advance how well or not the person’s personality and work style fit the requirements of the role, it would have had a significant impact on your decision. Assuming that information either wasn’t known or was overlooked, it appears in hindsight that “Attila” may not have been the best choice.
Regardless of how long he or she has worked for you, an investment has been made in this individual. An additional investment to help him or her develop essential relationship skills carries with it all the other skills that this individual brings to the job. (Incidentally, gratitude for getting an opportunity to change is a terrific motivator. Once the coaching is completed, this individual will likely walk through fire to ensure you get a return on your investment.)
Making an investment in the future is always better than adding unnecessary costs – in this case the combined direct and indirect costs of turnover, which average as much as one-and-a-half times the annual salary of a high-level manager or highly skilled professional employee.
Industry knowledge and familiarity with the workings of your business (its history, strategy, processes, products, practices, customers, innovations, pricing, vulnerabilities, etc.,) represent everything the individual knows when he or she walks out the door. Fixing the problem through performance coaching can prevent the loss of intellectual capital – an intangible asset that organizations now recognize as invaluable and are trying desperately to protect.
Experts predict that in the near future, there will be a significant gap in the number of workers available versus available jobs. For some industries, locations or positions, this is already a reality and the gap is widening. Competition over limited talent is fierce and will only get worse. It’s also likely that a competitor is already busy trying to tempt your best people. Can you afford to hand over to them your competitive advantage on a silver platter?
Of course, there are circumstances when firing someone is really the only option (gross misconduct, ethical breach, illegal activity, etc.). However, in more typical scenarios, otherwise talented employees lose their jobs because (a) “they can’t handle it”; (b) “they don’t behave”; or (c) “they can’t get along.” These things are usually fixable. Talent is too scarce and valuable these days to discard it so easily.
Marilyn Lustgarten is president of The Star Makers Group, LLC, a management consulting firm based in the St. Louis, Missouri area. Reach her at www.starmakersgroup.com.
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