How do we burn thee? Let us count the ways…
- In the hospital, when you are at your wife’s side during a pregnancy crisis…
- When you go out to lunch, and your boss calls your cell to say it’s NOT necessary to come back…
- When you pick up your messages and it’s the phone company calling to disconnect your business line…
- When everyone on the team already knows what you will find out after the meeting…
These are just a few of the ways some organizations demonstrate to people (and their colleagues still standing) that our human resources are our most important resources. That we care. Really, we do.
Is it really that inconvenient for your manager to talk to you first, privately, in person?
What is it about organizational life that provides permission to re-write the basic rules of human decency? This is really not a “Miss Manners column,” but we are pretty shocked when being a leader means you can do anything from putting oranges in your pants (don’t let anyone ever tell you we don’t have balls here) to interrupting your child’s birth to announce that you have been terminated.
~Believe It Or Not~
One of the 3rd largest insurance companies in America,
an icon for “family values,” fired an employee via email at 11:50pm Sunday evening.
Indecent seems to be the right word to use when you are told to fire a 20+ year, valued employee because the $400 million dollar bonus the senior staff have divvied up leaves the company a bit too short to afford her $40,000 dollar salary. Just email her. She’ll find some other job; after all, she knows every one of your clients by voice, and remembers all their spouse and children names and hobbies. That kind of memory will certainly serve her well in the new job market.
We are not big believers in developing classes in ethics, or coursework of that ilk. After kindergarten, you know that hitting other people hurts them as much as when they hit you. And you also know that what belongs to other people belongs to other people, the fine print not-with-standing. Whether or not you choose to live your life by these values is another matter. A class will only annoy the ethical and give the others an excuse that there is something to discuss.
Doing what is right has never been easy. Ask a soldier or anyone over 60. Or ask your children about the choices they are making at school every day. It is not a generational thing. It’s a human thing. Encumbered with the burdens of our own lives we face a fork in the road and one of the paths appears to be downhill.
To that point, a leader we admire a great deal told us this story:
Just entering the shipping department late one afternoon, I interrupted a celebration, with high five hand slapping and people laughing. The team members were so enthused, it looked like the group was about to hoist “Joe” onto their shoulders.
This is exactly the kind of scene you want to run into all over your organization – and I was eager to get in the moment with them. I pressed them for the news: what had happened – what was this success?
With urging from the group, Joe told his story. It appeared that he had gone to Home Depot to pick up $1800 dollars worth of paint and the clerk forgot to charge him. That was the cause of the celebration.
“Joe, get your ass back in the truck and go pay for the paint!”
How naturally and spontaneously we communicate our own values! Without a moment’s hesitation, our leader sent an unequivocal message: the misfortune of others does not count as our success. In the chaos and confusion of mistakes and misinterpretations and an uncertain future, we find our way by always doing what is the right thing to do.
We know of an organization which employed a “travel expense review committee” to insure expenses were accurately reported. Sounds reasonable, doesn’t it? Occasionally, reimbursement was requested for something that was not allowable, and that resulted in “savings” for the organization.
Unfortunately, this group found most of its satisfaction when employees could have claimed an expense (like parking) and forgot to note it on their expense report, even though they had enclosed the receipt. This oversight was never brought to the employee’s attention and resulted in a win something akin to the paint celebration.
Doing what is right doesn’t imply doing what’s right for the organization over the individual, does it? The more you find yourself qualifying what is right, the less right it is.
Shouldn’t people appointed to the “travel review committee” actually have traveled extensively themselves? Those who are never asked to sacrifice for the organization by leaving their homes and families, and never miss a dinner meal or a child’s play at school should probably not be the ones in charge of evaluating the travel patterns of associates whose evenings are entirely dependent on the kindness of strangers.
Layoffs happen. Economies and fortunes decline over night, sometimes through no fault of our own. But the way in which we face these challenges speaks volumes about our character or lack thereof.
One organization called several hundred people into a meeting hall to discuss an impending layoff. Upon leaving, each person would receive an envelope, only some of which contained a pink slip.
When it happens to you, how far down the hall will you walk to open your envelope? What kind of regard will you have for those who engineered this low courage assault on your self-confidence and security?
When you get burned, the person who guided you, supported you and cared about you, should be there with you, helping you take the next steps just as he/she has been there coaching you for success. It isn’t necessary for that person to have all the answers, but being there – showing up – is the right thing to do.
Personally, we know some admirable people, great managers, who took the uphill path in the face of these situations and left with the staff who had been wronged or discarded for a cheaper model. Since their resignation never “saved” that person, we suspect that most took this route as much for themselves, as for their associates, to insure their own solid footing on the path…far away from the slippery slope of convenience.
-
Sara Coffman-Modrell
