Your Mindset is the biggest success or failure factor
The person opposite me had just finished a 5 minute rant about one of his team members. He was looking calmer, having got a lot of his anger and frustration off his chest.
I will call him James. James was a Divisional Finance Director of a large corporate. He had many years’ experience managing teams, so I was a little surprised he was so angry about his team member. James had just complained about the performance problems of his team member and complained that the team member wasn’t really saying much in answer to James’ questions and suggestions.
From James’ description of the behaviour from the team member, it was obvious to me that the team member was scared and very worried about his job security. James had made it clear to me that all he wanted was to remove this person as quickly as possible from his team. I could almost see the steam coming out of his ears.
An Observation
I pointed out to James how angry he was. I then asked how all his anger was affecting his team member?
James was silent for about 2-3 minutes. I could see him really thinking about the question.
I waited. Then I saw a lightbulb go off with him.
James realised he was part of the problem. The situation wasn’t all his team member’s fault.
I explained to James all about the Threat Response barrier and why he was reacting with anger and had the desire to remove his team member from the business.
James did some more thinking. Another lightbulb went off.
He said really calmly “I think I need to change how I am approaching the situation”.
James did exactly that. His anger was gone. James understood his team member’s behaviour and knew he was at least 50% to blame.
The Plan & Results
James took a specific set of actions we planned out together – exactly what I teach in our course How to Manage Difficult Employees.
The next time I saw James, he was smiling and laughing about the situation. He was also talking very positively about his team member. Their relationship was in a good place and improving. They were communicating openly and honestly. The performance issues had vanished. James was no longer planning to remove the individual and was delighted the situation had been resolved in weeks.
The point of sharing this situation with you is that even really experience people managers can get caught up in the emotions of feeling threatened. Their response causes even more problems, and the situation can easily spiral out of hand.
When you have the right mindset and use the right approach you can quickly and easily remove the Threat Response barrier, which in turn means your ability to resolve the people issues in your team goes up 10 fold. All the anger and frustration you might feel now, drops away. You put yourself back in control and have a series of very effective actions to take which drive great results. You can have same success James achieved in weeks.
Join Our Course
I invite you to join our How to Manage Difficult Employees course to learn exactly how to remove six barriers preventing improvement from your team members. Resolve any people problems in your team quickly, easily and fairly. You, your team, your business and your career will be a lot better off.
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