The GarbageFactor™

Because Employee Engagement is not about the money!

Posts Tagged workplace

Nothing Like Inspiring the Team

Nov 6

Posted by Marian Madonia in Communication, GarbageFactor, Managers, Toxic Environments | Comments off

I sat in on a business meeting yesterday where a department head was giving a report on what his team had been up to during the past year.  The meeting’s focus was team building and information.  His intention was to share changes and build confidence in his team so that other departments would have more confidence in the team. When he was done with his 20 minutes, the only thing I was confident of was that I’d never want anything to do with that team.

In 20 minutes, he managed to insult the team 8 times (and insult 2 other departments once each).  That’s one insult every 2.5 minutes.  The GarbageFactor™ in full force!

These were so bad, I had to write them down.  Ready for the groaners?

Regarding the mission statement “I’m not saying we’re actually doing these things.”

“We’ve had some challenges there, we’ve made some mistakes, but we’re improving.”

“We weren’t hired to be creative.” (The teams work involves about 70% creativity)

“We’re not smart enough to do this by ourselves.”

“We weren’t doing our job in the past.”

“We have to get better at it.”

“We’re struggling with quarterly updates.”

We’re going to continue to make mistakes.”

He then referred to one department as “obstacles to communicating with clients” and another department as “the big Gorilla.”

You can’t make this Garbage up!

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Meeting at 1 pm – Topic: Why we’re not Meeting Goals

Oct 28

Posted by Marian Madonia in Communication, Managers, Toxic Environments | Comments off

A Tweet I saw earlier today got me thinking.  Take a read and see what comes to your mind.

@The_Troy_Show “We will continue having meetings, everyday, until I find out why no work is getting done.”

This so clearly summed up what happens in many organizations.  Meetings are scheduled because it’s the way things have been done, but no one stops and thinks about whether the meeting will be effective and efficient or whether there may be another way to accomplish the task(s) at hand.  Organizations also don’t evaluate past meetings to see if they’ve met the same effectiveness & efficiency standards.

There are many books and experts on managing time and meetings (@chucbarnes is one of my favorites). So why aren’t people using this information?

I’ve always decided whether or not to attend a meeting by which of my body parts needs to be present in the meeting.  It’s simple, if my mouth & brain need to be at the meeting, I attend, if only my ears need to attend the meeting, I check notes from someone else who attended.

That’s easy enough for me, I manage my own schedule.  But why don’t managers show respect for their employees’ time by giving them the same rule?  If employees don’t want to attend a meeting, then they don’t see the value, or something else holds more value at the time. Managers need to make sure the meeting has value (and don’t use spin…employees can see right through it).  Many meetings do impart valuable information, but when there are too many meetings on the schedule, people have difficulty discerning which ones are important.

Meetings need to be assessed for effectiveness the same as any other activity within an organization.  Listen to employees.  They can probably tell you which meetings are the good ones.

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Kept in the Dark

Oct 26

Posted by Marian Madonia in Communication, GarbageFactor, Managers, Stress in the Workplace | Comments off

I stopped by a furniture store this week to pick up a new desk chair.  As I was checking out, there was a sign behind the cashier that announced that you could “win a $1000 shopping spree.”  I asked the cashier how I could win and he went from smiling and happy to down with a visible loss of energy.  He said to me “to be honest ma’am, that sign was here when I came in this morning, but no one told me what it’s about.  We are too busy to leave the cash registers to find out, so I’ve looked stupid all day because I can’t tell customers how to enter.”

Management often expects employee’s to be proactive, but if you don’t follow through and make sure they have the ability to be proactive, then it is the same as purposefully keeping people in the dark.  If management has implemented something new, then it is management’s responsibility to inform staff of what is new and how it will affect them.  Employee’s need time to learn and ask questions.  They deal with customers on a day to day basis and will likely know the types of questions that customers will ask.

Keeping employees informed is not limited to new things for customers.  Managers need to ask “What is new?” and “Who else needs to know about this?”  Then they need to get out there and inform staff.  Small efforts such as this add up to big results in motivation and performance.  Employees want to do the right thing and they want to be informed, but they also need management to clear the way so they can. If employees don’t get the communication they need, it just adds to the GarbageFactor™.

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You can not create a collaborative team if you do not have a team of equals.

Oct 5

Posted by Marian Madonia in Team Work, Toxic Environments | Comments off

You can not create a collaborative team if you do not have a team of equals.

If people are not intellectual equals, resentment will set in.

If people are not attitudinal equals, resentment will set in.

If people are not commitment equals, resentment will set in.

If people are not value equals, resentment will set in.

If people do not equally respect each other, resentment will set in.

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Don’t forget the “d”

Sep 30

Posted by Marian Madonia in Managers, Stress in the Workplace, Toxic Environments | Comments off

Just read a story about a woman who works with a manager that screams, storms around, disciplines & mocks people publicly, and frequently uses threats as part of her management technique arsenal.  Apparently upper management and human resources have been made aware of this garbage.  I don’t know their excuse, but it sounds like this manager doesn’t know the difference between “shrew” and “shrewd.”

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Must Be Nice

Sep 25

Posted by Marian Madonia in Attitude, Communication, Difficult People, GarbageFactor, Managers, Stress in the Workplace, Team Work | Comments off

Friday’s were usually Tom’s only day in the office, and typically, he’d work just a half day since he’d already put in so many hours earlier in the week.  Tom had one of those jobs that looked glamorous, but wasn’t.  He traveled every week, often to a different city every day.  His schedule was grueling.  Give presentations all day, drive to the next city, get some dinner, snag some sleep, and start over again the next day.

Though he worked in St. Louis, only one team mate, Mimi, worked with him there.  The rest of his team was in Chicago.  Another division was also located in St. Louis, so he and Mimi both had an office (cubicle) there to go on Friday’s.  Inevitably, the division manager would find a way to tease Tom when he was in the office “must be nice only having to come into the office only one day a week and then make that a half day.  We should all be so lucky.”

Mimi witnessed this for about a year.  She supported Tom and gave him ideas on how to deal with (or let go of) the situation, but Tom kept letting it get under his skin.  Tom was promoted and moved out of that office.  The search began, but the division manager wasn’t waiting.  The very next time that Mimi ran into him, he said to her “must be nice only having to come into the office only one day a week.  Wish I had that job.”

Mimi excitedly replied “You can! We have an opening right now that you can apply for!”  Everyone laughed and the division manager never picked on Mimi again.

Sometimes the best way to get rid of a little garbage is to use a little wit and humor.  Instead of battling people to prove your point, try going in the same direction.

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Bad Attitude in Three Short Stories

Sep 23

Posted by Marian Madonia in Attitude, Difficult People, GarbageFactor, Miscellaneous, Stress in the Workplace, Team Work, Toxic Environments | Comments off

I just found these stories.  I’d saved it under a title that I’m sure made sense at the time, but upon recall, it made me think it was a different document.

Background – all three of these encounters happen the same morning, in the same building, for the same organization.

Scene 1 – I arrive to teach a seminar about Flex Spending Accounts.  My mood is set, I feel great because I’m speaking and training today.  I’m especially pumped because I love the thrill of applying my inspirational approach to financial matters that people expect to be boring (I have a financial services background).  I enter the building and check in with security.  A guard takes me to my first encounter.

In introduce myself to the leader who looks put out.  She starts by treating me like I am a criminal or have done something wrong.  Angrily she says:  “I don’t know who you are!”  She didn’t hide that she was annoyed and put out.  She next challenged me as though I was lying “who sent you here?  Who are you supposed to see?  I thought this was Insurance, nobody told me you are here!”  What’s flex spending?!

Scene 2 – The insurance rep and I (we’d both been invited by the main office) were in a conference room to answer questions one-on-one.  The first employee that the Insurance rep (we were both scheduled for the day) had to deal with wanted the rep to make the changes for her.  The rep didn’t have a laptop with her and the employee got snippy “your website doesn’t work!”  The rep tried to verbally get the woman to come back to find out what the problem was.  The woman was determined to be a snot and turned her back on the rep and walked out ignoring the pleas of the insurance rep to try to identify the problem to fix it.

Scene 3 – It is lunch time and I am in the employee cafeteria.  Across the table from me is a woman who’s just sat down with her lunch.  “This is a hamburger without the bun!!!”  She was angry, you could tell she felt cheated.  “They call this a patty melt!  What the hell is that?!  It’s a hamburger without the bun.  By law this is a hamburger with no bun, everybody knows that!”  She slams her food around looking hateful and angry.

This is the GarbageFactor™ in toxic doses.  This whole building needs to be wrapped in a quarantine tent and a dose of attitude adjustment pumped in.  Seriously folks, I’m sure many of you have worked in an environment like this, but what makes me so passionate about this one is that it was an elementary school.  The “leader” was the school principal.  The other two scenes were with teachers.  This is crazy.  No one should have to work with people with attitudes this bad, never mind subject our kids to it.

I have an assignment today.  Look in the mirror and ask yourself if you are behaving like one of these people.  If you are, find out what the cause is.  This is beyond bad attitude, this is toxic behavior.  If you need to get out, find a new job as fast as you can.  If you need a break, take it.  If you need to learn how to deal with the problem, take a seminar.  If you need a shrink, find one.  Whatever you do, take some positive action because everyone around you is being infected and you won’t be able to break the cycle of negativity until you do something different.

If you’re working in this kind of environment, your solutions are the same.  If you need to get out, find a new job as fast as you can.  If you need a break, take it.  If you need to learn how to deal with the problem, take a seminar or read a book (mine is a great pick http://shop.marianmadonia.com).  If you need a shrink, find one.

Whatever you do, take some positive action because everyone around you is being infected and you won’t be able to break the cycle of negativity until you do something different.  If you are in a leadership position and this describes your environment, don’t go it alone if you’re not trained in turning this type of situation around.  Bring in a consultant who specializes in workplace relationships (I know a few, so let me know if you need a referral).  If you think a seminar or program would help, that’s my specialty (check out my video’s at http://youtube.com/marianmadonia).  And if you need it, contact an arbitrator to help resolve conflict in specific relationships.

We all want to work in a job that has as little garbage as possible.  What can you do today to reduce it?

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