There are so many people that are afraid, or I'll just say not confident in just speaking up. And I think social media, because of the anonymity aspect has empowered people to an extent, to speak up and speak out. But put two people in a conference room alone to have these discussions. And all of a sudden, they're not so assertive anymore, because now we're actually talking to each other across the table.
The workplace is where we spend a large amount of our time. Like your family, you don't always get to pick who your fellow employees might be. And like your family, sooner or later, someone will get on your nerves. So how to co workers and managers navigate difficult situations at work. This is random acts of knowledge presented by Heartland Community College. I'm your host, Steve fast. Today we're talking about navigating difficult conversations in the workplace. Some of these conversations might deal with a large issue, and some a simple workplace harming situation. Today's expert says no matter what the difficult conversation, it's better to have it than to let the negative consequences make things worse.
I'm Terry Lowe, and I teach at Heartland as an adjunct, and I also teach at ISU full time in the College of Business. And I do some consulting work.
One of the things that you do in your classes, especially with consulting is try to help managers and employees communicate a little bit better and overcome some of the pitfalls that happen working with other people. Sooner or later, someone in any group is going to have some sort of annoying habit or behavior, or even a bigger concern. And the real question for many people is how do you approach that? And when is it something where you take an action to speak to a co worker or a manager should speak to an employee.
So it's interesting, Steve, that if we were having this conversation, 10 years ago, it would be very easy to talk about how we can approach someone and be fairly honest about an issue or a problem like you just described. But in today's society, and in today's workplace, we talk a lot about hypersensitivity, hypersense, hypersensitivity of the workforce hypersensitivity of just people in general. So we're putting a lot more thought into those kinds of situations, and almost to the point where it's kind of even a good idea to have a rehearsal before you go into one of these meetings, because there is this fear on the part of a lot of managers or even subordinates, that they're going to offend someone, certainly inadvertently, not on purpose. But when the issue becomes one that is disruptive to the workplace, disruptive to the worker, and they find their productivity or they're comfortable in us in the workplace is affected. That's the time the new question is, what's the best way?
Well, let's talk about it from the standpoint of an employee. First, let's say that you are feeling you're affected by somebody's behavior. How do you determine whether or not you should say anything? And who you should say it to? What is a reasonable situation where you would raise this up? Because as you say, there's more sensitivity, it could be more sensitivity towards the person that you're asking to change their behavior or more sensitivity, the person that's affected? So as an employee, what do you need to assess before you take an action?
I think a good place to start is to determine if you the employee are going to suffer any consequences or in any way, have your work be assessed, whatever this issue is, would come into play. And you're going to be thinking, You know what, this was not my fault that something didn't get done, it was because somebody else is doing something to impact me. And I'm going to give you an example of let's say that you're on a team, a group of employees who have a project to do and there's someone on the team who is not pulling their weight in one way or another. Rather than let that go. It's best that the other teammates or maybe just you, in this case, approach that one teammate and at least try to determine why something isn't happening. But I have to tell you, there are people who these days are very, very reluctant to do that. And they may go to the supervisor, but wouldn't it be nice if we could just go to our coworker and say, something isn't getting done? Can we talk about why but there's a lot of hesitancy, a lot of hesitancy again, I'm gonna say 10 years ago, or more, it would have probably been a lot easier.
What is the best way to approach a coworker that you feel is not pulling their weight. Say there's somebody that's always late. Sometimes people have pretty tight schedules. And sometimes you have a busy life. And sometimes, you know, people are going to be late. But if it's an affecting a group project, work the day to day operations and affecting somebody else's job, something you'll be evaluated by, how do you try to approach that person in the best possible way, because you certainly don't want to get it to the point where you're so irritated all the time, where you strike out and maybe get angry at somebody. So what should one do to try to address these problems?
I'm going to be a little risky here and give you an example rather of what probably not to do, but you referenced it, it would not be good to let this build up and eventually say to the person, you're always late. I'm so annoyed with you. Now, anybody would get defensive about that kind of thing. The better approach would be to go to the person and say, I'm concerned about your tardiness to our meetings. Is everything okay with you? Is there anything I can do to help you? Or is there anything you want to discuss? Because it is impacting the whole team and and it's impacting me too. So can we talk about this more of a neutral tone, but more importantly, reaching out to the employee in a supportive, positive way, maybe opening a door, and you never know what you may hear. I've been in situations where that kind of conversation where I open a door has led to someone venting to me or telling me some very serious problems that I could then help them help direct them to get the appropriate help. So supportive, some kind of a supportive use of words to let the employee know that it's a problem, but you're willing to work with them.
I guess it's important for us to reassert that sometimes people do have problems with coworkers that do cross into the boundaries of what is acceptable behavior in the workplace. And if there is a behavior that infringes upon somebody's that could be harassing behavior, sexist, racist, offensive behavior, sometimes those are things where you might want to refer those issues to your boss instead of trying to handle them yourself.
That's correct. And something that I think we don't say often enough, is that in every workplace, these days, any sort of harassment is not acceptable. And let's go back to the 90s, most companies put in place a policy that says sexual harassment would not be tolerated these days, when you read those policies, they just say harassment, just the one word. So any form in the workplace, we all have opened doors, we should be able to go to anyone and say, I feel I'm being harassed, I feel something has happened. But ultimately, the EEOC has said management is held to a higher standard, and they should do something about these behaviors. What often concerns me is that part of the sexual harassment law, particularly if you're going to claim hostile environment, says that it would be better if you have some sort of a record where you went to the offending party and said, stop it. It bothers me, I don't appreciate it, make a note of the date that you did that if you have any witnesses, keep kind of a little diary, that kind of thing. That helps everybody that would help them manage her than to say, You know what the employer is already has come to me, but I know they've already been to you. So we need to talk about this. Don't have to do that. But it would certainly be better. And maybe the employee who is doing the harassing is not aware. Maybe they'll say you know what, I did not mean anything by it. I'm very sorry, it won't happen again at that might take care of it.
Let's talk a little bit about the role of management in these sorts of situations. As we mentioned, it does become the role of management to deal with some of these problems and to make sure that there aren't tensions between employees, but sometimes they might not know about these things. What are some techniques that managers should engage in to make sure that they are keeping that communication open and that they might be hearing about any potential problems before they could boil over
to words come to mind right away? That is culture is the culture in the organization such that most employees feel comfortable going to management, going to anybody really and having an open discussion. Some businesses, some organizations do that better than others, but somehow the culture needs to be worked on so that employees feel they have this opportunity. At any point to bring these matters to the attention of whoever, without retribution, without any sort of punishment, if you will. The other word that comes to mind, which is a derivative of a good culture is trust. Is there trust in the workplace? Can employees feel that they can be honest and open? And do they trust management, to keep those things confidential, but to also deal with them professionally, quickly, do the appropriate follow up, whatever is needed. So those two aspects, I think have to be there.
It's not just conversations about people's performance that can be difficult in the workplace. Sometimes there might be other issues where you notice an employee might be struggling, and it could be affecting their performance, or it could just be affecting them overall. And many workplaces have good resources for support for employees, you know, employee assistance programs, things that people might not necessarily seek out how, as a manager, do you decide to approach an employee to remind them of certain services and benefits that are there for them, and encourage them to use them. Because as you say, people can be sensitive people can maybe take offense when you bring up certain topics,
there is a concept in the study of human resource management called constructive confrontation. And what that means is that everything in the workplace needs to be based on revolving around an employee's performance. So if a manager has any reason at all, to talk to an employee about their performance, is it erratic? Is it going down anything where it's not meeting expectations, the manager has a duty to say we're here to talk about your performance. How can we work together to help remedy whatever it is, but a manager should not in any case, assume that there's any diagnoses or anything else going on, that they don't have a right to know about, or that the employee doesn't want to share. So it starts out that your performance has some issues that we need to resolve, let's work on that. But then maybe there's a reminder to the employee, that the company, the organization does have resources that they could consult, if they felt they needed it, in order to help them at any point, not just about this performance. But at any point, remind them of those resources and make it clear that there's no mandate, but if they felt that would help, they could pursue those options. And then again, bring it back to where to talk about your performance. Now, it is possible in those discussions that an employee will say, I do need help, and they will self disclose that they have issues. And at that point, the door has been open. So now the manager can always say, let me give you more specifics about where you can go. But still, it has to be about the performance and improving the performance, but move them to the resources that they can optionally seek or go for. If it comes out that way.
Is it appropriate for a manager to follow up the if that door gets opened? And the manager offers up those services? But things don't seem to change? Is it appropriate then for the manager to say, Hey, I noticed you're still having some problems? Did you go to the assistance program? Did you seek a counselor, that's where I think things might get more sticky. And that's a another difficult conversation to have.
So we've kind of crept a little bit into HIPAA here, the HIPAA law, we have to be careful. Everybody has to be careful not to get too detailed, or into too much private information. But again, if this is all based on performance, the discussion should be your performance is either improving, or we're not seeing any differences, but to say, so what are you doing outside of work to get this taken care of I in my opinion, that would be a violation of privacy and you would not want to go there, you would still want to be talking about the performance. Has it changed? Is it getting better? Is it worse? Is it the same? And again, just reminding the employee there are resources, but the employee has to fix this? If you the manager keeps saying and what can I do to help what can we do to work together? That's very good, but that might be as far as you want to go if an employee seeks outside assistance Particularly with an employee assistance program or a professional, generally speaking, the manager is not going to be able to access those records. And he or she may know about it, but to find out the results, and that kind of thing generally is outside of the limits for anyone due to HIPAA.
So we talked a little bit about some of the performance related issues that can affect fellow employees. We talked a little bit about the type of issues that manager might want to approach with an employee, what are some of the other examples of difficult conversations that we might encounter at work that we need to broach and start?
So I'm so glad you asked. And I chuckle a bit, because I'm gonna go back 1015 years ago. Now, when we said difficult conversation back then, it was the fire in discussions, the performance discussions, the flagrant violation of company rules, discussions, but it has absolutely mushroomed into all kinds of things. Now, I'm gonna give you some examples that I have come across in my consulting work in the past couple of years, believe it or not, there have been a fair share of dress code conversations I've been made aware of where somebody comes to work. And the company or business has a kind of a, an informal dress code, but maybe it's business casual, but people have come to work in pajama bottoms, tank tops, way too much cleavage showing ripped jeans, and the company's management have had to have this conversation and say, you may not have realized it. But this is not acceptable. I have had conversations about people being chronically late, maybe there is no timecard to punch, but the expectation is work starts at 830. And they come in at nine or 915, or whatever. Those conversations can be a little bit difficult if you're not on the time clock. But again, it's just be respectful, you're being paid to come to work each day for a certain amount of time and get the work done. body odor. Believe it or not, I have coached some managers on how difficult that's going to be. But it has to be done because multiple employees have complained and said, Please, somebody do something. And I guess I could keep going. But there are just a lot of things these days, where behaviors are just what we used to kind of note, we just knew how to behave and act in the workplace. People don't seem to know as much anymore.
That's something that employers don't necessarily know, on the intake, how to handle. That's why you see the development of these essential workplace skills workshops that one can send their employers to, so they can learn things like what's the proper way to present yourself at work? What's the proper way to dress at work? What are some of the things that you want to prepare to be successful in the workplace? But I have to ask you, since you brought up the issue, how does a manager tactfully bring up a body odor conversation?
I don't have a textbook answer. And I don't think there is a good answer to it's going to be very uncomfortable. The point is, it has to be discussed. But the cause does not have to be the symptoms can be described, and how the odor has been detected or where, where it is most noticed in the workplace, those kinds of things, just factual kinds of things. But again, the employee should be challenged to correct it, how they do that is not something that managers need to direct or even follow up on necessarily. It's just get it get taken care of. And in many cases, it's just something that once an employee knows, in many cases, they'll say, I had no idea I will be more careful. Most of the instances I have been involved with have been easily corrected. The employees just didn't didn't realize they didn't know and took care of it. But there is no, there is no answer other than then just do it.
Sometimes I think the policy can be a little vague for some people as well. There could be generational or cultural differences. And I've worked at places where they've had a dress code, and it was just stated, its business casual. But there's nowhere that you can go and see an example of business casual at that workplace to what it is. And I've worked in other places where they say this is business casual, and they have a little paper doll to show you what you can and can't wear. And sometimes as silly as those things might seem, that can be very helpful to have something to refer to that managers can say, This is what our dress code So here's an example.
I agree and I have even seen printed employee handbooks, which will have a section in them that have pictures, not so many words, but pictures, examples, photographs that someone has taken, and it will say acceptable, not acceptable. And that can help in many situations, particularly, because we, we are such a melting pot society now, we have so many different cultures in the workplace, our expectations may not be easily explainable to someone from another country who's come here to live and or work. So, I think we're going to see more of this, I think we're going to see more videos, we're going to see more pictures, we're going to see more maybe even audio tapes to help employees understand the workplace expectations, professionalism, in particular, and one of the things that's contributing to all of this is social media. And study after study after study is showing that social media is contributing to the lack of, let's just call it everyday knowledge of how to behave and look and act in the workplace. So I think this is going to continue. But maybe down the road, we're going to see more emphasis placed on this kind of thing in orientation programs. So the first day, the first week of work, I think a lot of companies are putting in a lot more effort to try to get all these things covered in that first, first few days.
You mentioned social media, and it's not quite large leap to get into the subject of politics. Now, maybe a few years ago, having a risk of problems from people having political discussions at work, wasn't much of an issue. Is that something that you need to be concerned about in the workplace? Can you approach an employee and say, Listen, your discussion of this particular political ideology or speaker, whatever is making your coworkers uncomfortable is not the place for that is that something that rises to the degree of a difficult conversation people need to have?
I think we have to be careful. Free speech, of course, is something that anybody can push back with. If it was so intense, and so frequent, that other employees were complaining that they couldn't get their work done, or their work was suffering because of it, then I think you can take the subject the political subject out of it, and just say, there's too much discussion. There's just too much discussion. It's, it's impacted your fellow workers. And we would appreciate that you tone it down, maybe save the discussion for the work area. But I don't think you could very comfortably say don't talk about politics in the workplace anymore, that would probably cause a negative reaction.
So let's go back a little bit to what we were talking about at the beginning, about people being feeling empowered to speak up in a way to address issues that they have to have with these difficult conversations. Are there any gender dynamics in play with that? Do we see people in different positions may or may not feel empowered to be assertive, but yet professional in the way that they could address issues?
There is this old old, I'm going to call it a theory, lots of times we run into it in leadership, where you can be aggressive, passive, aggressive, assertive, or passive. Now, we want leaders not to be aggressive, we don't want them to be passive, we don't want them to be passive aggressive, we want them to be assertive, I find that an assertive person that fits in a nice little box of the definition, is very hard to find these days. Because there are so many people that are afraid, or I'll just say not confident in just speaking up and saying, Look, I understand you have an opinion. I respect it. I don't agree with you. But then let's just move on. We don't have to have a debate. We don't have to try to you're right, I'm wrong. None of that kind of thing. It used to be that someone would say that's interesting. I have trouble being where you're at. I'm not there. And then let's just move on. But it seems today as though someone has to win and someone has to lose. So we're getting into more and more of these, almost like a debate society, if you will. And I think social media, because of the anonymity aspect has empowered people to an extent in the workplace to speak up and speak out, but put two people in a conference room alone to have these discussions and all of a sudden And they're not so assertive anymore. Because now we're actually talking to each other across the table, we're face to face. And the social media aspect has created such a safety net, where you can just type out whatever you think and figure on their behalf to talk to this person and in person. So I'm okay with that. I've seen a huge dip in the past 10 years of people saying, I'm going to be okay in a one on one in a private conference room. And the other thing that are another thing that has come up that I find fascinating is, let's say your performance is suffering. And you kind of know when I call you to a meeting, that that's what we're going to talk about. You bring a witness, people bring witnesses to meetings now, and I could bring a witness, if I was getting pretty nervous, I could bring a witness. So I've read stories about conversations that managers have had with subordinates where there may have been some tension going into it. But it's not just the subordinate of the manager in the room, there's witnesses to this conversation, because somebody is afraid there's going to be legal action. We used to just be able to have these conversations and say, here's the issue, let's work to solve it and move on. But, boy, we are just as I mentioned earlier, hypersensitive, hypersensitive.
You know, related to that is that open dialogue that you have at work every day, I think that managers could probably do a little bit to foster that to make sure that there is a constructive dialogue, even if there aren't any difficult conversations to have, even if there aren't any immediate problems that need to be addressed. What what does a manager do? What kind of environment can be fostered by helping create an open dialogue amongst employees?
That's a great question, because it goes towards the root cause of a lot of this, at least in my opinion. Because of social media, we don't talk to each other nearly as much as we used to. So that bleeds over into the workplace. And what a lot of companies have done, just probably more in the past five years, I would say is required managers, to once a month sit with each employee for maybe 30 minutes. And they call them different things, touch ins, just monthly conversations, that kind of thing. So it forces just even if it's casual conversation, let's talk because we haven't for a while, and the employee can bring things up, the manager can bring things up. And interestingly, this is the new performance appraisal preferred method. So once a month, the manager and the employee talk, they make an electronic record of their discussion. And at the end of the year, when it comes time to issue ratings, there's 12 Little discussions that become the performance review for the year. And now you add some additional comments, and you're done. You don't just meet once a year in that very uncomfortable meeting, and talk about all the things that were good and all the things that were not so good. But it was a structured kind of thing where we at least have to sit down once a month, or the more the better. Maybe it's once a week. I haven't heard about that too much. But at least once a month, at least we're talking and again, I'm gonna go back to trust and culture. If we're having these touch points, and we are staying in touch, I think the chance chances of the culture being more positive the chances of more trust being there are greatly enhanced.
Well, Terry, thanks so much for talking to us about these issues and having these conversations we had a pretty easy conversation about how people can have difficult conversations. It's great to have you discuss this with us today.
My pleasure. Thank you.
Terry Lowe teaches business related classes at Heartland Community College and at Illinois State University. He specializes in human resources. If you are interested in other topics about business, communications, diversity, and more, check out our other random acts of knowledge podcasts, subscribe on Apple podcasts, Spotify, audio boom, or wherever you found this one. Thanks for listening
