Avoid tongue-lashing in dealing with errant workers

I was holding one of my weekly team leadership meeting on a major project that we are doing. I am one of those people who believe in the adage “Praise in public and criticise in private.”  But one of my managers has been missing most of the deadlines and is dragging the project down.

I have decided not to say anything in public and handle him privately. But this might be seen as a weakness. I feel that time has come for me to give him a tongue-lashing next week if he is still behind. Is that a better option?

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If by “tongue lashing” you mean embarrass him in public so that all his colleagues know how you feel about him, then that might not be a good idea and you might not achieve what both you and the manager might desire, which is improved productivity at the work place.

That said, you as the boss might seek to establish first of all, why the manager has become a lazy boy, as you would have us believe.

Is it perhaps that for him it is all work and no play? Is it possible that you have set such difficult goals for the poor chap that in his view they are not achievable?

To what extent was he party to the setting up of the goals? What tools have you given the manager to enable him achieve his goals?

Have you examined and are you satisfied that the working conditions are good and that he has, for example, the hard and software required? What are the noise levels at his work place and how about lighting and other distractions like traffic!

Have you ever wondered why “the boss” sits at the proverbial “corner office”? Is it possible that you sit in a well lit quiet office far from distractions and are not aware of what staff at the front office have to go through on a daily basis?

There are many other questions you must answer before lashing out with your tongue in public.

For example, how well do you know your manager as a human being? Is he married, does he have children, and where does he live? What does he feel about the salary package you give him? Is he perhaps looking for a job right now? Is it possible that he spends working time looking out for other jobs, since he feels poorly paid and appreciated?

How much do you know about his health? Has he been in an accident recently, has he perhaps recently come from hospital, undergoing treatment for depression or some other medical condition? Is he on medication that makes him feel tired all the time?

Talking about health, is any of his family member unwell, wife, child, parent or some other close relative?

Is the poor manager going through some other crisis in his life? Perhaps a wife cheating on him or a son or daughter not doing well in life or perhaps a crisis of simply not knowing what life holds for him.

In Wole Soyinka’s Trial of Brother Jero, the character Chume is very clear in his mind that all he wants is to become “The chief messenger with a desk telephone and a bicycle”.

Is the manager perhaps not as clear in his mind as to what success would look like?

We are increasingly talking about the principle of the “hedonic treadmill” which might be where he has found himself. This is a situation in which he seeks ever elusive pleasure and happiness. On this life treadmill, happiness is like a mirage, clear at a distance but vanishes when you get near it, only for another target to emerge.

We recently came across a man in his late 40s who was sent to us by his employer because, like your manager he seemed to have “run out of steam”.

He had started off at a bank 10 years earlier as a trainee. In rapid succession, he had gone through a series of training programmes and had by 33 finished all the exams required in his field.

To kill time, he had done a degree in Computer Science and was a part time student of Psychology and Theology. None of the things he did seemed to give him any further challenge.

Money and promotions used to give him a great deal of satisfaction, and each time either came (earlier in his life), he would be very happy, exited and would celebrate with friends and family.

In time, he had stepped into the hedonic treadmill, where greater and greater achievement brought increasingly less excitement and happiness to him.

This principle is very similar to what we see in addiction, where increasing doses of a drug or alcohol give less and less of a high. In other words, more gives less and hence the need for even more! Like the treadmill, the journey simply stays on one spot, never ending, and the faster one moves the greater the effort to stay on the same spot.

As you can see, the poor manager has many reasons that could lead him to fail to meet deadlines.

It is for this reason that many serious employers have in place employee assistance programmes where some of the questions we have raised might find answers in the right environment.

Tongue lashing is your prerogative but my advice is please find a modern method of dealing the manager.