07-05-2014, 02:20 PM
Employee Morale Business Success Articles - Improve Company Culture and Employee Morale
If I could change one thing about my leadership style early in my professional baseball management career it would have been the immediacy with which I addressed challenging personnel issues. Like many leaders, when it came time to address performance, behavior or attitude issues with employees I avoided them like the plague.
Mid-way through my leadership career I was given the opportunity to take over a growing operation, one that grew from a full-time staff of three to 15 within just three months. The situation caused tremendous growing pains and strained my limited leadership skills as I had to manage more varied personalities. My default approach would be to hope whatever the personality conflicts, behavior issues or employee performance matters, they would fix themselves. They didn’t. As you might imagine the issues got worse and employee morale plummeted, along with my respect as a leader.
I learned the hard way how not to manage workplace conflict and how not to improve employee morale.
The final five years of my leadership career I became much more proactive in addressing these type of issues, reducing my stress, reducing stress throughout our company culture and eventually improving employee morale. After leaving baseball and starting my business coaching and consulting firm I decided to make the issue of helping business leaders to promptly and effectively confront employee performance, behavior and attitude issues a primary focus.
Confronting issues quickly, directly, and respecfully is a leadership skill that separates champion leaders from mediocre ones. One of the primary organizational issues leaders must address in this manner center around employee performance, behavior and attitude. Many times this requires a what could be considered a confrontational conversation with the offending employee(s). Usually, because the issue has not been dealt with promptly, the situation has festered and gotten worse, making the discussion even more challenging with the potential to cause workplace conflict.
The good news is that there is a way to manage potential workplace conflict. Which is simply, the earlier a leader confronts an issue the more likely what could be viewed as a confrontational conversation that could lead to conflict, can be avoided. Leaders who master the fundamentals of communicating to influence are more able to address issues at the beginning stages of a situation. As such, they are more respected, enjoy more effective teamwork, create a high-trust company culture and attain greater bottom line results.