Rotten Apple
Dear entrepreneur, employer,
It is important to know your customers, but most importantly are your internal customers, in other words your staff. You often hear entrepreneurs talk about the customers they have. They read about a lot about them, deepen their knowledge about their customers. Because of course this brings in money and staff only costs money. How short-sighted. Did you know that your staff are the ones who can bring in money or even save you money? Don’t you want to have good customers, that goes the same way for good staff as well. All together you can create a win-win situation.
This blog becomes a bit vivacious, but that is not bad at all. I will also tell it with moving images and sound. I would like to take my time in this one to explain why this is so extremely important. If your company is “your baby” (which is often said), then it is crucial to know who is present in your company and in which way they are contributing to it, right? Take your time, let it sink in. And hopefully, when you return to your work place the next day, you will look at your staff with a different mindset: what do I want from them? What do they want from me? What do we all want together?
Have you ever heard the saying: “One rotten apple in the basket makes the gift of fruit to disgrace”? I can tell you that I have experienced quite a few rotten apples myself, had I not slowed myself down, I would have probably become one myself. People watched it happen and did nothing. I was unlucky to face an entrepreneur who preferred parrots and yes-men, while the employee it concerned kept lying, under performing and after making serious mistakes, blamed others, because “they had just started at the company” or “it must have been the intern that has done it wrong again”.
This guy tormented his colleagues up to the point that they left the company with his misguided arrogance. And still I felt pity for him. Because I saw that it was the insecure type, no matter how much he tried to come across as full of self-esteem. This hunger for appreciation was not felt by his employer. His frustration led him to behave respect-less against those colleagues who had been working there shorter than he had himself.
This all had its influence upon the group. After having given him several signals to my employer in his office, I was hoping he would intervene. The management saw what happened, but decided to turn a blind eye.
Thereafter I decided to confront him with his own behaviour. Some people act in a certain way unconsciously and don’t have a clue that they are ruining the atmosphere. I wanted to let him know what was going on. I went straight to the point and asked if he had any clue how anti-social his behaviour at the place of work was: “Why dont you indicate this is getting too much for you? You should alarm management, instead of naming and shaming others when something goes wrong and it is your responsibility.” I asked him. I saw a little boy in front of me who had turned hardened and embittered over the years at the workplace. Who knows, maybe he took this stuff home too, as far as I could tell he did not. He had never been regarded as a human being, he was turned into a robot instead. Hard as a rock and almost ready for demolition. It often is a burn-out or other physical discomforts waiting to happen. The others were treated the same way; you saw them enter alive and energetic and slowly bleed to death.
I have also experienced that I was doing both my work as well as the work of the colleague sitting right across from my desk. The job had to be done. But I did notice that my colleague seemed to enjoy it very much that she could spend her time pinging on her blackberry while I was working for her. Even though she was hiding behind her big screen, I could clearly tell her fingers were not touching her keypad. After keeping this up for months I started to drop some stitches, as I did not want to ruin the atmosphere. But it did not make sense to her yet. I decided to ask my manager what would be the best way to approach this situation (I knew my own way would hurt my colleague and did not want to do that. She was so good at looking sad and pitiable). My manager wanted to take care of this himself and I ended up being the one who got reprimanded, that I should leave the building because I was too enthusiastic and did my work so well it intimidated my colleague, who felt insecure because of me and dominated by my (literally what I was told!) Oh, yes, minor detail, I had been their temp for three years while she was a full-time employee. So, my enthusiasm and my high level of work did not fit the workplace, it came across intimidating. How about that for twisted logic?
How well do you know your people? Or how much would you like to get to know them? I am not just talking about what is mentioned on their resume, that does not tell the whole story at all. How much time are you spending on this? Or are you afraid to go deep? How many times do you have conversations with the ones working for you? Or do you consider this a waste of time? I often hear conversations concerning these issues.
Another example: Two men who are complaining about work. One says to the other: “Did you address this with Hans (the manager)?”, the other replied: “Yes, but he is not doing anything about it. So, he can go to hell, I will do as little as I can, it is not my company anyways. The other one reacts: “You are absolutely right, screw them for not listening, you will get your money anyway. Am sure you recognise this kind of dialogue. Considering how important the wellbeing of your company is to you, may I challenge you to get out of your leather management chair, to walk to the other side of your
company and analyse how good things are going from the inside out. Are the right people on the right jobs? What vibe is there among the people on a Monday morning?
Maybe you are reading this and thinking, this is all normal. Am sure it is, but I have done my research and if the doors of the unemployment agency could talk, we would all be shocked how many jobless people went down this way.