3.5.6 Applying the Guidelines: Side Business

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From the course by University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Leadership and Influence

18 ratings

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Leadership and Influence

18 ratings

Course 3 of 4 in the Specialization Professional IQ: Preventing and Solving Problems at Work

The only thing you get to change is yourself, and in the prerequisites to this course we’ve given you real tools to do that. Now, use those tools to influence the course of your future, your team's future, and your organization's future. Make a plan for yourself that will help you help others, and learn skills to make it happen. Listening and being sure of your values underpins everything that comes with professional influencer and leadership soft skills. We’ll go on to look at self-assessment and leadership planning, negotiation, addressing and resolving conflict, and successfully identifying and promoting circumstances you want. After this course, you will be able to: - state your own mission and plan with confidence - negotiate and persuade - deal with difficult people - contribute to crafting a working environment you want to work in The prerequisites for this course are Courses One and Two of the Specialization "Professional IQ: Preventing and Solving Problems at Work".

From the lesson

Week 3: Difﬁcult Conversations as a Leader

Develop skills for tackling difficult conversations, including giving and getting feedback and handling complaints.

3.5.1 Complaint-Handling Guidelines1:21

3.5.2 2MC: Side Business1:20

3.5.3 Preparation Is Key5:49

3.5.4 Complaint-Handling Guidelines, Part One6:26

3.5.5 Complaint-Handling Guidelines, Part Two5:32

3.5.6 Applying the Guidelines: Side Business6:00

Meet the Instructors

C. K. Gunsalus
Director of the National Center for Professional and Research Ethics (NCPRE), Professor Emerita of Business, and Research Professor at the Coordinated Science Laboratory

[MUSIC]

Let's see how these ten guidelines apply to the dilemma we started this

lesson with.

So you've had a complaint about an employee who's selling things out of her

desk and people are feeling pressured and

there's a lot of traffic through the office.

How do the 10 guidelines apply?

Well first, don't take it personally.

There may be even direct or

implicit criticism of the way you're running the office in this.

It's not about you.

It's about the office, and

it's about establishing and maintaining an appropriate professional environment.

So don't take it personally and

don't treat it as personal criticism of you, even if it feels that way.

Don't let it show you take it personally.

You're responsible for the good of the whole here, and so

you'll take this information in and act upon it.

Never act on only one side of the story, and

remember that nobody knows what everybody knows.

So once you've heard this complaint, it's time for you to collect other information.

You need to talk to the employee herself, and it would be worthwhile thinking about

some of the other factual records that might have information.

How's her productivity and performance?

Do you have logs that show who comes and goes from this floor or this building?

Is there extra traffic, are extra people coming through perhaps related to her

side business and not related to your company's business?

Is there evidence that it's affecting the productivity of other people?

You may want to find out if other people are feeling pressured to purchase.

And you want to be a little careful about how you go about that because you could

start the gossip line pretty quickly by going around and saying so,

are you having a problem with this too?

Because again, as the authority figure,

things that you say will carry a much greater weight than you expect.

Which feeds into guideline four, when in doubt, leave it out.

Do not provide commentary.

Do not say things like, yeah, it's always made me uncomfortable too.

Authority amplifies everything you say and anything you say in this circumstance

could be carried back and retailed and it may grow in the process.

So pretty soon, you were saying, I'm going to fire her or something.

It may get out of control, so watch what you say.

When in doubt, leave it out.

Remember, never attribute to malice that which incompetence may explain.

Your employee may not have been aware or

have affected people in ways she didn't intend.

If she's otherwise a good employee, you may not have a big problem on your hand,

it may be something one simple conversation will take care of.

Don't assume going in that there is a problem or isn't a problem,

collect some facts, and assume that maybe there were miscommunications involved or

information misinterpreted and set out to sort it out and straighten it

out because your responsibility is the work place environment, creating and

maintaining a professional environment.

If there is something interfering with that you may need to act upon it.

If it's not the problem may actually be the person who came to you.

So keep an open mind,

collect facts, don't attribute motives, say what you'll do and do what you say.

In this circumstance,

it's pretty important to be careful about what you promise.

Because you might not promise to get back with what you decided to do.

You may want to say quite carefully, thank you for bringing this to my attention.

I will look into it and do whatever is appropriate.

And consider the matter closed then because it's not necessarily the other

person's business how you resolve it, so long as the workplace environment is

a proper and appropriate for that person's productivity.

Remember that in the absence of facts, people make things up, and

ignorance breeds pessimism, so be careful about what you promise and don't promise.

And also remind people of their roles in the situation.

It's not up to other people to decide or to make things up here.

Bear that human impulse in mind.

Take good notes so that you know exactly what's being complained of, so

that you don't have a tendency to overlook them or flinch or look away.

Or remember it as a bigger problem than was actually reported.

So keep good notes.

This is not a situation where there's likely much fear involved unless you just

have a fear of confrontation and saying hard things to people.

So that probably isn't an issue.

And this is also probably not a problem that requires much formal process.

In the worst case,

the kind of formal process this might involve is a letter of expectation.

If you've had problems with this employee before you might be

going to the next level of progressive discipline.

The guidelines though, it's worth stepping through each one each time,

because sometimes the biggest problems come imbedded in little tiny things.

So if you do, pay attention as you go through and check the guidelines.

It will help you come to an appropriate professional principled even handed

outcome.

And if in the course of the process, you discover something more serious,

you were checking something and you reveal some other inconsistency or

anomaly, then you go back to the guidelines all over again, and

double check that you're following them.

If you follow the guidelines when you're dealing with complaints and

problems, it'll keep you out a lot of trouble.

[MUSIC]

[SOUND]

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