Resolving the “You vs Me” Scenario | Episode 217

Scott McCarthy [00:00:00]:
So you have an employee and you’re just not getting the results that you expect from them. And, of course, there’s a conflict between you and them. You’re in the you versus me scenario. Are you ready for this? Alright. Let’s do it. Welcome podcast, a weekly podcast series dedicated to helping you hit peak performance across the 3 domains of leadership. Those being leading yourself, leading your team, and leading your organization. This podcast As couples, my 20 years of military experience as a senior Canadian army officer with world class guests bring you the most complete Podcast on leadership going.

Scott McCarthy [00:00:56]:
And for more, feel free to check out our website at moving forward leadership.com. And with That, let’s get to the show. Hey. Hey. Hey. Welcome, everyone, to the show. It’s great to have you here. It is your chief leadership officer, Scott McCarthy, talking.

Scott McCarthy [00:01:18]:
And Back home from Poland, if you’re listening to this in real time, last episode, I was in big gosh, Poland and now I’m back. Alright. So I got this inspiration for the show this week, and I had to dive into it because Someone in our free Facebook group, leadership skills for managers who want to be leaders, not bosses, post up a situation. And I looked it over, and I wanted to chew on the comments first before I dove in with my 2¢, of course. And here’s the situation, and it is a common situation. If you find yourself in this situation, don’t worry, you’re not alone. And that is This basically, the situation goes like this. 1 of the members has an employee who has bad attitude towards them, And the member stated that they probably have a bad attitude back towards the employee and she’s not getting the results she expects out of the employee.

Scott McCarthy [00:02:30]:
So she wondered how to handle this situation. And there were a number of interesting comments in there. And the one that really basically set me off per se. Really boiled my blood was 1 comment where a person said that you have a sit a Discussion with them, and you basically say to them, this isn’t about me. It’s about you and your performance. And if you got an issue with that, you can bring it up with my superiors or HR. And right away, that sends off red flags to me. Right? And why? Well, as a leader as a leader who is looking to achieve peak performance between you and your team members, does that instill a sense of trust? Does that instill a sense of psychological safety? I would argue, no.

Scott McCarthy [00:03:28]:
It definitely doesn’t instill those things. That is the essence of bossing and not leading. So that’s why my blood immediately got to boil. If you’re looking to achieve peak performance with you and your team, setting them up for a situation where You don’t like what I have to say, you can go ahead and bring it up with HR or my boss is going to do nothing good. Nothing good whatsoever. That is not opening dialogue. That is rather shutting dialogue down. That is creating a one way conversation.

Scott McCarthy [00:04:14]:
Now don’t get me wrong here. You’re talk you’re listening to someone who has over 20 years, soon to be 21 years worth of military experience under his belt. I’ve had plenty of one way conversations, and I’ve been on both sides of those conversations. And, yes, they I will state there are times and places for one way conversations. But in this situation where it’s a Reoccurring issue and disrespect is going both ways. This is not the time nor the place. So that being said, how do we go about reestablishing that communication and Breaking down those barriers of communication and rebuilding trust and psychological safety between our team member and us. So, basically, there’s a 5 step process that I want you to kinda map out here.

Scott McCarthy [00:05:31]:
And the first step of it is find a suitable location for discussion. So why is this so important? You actually don’t want to use your office if possible. Having a 3rd location that isn’t your office and by the way, I’m running off the assumption that your office has been where all the negative conversations has occurred. Right? You want to avoid that. You want to get away from where the negativity has been present most. So maybe you invite them out for a coffee Somewhere that’s, like, across the road to, hey. Let’s have a 1 on 1 discussion, and I don’t feel like doing it in my office. Let’s go grab a coffee at, You know? Jill’s coffee shop that’s across the road.

Scott McCarthy [00:06:27]:
Maybe that’s possible. Maybe not. Maybe it’s a quiet room that you have in your building, so on and so forth. It all depends on your situation. But the moral of the story is if possible, you want to change the location. Why? So that you remove all the negative connotation with the location. So if the person is if you email them and you say, hey. Wanna have a discussion with you.

Scott McCarthy [00:06:54]:
My office, 1:30 this afternoon. And they go, here we go again. The boss is just gonna have it at me. Right? So right away, the person is in a negative connotation, Negative framework of that conversation. But if you change it up, you’re going to pique their curiosity. You’re gonna open them up a bit more. Again, not always possible, but if possible, that’s what you wanna do. The second thing you want to do is when you open the conversation to the dialogue, you want to show humility and accept fault for your side of the problem.

Scott McCarthy [00:07:38]:
As I said, they’re showing disrespect to the to the leader, and the leader is showing it back. Right? So in this kind of situation, fault goes both ways per se. You can’t be disrespectful to your employees and expect them to be respectful to you in return. It just doesn’t work that way. I’m sorry, but you can’t have your cake and eat it too and rather that isn’t even a real cake per se. That’s a bold Crap. Right? Disrespect is absolutely unacceptable in in regards of leadership. So you accept humility for your part of the problem.

Scott McCarthy [00:08:27]:
Keep in mind that if you’re not getting results that you want, most likely your default anyway as I’ve said on the podcast, god knows how many times. So, Again, accept that humility. Accept owners take ownership of your part of the problem and tell them that you’re willing to work to basically reestablish the relationship on a strong footing. Does that mean you guys are gonna be besties and hanging out and doing all kinds of things together, going for wine drinks or maybe paint night Or go and check out the game. Heck. No. But you can still have a solid relationship with the person, right, based off of your work environment. The next thing that you want to do is focus on their side of the equation through appreciative inquiry.

Scott McCarthy [00:09:26]:
Now what’s appreciative inquiry you ask? Appreciative inquiries where you ask generative questions that you are actually not responding to, but you have the goal of understanding their side of the occasion. Things like, when in the past have you felt most disrespected for from me? When what is it that I do that makes you feel uncomfortable? What Blockers are out there that you feel are hindering your ability to get your work done. And you’re asking these questions from a stance of understanding vice responding. Okay? Your goal is to not respond to these questions. The more response you do, the less effective it’s going to be. You’re trying to get your employee to open up to express themselves again and feeling safe in a trustworthy environment. And the next step attached to appreciative inquiry is that you want to avoid the blame game. Most likely, there will be a few knives come out.

Scott McCarthy [00:10:42]:
There may be in a few tacks on your personal character, And it’s gonna be tough, a bitter pill to swallow, but you have opened the door to them to actually expressing themselves. Now once all that is done, you and if you avoid pointing fingers at them, which would in turn them pointing the finger back at you even more, you can actually move on. And that is the final step, and that is mapping out a plan, a plan of attack where both of you can, Maybe not necessarily always see eye to eye, which is totally fine, but at least operate at a level of mutual respect and understanding. Understanding where you agree to disagree, Understanding of everyone’s roles and responsibilities, understanding what is acceptable and unacceptable conduct. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how you get out of this you versus me conflict mentality. So again, those 5 steps, picking a new location if possible, showing humility, approaching with a appreciative inquiry, avoiding the blame game, and then finally, mapping out a plan. Alright. So that is it.

Scott McCarthy [00:12:10]:
That is it for this week’s episode. Short, sweet, to the point, but I’m sure it will be effective for you. If you like it, let me know. Let me know if you use this 5 step process and tell me if it worked for you, if it didn’t work for you, or if it’s somewhat worked for you, I’d be super interested in them. I know it’s worked for me in the past, so I have no doubt it’ll work for you. Get as always if you want to learn more about moving forward leadership, you can check us out at moving forward leadership.com. Or more importantly, if you’re a leader who’s frothing for more, you want a community that both helps you, supports you, but enables you to grow as a leader, then check out our mastermind, moving forward leadership.comforward/ mastermind. And check out the leader growth mastermind.

Scott McCarthy [00:13:04]:
I’m sure it’ll surprise you. Alright, ladies and gentlemen. That’s it for this week. As always, lead, don’t boss. Take care now. And that’s a wrap for this episode, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for listening. Thank you for supporting the peak performance leadership podcast.

Scott McCarthy [00:13:30]:
But you know what you could do to truly support the podcast? And know that’s not leaving a Rating and review, it’s simply helping a friend, and that is helping a friend by sharing this episode with them If you think this would resonate with them and help them elevate their performance level, whether that’s within themselves, their teams, or their organization. So do that. Help me. Help a friend. Win win all around. And, hey. You look like a great friend at the same time. So Just hit that little share button on your app, and then feel free to fire this episode to anyone that you feel would benefit from it.

Scott McCarthy [00:14:12]:
Finally, there’s always more. There’s always more lessons around being the highest performing leader that you can possibly be, whether that’s for yourself, your team, or your organization. So why don’t you subscribe? Subscribe to the show via moving forward leadership.comforward/subscribe. Until next time, weed. Don’t boss, and thanks for coming out. Take care now.