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A Clash of Characters
At first glance, some problem employees seem beyond rehabilitation. That's what Transwestern's Saah thought when he watched his extremely logical, rule-bound employee alienate some of the real estate company's star brokers by shooting down their requests. (Transwestern of Houston has annual revenue of about $170 million.)
Saah fought his instinct to fire her; instead he decided to learn more about his entire staff by inviting his personal career coach to assess employees with the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. Many employers use this personality test to identify how employees analyze problems, make decisions and interact with other personality types.
After the staff took the test, the coach gave employees more information about their personality types. Saah was an extrovert and learned that his personality type is less suited to executing details and more to identifying solutions -- a common trait among CIOs and other senior managers. Not surprisingly, the staff member with whom he clashed was his polar opposite: While she often lacked the ability to see the big picture, she had a keen sense for the details and could execute in a careful, rule-bound way. And of course, she was not the only detail-oriented person on staff.
During a coaching session, as Saah's team discussed different approaches to problem solving, another seemingly inflexible staff member explained her preference for order. As she candidly told the group that day, she uses a grocery shopping system from which she does not deviate: She puts her grocery list in the same order in which store items are stocked. If she mistakenly passes an item on the list while shopping, she doesn't retrace her steps to get it from an aisle she's already passed; that's not part of her system. "People said, 'Are you serious?' She was very serious," Saah says.
Saah was already well aware of the drawbacks to such rigidity. For instance, the company's top real estate brokers complained that it was difficult to get the methodical grocery shopper to solve their technical problems. One vice president wanted his cell phone billed another way; his request didn't meet her parameters, so she turned him down. More recently, the marketing department requested a change in the content management software for the new corporate Web site. She agreed to research the solution but added that she had other priorities, which she proceeded to list.
The coach helped Saah see that this irksome rigidity often worked to his advantage when applied to the right situation. In fact, it's a good trait for software development, quality control and following corporate governance practices. After realizing this, Saah sat down individually with his more process-driven employees. "I love the way you impose order on this, this, this and this, and it serves us well," he recalls saying. But for meetings with customers, "it doesn't serve us well," he explained.
He explained the problem as a type of culture clash: "You've got the broker, who's very verbal, very conceptual and makes money by thinking out of the box. Then you have the people who succeed by maintaining the box. Put those two in a room without any instruction, and it can be a recipe for disaster."
Saah advised his more rigid staff members to keep an open mind when fielding customer requests and to suppress the urge to say no on the spot. That advice made a huge difference in the staff member he once thought he could not work with. Now, in customer meetings, she responds to requests by saying, "OK, we'll see what we can do," Saah says approvingly. "She has totally transformed her personality. It's been an incredible transformation over 18 months."
Of course, it's not realistic to think that every employee is capable of an incredible transformation. As Gartner's Walker notes, sometimes it makes more sense to cut losses and move on.
Wine Enthusiast's Juliano says in his experience, it is very difficult to rehabilitate employees who don't play well with others or who are insubordinate. He recalls the case of one star performer who doubled her personal productivity by demanding help and information from others while refusing to reciprocate. She was "killing the output" of other staffers, he says. When meetings, written warnings and coaching failed to help, he let her go. "It's amazing that you can have one person doing the work of two and taking down 20 other people," Juliano says.
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