“We love being mentally strong, but we hate situations that allow us to put our mental strength to good use.” ― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

It comes up more often then you’d imagine: “We can’t get our employees to show up on time!” (Or follow through on an assignment or complete a project, etc.)

I ask, “What happens if they are late?”

The answer, “Nothing. But we’d really like them to show up.”

I follow up, “Why does nothing happen when they are late?”

The answer, “Because they always have excuses or get upset when I bring it up.”

I push, “And why do their excuses or attitude create a problem for you?”

The answer, “I don’t want to be a jerk.”

It’s such a common issue. The employee who tries to push your boundaries. They try to be the exception to the rule. Or if they can’t get around the rule, bend it. Or break it.

It’s exhausting.

How do you stay firm on a decision or policy or rule – without being a jerk?

But First: How Being Nice Isn’t Everything It’s Cracked Up to Be

I started consulting 14 years ago. Back then, I really wanted to be liked by my clients. It was too important to me.

Anything they asked me to do, I did. Anyway they wanted me to design a project, I did. Any concern they had, I attempted to immediately mollify.

The result was: I didn’t confront them on poor behavior or decisions. I allowed clients to design projects that couldn’t succeed.

It turns out, I can’t always serve them well and worry about being “nice.”

I’m often the only voice a leader or group of leaders will hear that will challenge a decision or suggest that there may be more to the picture or that perhaps they are responsible for an issue they are trying to pass off on others.

It’s never fun to do that. But I have an ethical and professional responsibility to help them succeed. Even if that means I need to be firm.

I can’t serve well if I’m focused on being liked.

Neither can you.

Too many people in leadership or management positions are too concerned about being nice.

It isn’t being nice that they are concerned about. What they really want is everyone to be happy with them. To be liked by everyone. To never be rejected.

Too many leaders are too desperate for the affirmation of everyone else.

Any whimper or squeak of displeasure at a decision or at accountability and there is a reliable cave in.

The pushy person gets what they want. Everyone else must deal with it.

This is negligent leadership. What is happening is the pushy person is making other people pick up the slack or deal with the consequences of their own poor behavior.

People like to call this behavior, “bullying.” Too many nice leaders let bullies get away with it.

That’s not that nice.

Always being liked comes with consequences.

These consequences look like:

• Pushing off responsibilities onto other staff.
• Not growing your employees.
• Losing the respect of others.
• Degradation of standards and excellence.
• Increased stress for self and others.
• Hurting other through negligence.

You cannot be an effective leader, who cares about others and always be liked by them.

You just can’t. Not everyone likes doing the right thing. Not everyone likes doing hard things. Not everyone likes being confronted on poor attitude or performance.

Respect is important

It’s important to treat others with respect. To preserve their dignity.

Even when we need to be firm. When we need to confront. Hold to account. We can still treat them well.

People will often not like a decision we make but respect us enough to trust us.

Additionally, we should work to earn the respect of others.

We might offer respect to others, but we can’t demand that it be given to us.

Leaders need to earn it.

People can respect you as a leader even when they aren’t happy with you. In fact, many leaders whom I’ve coached have found that they earned the respect of others when they made the right but tough decisions.

People can increase in their respect for you – even if what you are doing makes them unhappy.

How to Be Firm Without Being a Jerk?

There are two parts to being firm and earning respect but not being a jerk.

The first has to do with how you lead before you need to be firm. The second has to do with how you communicate while you are being firm.

Two Leadership Practices That Make It Easier for You to Be Firm Without Being A Jerk

1. Clarify Expectations. Whether this is for behaviors, performance or attitudes – be clear on what is expected in advance of the issue. Also, be clear on consequences.

Do what you can to practice anticipatory leadership. To try to look down the road and be prepared for what’s coming.

However, even the leader with the clearest foresight can’t anticipate every possible clarification that may be needed. But if you run into a scenario where you are dealing with an issue more than once – it’s something that needs clarity.

2. Be Consistent. Relate to your expectations consistently. If you are consistent, people around you also learn to be consistent.

Most staff inconsistency reflects inconsistency on the part of leadership.

Tough truth. But you already know that I’m not trying to make you happy. I’m trying to help you lead more effectively.

When you do these two things: Clear expectations and consistency on your part, you’ll find that there will be fewer occasions where it seems like you need to be firm.

If there is ambiguity in your expectations or you are inconsistent in how you relate to them – you are creating work for yourself. You’ve only got yourself to blame for that.

Seven Steps for Having A Firm Conversation (That Works & Respects the Other Person)

1. Go Directly to The Person or Team in Question

This requires courage and willingness to act. Don’t gossip, be sarcastic, attempt to drop hints, post signs around the office, send memos or address the issue indirectly in a big group.

Just go and talk to the people who need to be talked to. Everything else is an exercise of avoidance. Avoidance is a consistently ineffective strategy. I know, we keep hoping that if we keep practicing at avoiding issues, we’ll get better at it and eventually they’ll go away.

But they don’t. Go and have the talk.

2. Affirm Relationship

When you talk to someone, it can feel tense or intimidating.

I recently received a call from my son’s principal and immediately I thought “What did I do!? The principle is calling me into her office!” (Tells you a little about my history with principles!)

When you are confronting someone or holding a standard – there is a possibility that their first reaction might be as irrational as my reaction when my son’s principle called. (She just had a message for me.) So, do what you can to put them at ease.

Affirm them. Let them know they are a valuable member of the team. Or that they have great potential. Or that their contribution is noticed and appreciated.

The purpose is to let them know that even though you might have something difficult to say – it truly isn’t personal. You aren’t rejecting them as a person. You are just addressing an issue.

3. Address Single Action

Too often we don’t have these conversations until the frustration has really built up. Then, while we are addressing the issue, we decide we might as well address every other issue that has bugged us for the last 8 years.

It’s too much. It feels like an ambush. It’s confusing. The person doesn’t know how to respond or how to begin to fix things.

Your desire for catharsis and to get it all out isn’t productive.

Focus on the one issue you want to deal with. It’s best if you focus on one specific behavior. Something that can be objectively described.

This may take some advance thought on your part. The purpose of this is to help them clearly know what they need to do to make things right.

Why make them guess? But too often we do. We aren’t quite sure what we want them to do. We just know what we don’t like. But not doing something is usually a poor target.

4. Non-Judgmental Cause & effect

This is a script, “When you do ­­­­­­­(specific action) it (describe the specific impact.)

When you showed up 20 minutes late yesterday, Shannon had to stay late to cover, which meant she had to leave her child waiting at school.

When you didn’t get the project done on time, it meant that we needed to hire additional support to meet the deadline and that cost us $X.

When you don’t follow the safety guidelines by filling in the forms, it means that we get fined for each violation.

These are A) Objective observations of what happened followed by B) Objective descriptions of the consequences felt by everyone else.

Being objective is different than saying things like:

• You are always late! (They’ll argue they weren’t late that one time, last month.)
• You never pay attention to details! (They’ll argue that you missed a detail once.)
• You are rude to customers! (They’ll ask you to prove it and then try to justify their behavior.)

The reason behind this format is to stay away from character attacks or accusations. Those aren’t fruitful. We don’t want to make them defensive or put their attention on minimizing what happened. By staying objective, we dramatically reduce the likelihood of an argument starting.

What we want to do is help the employee to understand what they did, the impact it had and to help them see why we want change.

5. Describe a clear way for restoration – next steps/accountability

This step is super important and often ignored. But be clear about what it is you want. What does “fixing it” look like?

If you don’t know how to describe it – can you really expect that they can figure it out?

6. Reaffirm relationship

This is important. The conversation may not have been that fun. It may have gone well – but there is some stress.

Depending on their emotional maturity, they might be wrestling with a sense of frustration, defensiveness or shame at being confronted.

Affirm them again:

We really appreciate your ability to relate to customers!

I’m glad that you are part of the team and look forward to a great year this year.

I really appreciate how you pitched in and helped last week when we were short staffed.

The purpose of this to let them know that you do notice the good things that they’ve done. You don’t see them as all good or all bad. You haven’t rejected them.

This is more important then what some people realize.

Just make your affirmation genuine. If, for some reason, you are struggling to think of something to affirm – affirm the future relationship or success that you anticipate with them.

7. Reflect and Adjust

Was there something you could have done that would have prevented this situation from happening? Is there something that you should do to prevent a similar situation from happening again?

If so, take action. Build the policy, clarify the expectations, begin the process. Use these incidents to help grow the organization over all.

Conclusion

If you follow these steps, you’ll practice being firm without being a jerk. It’s part of teaching others how to relate well. It’s part of modeling how to have difficult conversations without letting them get weird.

Are there any conversations that you need to have?

Take good care,

Christian

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