Kit, the pitcher in A League of Their Own, is negative
throughout most of the movie.
Manufacturing sympathy for her is tough.
She is a whiner. She brings down
those around her. She is frustrated with
the sister who has been kind to her and given her support in her life. She is obnoxious to her teammates. She is negative about her life and wants to
bring others down around her.
How many of these people work with or for us? And while you might want to fight this
person, just as happens in one scene of the movie, work policy is likely to
prohibit you from doing so.
Confrontation is appropriate.
You do not need to allow this person to monopolize your time or to
jeopardize the flow of the rest of the team due to such negativity. It is not okay.
Make the business case first.
Log the hours given in support of this negative person, to try to move
him/her beyond the perceived issues. Log
the hours given in support of correction in team communication often displayed
in frustration. Log the hours given in conversation
with other team members who struggle to work with that negative person. Those hours have a cost, with very little
ROI.
In restaurant
jobs nyc, the typical pattern for a manager is to have all of these
conversations, but the functional team dynamic remains the same. The cycle of engagement is not impacted and
the status quo returns a day after addressing the issue. Management does little usually to
course-correct the department. The
symptom gets address – frustration, lack of communication, hurt feelings – but
the cause – the negativity of a person – is left because we don’t know what to
do.
In all of the hours spent by the manager in dealing with the
situations caused by the negativity, rest assured it’s about the same for the
team members involved. They are not on
task because of having to address the related issues of the negativity. It should be very easy to show the negative
employee that the team is not here to deal with these issues; it’s not part of
their job description. The cost of lost
productivity is real and can be shared as an amount based upon time, hourly
rate, cost of goods, and other operational & production costs.
It, also, distracts the staff from
representing the brand, the cuisine, the service imperative and other details
of the organization to the customer.
That’s money for today and future monies in jeopardy.
Treating the negative person with the respect of truth and fact
is the most respectful way to engage. It
will allow the conversation to move away from feeling, which is the default
position, and rest purely on fact.
Management must engage on a level that moves the negative person out of
his/her own perspective and into one that includes the company’s purpose. Often, the negative individual sees his/her
role as unappreciated at the company, especially for hospitality jobs nyc. By sharing factual information, the negative
person is offered a different (and more correct) view of how the company sees
him/her. When confronted with such
information, management can be deliberate about the path of engagement moving
forward.
Management will need to follow through on this. If we’re serious that the waste of time is
enough, then we must act upon that. No
more resources of time, team members and operational productivity will be
wasted on such negativity. Everything
isn’t terrible, everything isn’t against you and everything isn’t about
you.
Clearly act on this.
And while management may feel that the negative person is too
tough to handle, a better view is to think about the team members that aren’t
receiving such attention despite the great work being done. The squeaky wheel getting the grease isn’t a
long-term strategy for success. Affirm
the right behaviors more than the wrong; look at the time you’re spending on
the wrong and make corrections.
Keep in mind, too, that this negative person can follow the
path that Kit did. She got traded. Don’t wait too long to trade your Kit.
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