Last week I was a guest on Jim Blasingame’s Small Business Advocate show. The topic was a riff on my article of a couple of weeks ago about excising infectious employees. One of the issues that we discussed was identifying a toxic employee who is a model performer to your face.
Jim asked (not because he doesn’t know, but because it’s his job to ask) “How do you know if an employee is behaving badly behind your back?” The answer is to seek feedback from other employees whom you trust.
As a business owner, how often have you terminated an employee while wondering what kind of issues it would cause with the rest of the staff? Then you were surprised when the reaction from his or her coworkers was “What took you so long?”
Your reaction was probably some variation on “Why didn’t you tell me?” It’s a valid question. When employees see a coworker who behaves duplicitously, showing one face to the boss and another to the team, why don’t they come to you and discuss it? Don’t they trust you? Is your employer-employee relationship so shallow that they don’t think you are really concerned about performance? Do they think the core values or mission statement on the wall is just BS?
It’s probably some of each of those things, along with a bit of maneuvering by the problem individual. Those folks seem to have a knack for claiming your name as authority for their actions.
If you have a very trusted employee, one who serves the function of the grizzled sergeant in the platoon, you may have the problem licked. If not, you’ll need to find a way to get honest feedback from your employees about each other. In a small business, a full 360 review, one that asks questions about performance and behavior from superiors, co-workers and subordinates of each employee, is cumbersome and time consuming.
On Jim’s show, I brought up a “Stop Light 360” that I’ve used in the past. I didn’t invent it, but like any good consultant I saw it or read about it somewhere and incorporated it into my tool kit. It’s fast, simple, and can give you startling information about what is going on in your company.
Here’s how it works. List all the employees of your business (or of a department if you have a larger company) on a sheet of paper. Distribute one such list to each employee. This isn’t anonymous, although you will keep the results confidential. Ask only one question, which should be printed on the form to reduce misinterpretation.
The question can vary, depending on the results you seek. It might be “How do you rate your working relationship with each employee?” or “What do you think the chances are that this employee will be here a year from now?” They answer for each person with a “stop light” methodology. Red for bad, or no chance. Yellow for maybe or I don’t think so, and green for yes or no problem.
When collected, the answers can be transferred to a spreadsheet. It should look like a map book mileage chart, with employee names down the side and across the top. The results are often very surprising.
An employee you thought was popular draws red universally, or one you thought was a top performer is all yellow. Often employees whom the boss considered marginal performers get green lights from everyone else. Of course, this isn’t something you can share, but it can be vital information for you.
Managing people is the most important part of an owner’s job. A Stop Light 360 helps you understand what happens when you aren’t watching.
