That's a piece of advice I try to keep in mind whenever I need to confront another person. If I want their cooperation, and good will, it's up to me to communicate what I need, and what I'd like changed, without leaving the other person feeling insulted, put upon, blamed, or otherwise unhappy about working with me. The more I have to delegate to another person, the more I want to feel I can trust them. The only way to generate trust is to extend it in good faith, and live up to it on my own side.
When an employee makes a mistake, it's important to make sure they have guidance. A good employee knows what they did and why it went wrong-- and you can help an average employee become a good one, if you are willing to listen, provide positive feedback, and problem solve together. Sometimes we need to teach the basic skills to coworkers and employees, but teamwork has an intuitive side. Letting your team mate know what you'd like to see from them going forward will win you far more cooperation and loyalty than detailing exactly what they did wrong and punishing them for it either by a verbal take down or other means.
H was a plant manager at a printing firm. He had problems with a proofreader whose foreign-language skills kept her in high demand even though her work attitude wasn't the best. She was always taking more than an hour for lunch, often came in late and left early. Her work was getting done on time. Although her personality was a bit prickly and she was known to be oversensitive and a bit overdramatic, she got along well enough with the typesetters and art directors, and no one complained about her skills. If anything she was a bit of a perfectionist, which management valued.
H called her into his office one day and told her that if she didn't punch in and out for a full 40 hour work week, he would take her off salary and put her on an hourly wage. One particularly slow week, her hours totaled under a full 40 hours, so H put through the paperwork without telling her. She found out by opening her next paycheck, that she was now an hourly employee.
She complained to everyone else in the plant about what H had done, and ultimately went over his head to the plant owner, who switched her back to a salary, with overtime. Eventually she quit the job, citing her difficult relationship with H. The company never could find another multilingual proofreader with her skills, and had to send the work out to a translation firm, on top of hiring and training a new proofreader to replace her. Needless to say this didn't sit well with management, or the rest of the employees who had grown to like the proofreader.
What could H have done differently? He could have completely overlooked her time problem, but that could have caused resentment among the rest of the staff. He could have just fired her on the spot, saving some of the printing floor drama, but bringing about the expense of replacing her even sooner, and alienating management even more.
Now imagine if H had called her in and said something positive about her skills and value to the company, before even addressing the time issue. Suppose he had explained to her his reasoning for her ontime attendance, sympathized with the differences between work rules in her country of birth and the USA, allowed her to explain what her reasoning was, and negotiated with her to find a better way to fulfill the company's needs. She might have been willing to cooperate once she realized H was on her side and valued her input. She might have understood the company's need for her to stand by for the full 8 hours, even if there was nothing for her to do. She may have been able to suggest additional responsibilities she was willing to take on to fill her waiting time.
H might have discovered she had a legitimate reason to be out, and gone to upper management, if needed, to work out a better schedule to accommodate her needs, something that in her case might have been more valuable than an annual raise, or a promotion. What if she had made a clear-cut case that as long as she was at her desk when work came in, it didn't matter whether she punched a time clock or not? Anything was possible until H. acted presumptively to punish her.
Think creatively about your employee problems, before you jump to conclusions, or drag them into your office to complain. Maybe there's a new way to look at the employee, and the situation, that will give you both what you want, and build your relationship as well as their value to your company.
