Lose Big! (Money, that is)

Recently, I was given an astounding demonstration of how the breakdown of communication and low morale in the workplace can lose companies money. Big money in this scenario. That is if you consider well in excess of a million dollars big money.

So, what happened? An employee didn’t do the checks and balances of protocol, and by missing a minor detail, the company had to eat a big loss. What I was told next is incredible to me: this isn’t the first time this employee, or others in this department, has made such a critical error.
I asked if staff had adequate training on protocol and was told, “Yes. It’s just that they don’t care.”

Upon further questioning I learned that the supervisor is a Task type. He typically gives directions and expects people to understand their duties. He has high expectations for himself and others and gets frustrated when directs don’t seem to understand him. I asked the supervisor if his directs tend to come to him with questions or clarifications, and he said that sometimes they do, but he again repeated, “They know what to do. They just don’t care.” When his staff makes mistakes, he typically grumbles and fixes it himself so that he knows its “done right.”

The staff in this department is primarily made up of People personalities whose primary focus is connection and friendliness in their relationships. After discussing the needs of each personality type using the Peoplemap™ System of change, the supervisor could easily see the dynamics going on between his primary type (Task) and that of his directs (People). He was eager to learn to “talk the language” of his team and started seeing himself as the instrument of change. It was amazing to see his perception of his directs change in the course of minutes.

Although a knee jerk reaction to a scenario like this may be to terminate employees who make such big mistakes, another take on it is that this supervisor could just keep hiring and playing out the same dynamic with new staff. His willingness to examine his part in this low morale, underperforming department may help him turn things around and hold onto…..big money.

*permission received from source to share this story in generic format it is presented in