What To Do When a Team Member Boils Over

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Owners and leaders of finishing operations wear plenty of hats. On any given day they can be found engaging with customers and prospects, devising marketing plans, managing cash, meeting with bankers, scheduling production, solving quality problems, engineering new finishing processes, recruiting new team members, planning transportation routes or providing counseling services.

Providing counseling services? Yes. Examples:

I could almost manage my calendar to the six-month intervals on which Julie (not her real name), our shipping and receiving team leader, would ask for an hour of my time. I knew enough from experience to carve out the afternoon. In our meeting, Julie would verbally wander across the litany of issues that were weighing on her. Inaccurate paperwork caused by the carelessness of others, a shortage of qualified staff, impatient drivers, her compensation package, a lack of appreciation from her co-workers, me absent-mindedly forgetting to congratulate her work anniversary. Not everything on her list was directly related to her job. Her marriage, conflicts in her extended family and health concerns often found their way into the discussion as well.

Steve (not his real name either) was responsible for business development, what some might call sales. From time to time his commitments to customers — requested quotes, personal visits, process design, sales consulting services — became overwhelming to him. Unlike Julie, Steve rarely asked for a meeting. Instead, he would storm into my office, ask if I had a moment, and then pour out what came across as a spontaneous, unorganized list of worries and grievances that could go on for as long as 20 minutes. Oftentimes, he would wind down his monologue by calling out his co-workers who he claimed didn’t care about his customers the way that he did.

I’m no psychologist, but over decades and through trial, error and failure, I have become better at working my way through discussions such as these. Some effective ideas...

Listen. Sometimes our team members just need to be heard out, and the art of listening and asking brief questions for the sake of clarification in place of arguing or immediate problem-solving oftentimes goes a long way in settling a team member’s anxiety.

Repeat. Give team members plenty of time to articulate their concerns and keep a list of what they share. When they finally pause, ask if there’s anything else weighing on them. Keep asking until they’re done. Then repeat the list back to them. Now they know they have been heard.

Ignore the temptation to solve every issue. Early in my sessions with Julie, I made the mistake of offering my own solutions to her list of concerns. This only led to her arguing with my suggestions and citing other items on her list as the reasons why my solutions wouldn’t work. Rather, I learned to…

Ask them if they have made a prioritized list of all of their concerns. The answer is almost always no. Tell them you’re eager to work with them to address their concerns after they write out their list. The process of making their own list almost always helps them put their concerns into perspective and suddenly, the items weighing on them seem much less daunting. As an example, Steve would invariably come back a day or two after making his list and tell me all was well, he just needed to prioritize his time and the items on his to-do list.

Offer resources. Anecdotally, many times those coming to a leader with concerns such as these put the weight of the world on their shoulders. Julie and Steve were both committed team members. They were conscientious about their work and took pride in doing things right and contributing to the success of our companies. In short, they were both incredibly valuable to me and to the performance of our businesses. Once their lists were completed and prioritized, I always made a genuine offer to add resources or move a few items off of their list and onto the lists of others. If a team member really has too much on their plate to perform their job well, we do them and our companies a disservice by not balancing their workload. Interesting, though, that while my offer was earnest, neither of them ever took me up on it. However, just knowing that I was willing to provide the help they needed often helped ease their worries.

In the wake of a two-year pandemic in which our team members’ worlds have been turned upside down, both at and away from work, anxiety levels for many appear to be at an all-time high. The next time one of your valued employees boils over a bit, listen and then listen some more. List their concerns, repeat them, ask them to make their own prioritized list and make a genuine offer to help where you can.