How to make enemies

Every project manager has had situations where he was not feeling the love; for example team members that do not provide feedback on their tasks, people that “forget” to provide important information, or team members that are always late for meetings.  Derek Huether describes this last situation in this post.

I do agree with him until he states:

“So, how do you correct this negative behavior?  I like to zone in on something that makes the violator uncomfortable.  I’ve made them sing.  I’ve made them dance.  I’ve stopped the meeting when they’ve arrived late and then made them go from person to person on the team and say “I’m sorry for wasting your time”.  This may sound a little over-the-top but they slighted everyone on my team.  Everyone else was there on time; they should be as well.”

Taking this path is horrible.  Under no condition should a leader humiliate a team member; if you do this you are creating an enemy.  Projects have enough challenges without having to watch your back because a team member is now an enemy.

My suggestion is to take the person aside and discuss the matter.  If there is no legit reason for the person being late; for example they can’t make it at that time because of daycare hours which could be accommodated by changing meeting time, tell the person that the next time they are late they will hit a closed door.  Have this conversation only ONCE and then act as you said you would.  Never make a threat, make a promise.  Walking the walk creates trust.

What do you think?  As always questions and comments are welcome.

Connect with me on LinkedIn.  I am a LinkedIn Open Networker (LION); you can use “Friend” to add me to your network, please mention the blog in your request.

Comments

[Glen B. Alleman]

Thanks Pat,

The advice was clearly from a person who never attended OCS or NCO School, led people into the belly of the beast, or had to explain why someone died under your watch.

[Patrick Richard]

Glen,

Some people are plain lucky that their team members don't have easy access to weapons.

They'd risk a "friendy fire" incident or the discomfort of sleeping with a live grenade...

A guy I know woke up from a rifle butt induced nap. It changed his whole perspective on leadership; go figure.

[Fomu65]

i had a professor in college who would pick up the phone and call any student in the class who was absent and have them explain to the class, on speaker phone, why they were absent. this class only met 10 times (for a 1/4 of a credit hour total) but was required of all students to graduate, so we all suffered through it. where it got interesting was if the student did not answer their phone and voicemail picked up. it became a game with the student population to intentionally skip (you could miss once and not fail) and leave crazy messages. because it was a christian school, no one ever got really crazy (you could get kicked out for profanity, etc), i always wondered if one student would ever get up the guts to leave something very inappropriate on their vmail, just to find out the professor's reaction.

that said, were someone to try what Derek suggests, i'd probably give him a great 'message' in response. i'd not be rude, but i'm nearly a master at turning an insult back on someone who intended it to hit me. play with fire and you'll get burned. its not mean from me, just honest. if you'll pull a stunt like that, you deserve to have it blow up on you. the first thing that comes to mind would be to say "I may have wasted a short bit of time, but this joker is wasting more of it through intent where my delay was one that was unavoidable. I'd be happy to apologize right after him."

[Craig Brown]

Yeah

Respect. Two way thing.

[Patrick Richard]

Fomu65 and Craig,

Thanks for your comments. I would hope that people subjected to this kind of management approach would actually openly rebel. At least the manager would know that he is on the wrong track.

Sadly, in most cases team and individual morale will be destroyed and good people will leave.