SMB Success Factor: Be The Boss

Its all your fault. When you started a business and started to hire employees, you accepted a degree of responsibility few others in the world have to shoulder.

Even parents don’t have as much ultimate responsibility as employers. Parents have to accept, to some degree, the role of their offsprings’ personalities when they misbehave. You can’t fire your kids.

As an employer your responsibility is pretty much absolute. When something goes badly south with an employee, its your fault. Either you hired the wrong person, or you didn’t train them right, or you didn’t fire them quickly enough. Harsh, but real.

This piece is inspired by two things.

• What I see every day: that far more employers are willingly held hostage by their employees than most people could imagine.
• A thought-provoking exchange with Patti Blackstaffe at Strategic Sense, about an employer’s responsibility in encouraging bullying behaviour by tacitly tolerating it.

There are 3 employee behaviours I would like to see employers end right now:

1. Bullying behaviour. This ranges from a pathological absence of gratitude (systematically taking others for granted) to out-and-out harassment and vicious gossip. The employers are aware it’s happening, but do little about it.
2. Refusal to buy into the culture. I see employers trying to set up cultures of mutual support and remarkable customer service. And then promptly undermine it by making exceptions for employees who refuse to buy in.
3. Failure to perform. I support employers in setting measurable growth targets, and then watch as they tolerate under-performers who sabotage those targets month after month.

Why do employers do it? Here are 3 excuses and 3 reasons why those excuses are destructively lame.

1. “I can’t afford to lose that employee. They bring in good money.” First of all, keeping a toxic employee because they bring in good money is just flat out immoral. Stop it now. Second, that employee will keep you stuck for ever. Do you think the rest of your team will perform to the best of their abilities when they see that you are constantly making exceptions for that under-performer? Do you think any new employees will perform well, or even stick around, in a culture that tolerates bullying?
2. “They just need a little bit more time. Its my responsibility for not training them enough.” Maybe. Then give it 90 more days, set clear objectives, evaluate constructively, and act, one way or another. You should have done this in the first 90 days they worked for you.
3. “They are going to make a scene.” Read: I’m afraid of them. Deal with it. Get your ducks in a row: contact your lawyer, accountant, and an HR specialist. Find out exactly what your exposure is, and what the best path forward is. You didn’t start a business to have someone else steal it from you, and that is exactly what they are doing. You are making every decision with this bully’s reaction in mind. Get support, put a plan in place, and act. It might not be pretty, but the alternative (tolerating what you know to be wrong in your own house, and functionally handing over your business to someone else) is far uglier.

I work with business owners to redesign a business and its future. Want more out of your business? Contact me. From my home base on Vancouver Island, I provide planning and coaching support to businesses across Canada.

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