Friday, June 29, 2012

BUT I TOLD HIM TO DO IT

If you have been in the Building Service Contracting industry for any length of time you no doubt have had that customer complaint where you assured a problem would be taken care of only to have them call the next day and tell you it still had not been corrected. You also have probably had the supervisor who told you when you asked what happened tell you, "But I told him to do it", or am I the only one that ever had that problem?

I remember telling a supervisor who gave me that response a few years ago that if all he was going to do was tell the cleaning tech to correct the problem, I didn't need him because I could have told the cleaner myself and saved a supervisors salary. What I needed from a quality supervisor was to go to the job, examine the issue, and make sure the employee knew how to correct the problem and then if they need training the supervisor provides it. That is supervision, the other method is being a messenger. That particular supervisor never did get the idea and eventually I had to take him to lunch and buy his to go.

This brings rise to another issue that is paramount in the workforce today. Do we all understand each other and the different meanings words can have in the normal course of a training conversation?

In the workshops I do on communications for companies, one of the exercises we have the group do is to provide their definition of the following words,

FIRE---

TRAIN---

DIAMOND---

HIKE---

BAD---

I invite you to take a minute and write down your definition of each of these words. Write down the first thing that comes to your mind. Ready, set, go.

Let me provide some of the answers I get,

FIRE---destroy, terminate, hot, warm, explosion,

TRAIN---choo choo, tracks, locomotive, collision, provide learning for employees,

DIAMOND---expensive, engaged, married, baseball,

HIKE---up the mountain, long walk, take a hike, pay raise,

BAD---good, terrible, poor job, spanking

Take a close look at the definitions provided in the exercise and compare them with your answers. No wonder we sometimes don't get the job done right. When diamond means engaged or baseball and bad means good, we should take a clue that we need to be very explicit in our instructions to our supervisors and they in turn need to be trained on how to be very clear in their teaching and training procedures to the people in the field. Believe me, when my wife asks me for a new diamond, she is not asking me to buy her a baseball. Let me ask you, do you have a training program in your company or a locomotive program in your company?

I am reminded of a story a friend of mine told me about his first job as a grocery sacker at a supermarket when he was 14 years old. He had taken groceries out to the car for a lady and as he placed them in the car trunk (boot in England) the sack split and he had groceries going everywhere. Well, the lady complained to the store manager and my friend was called to the office where he was told his services were going to be terminated. He said, "what's that?". The manager said, "you're fired". My friend said, "now I understand". By the way, I used to have a partner from England in a business venture and his definition of termination was "sack him". Now that complicates matters even more. Do we fire, terminate, or put the employee in a bag (sack)? See what I mean?

You see, every generation and every nation has certain meanings for different words. In the world in which we live we are becoming more and more diverse and employing more and more people from more and more countries with many different cultures and customs. Add to that the different generations and their different ideas about the importance of work and where it fits into their meaning of life, we can become confused rather rapidly.

As managers and supervisors of a very diverse work force here in the 21st century, it is critical that we make sure that our employees understand EXACTLY what we mean when we are communicating and it is also critically important that we have supervisors and team leaders that are true supervisors and not just messengers. They need to make sure that their workforce understands CLEARLY what is expected of them and how they are to correctly perform the duties assigned to them. What about you? Is your organization one of supervisors or one of messengers and do they know how to communicate so they are truly understood?

Till next time.

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