Managing: The importance of addressing it now, not later.

Ever snapped at your kids?   Sure you have, don’t feel bad, it happens.  Did they looked shocked and surprised?  Yes.  Because this is the situation:  You’ve been quietly tolerating their behaviour until your patience runs out, then you snap.  But they didn’t know this was happening,because it was all quietly in your head.

The human fuse of patience

Humans will do this.  I’m not here to make you feel bad for being a homosapien.  To keep things simple, we have default settings as humans, and this is one of them:

-       We put up with behaviour and actions we don’t agree with,

-       We ‘bite our tongue’ i.e. withhold our negative comments,

-       We do this because we value social harmony and don’t want conflict,

In short, we carry little fuses of tolerance, some of which burn faster than they replenish, and when they burn up, we speak out.  This is overall a good thing- imagine a world where everyone criticised each other without a filter.

Examples of what I’m talking about

-       No cleaning up after yourself in the kitchen,

-       Turning up late,

-       Calling in sick over every little thing,

-       Last-minute advising of appointments booked well in advance,

-       Negative behaviour,

-       Sloppy work,

-       Forgetting to do something.

The dangers of quietly burning patience.

But fuses are internal and invisible.  You don’t know when someone is quietly getting sick of your behaviour, because so far as you can see, you’re fine.  If we couldn’t go about the world assuming we aren’t annoying someone, we’d be stuck in analysis paralysis. 

So this leaves us with a perennially occurring conflict.  We put up with things, but sometimes they get on top of us, and we snap.  The problem with the snap is:

-       Legally we need to start at square one

-       The staff member didn’t know what they were doing was such a big deal.

What to do? Say it now (ideally today, at the least within the week)

Don’t give soft signals that it’s fine.  Humans look for reactions all the time.  If someone is unsure whether what they are doing if fine or not, they will keep an eye-out for how people react.  So don’t say, or imply, that it’s fine when it’s not.  Even failing saying it’s okay can be a soft signal that it’s not okay.

Get all the info.  You may have missed something, so ask.  Why they did what they did.  This is both being open-minded, and giving a soft signal that it’s not okay.

Tell them and listen to their response.  They will have a reason, so listen to it.  You don’t need to accept it, you don’t even need to get into a debate over it.  But end by putting your position to them- that what has happened isn’t within the grounds of acceptable, and next time you need to see different is what you need to achieve.

Don’t email.  Email is evidence of communication, and is the worst form of communication.  It’s one-way, you can’t control the tone, you can’t see their response, and they can’t respond.  So don’t email, unless it’s essentially just documenting what you’ve verbally said.

Can you call on the way home?  This could be what you need to do.  Is it good practice?  It’s not ideal, but you just might not be able to sit down with someone in work time.    Really you should find time within the workday, but better to call them when you have some spare time, than to send an email late at night.