Eliminate Your Problem Child.

If you manage a team, you probably have a problem child (or two).

​They forget to do things, miss deadlines, push back frequently, and overall do not fit in with the other high-performing members of your team.

Many of my clients have had problem children - here are the warning signs: 

• You spend a lot of time talking/worrying/frustrated about their actions.

• Your team complains about their behavior and are angry they ‘get away with things’. 

• You spend more time directing/assisting/reprimanding them than other members of your team.

If this continues, is this a good thing for the health and productivity of you and your team? NO.

You have three choices:

1. Do nothing. Keep the same dynamic in place. 

2. Change the dynamic, address the dysfunction, and hope for the best.

3. Fire them. Lay them off. Transfer them to another group.

Do nothing. ​
Many managers take this route. They act as if nothing is going on and pray that it will change. In over 15 years coaching clients and 20 years managing teams, it’s never happened. It gets worse until it begins to infect your staff — they observe that bad behavior will get your attention and lazy shortcuts are allowed.

Change the dynamic. ​
I coach most of my clients to go this route first. Sit down and explicitly illustrate how their bad behaviors are not only hurting them but also the team. Provide alternative actions and show them the way to work effectively on your team. If they’re new (less than 6 months), it usually works – if they’re 6-12 months in, they are set in their ways, and it usually doesn’t. Coaching/360° assessments are great next steps.

Eliminate them. ​
This is where we usually end up — the employee will not change and most of the time, they will increase their misconduct where it evolves into insubordination. “We’ve been talking too much about Steve” is my usual coaching response when it’s time to eliminate an employee. The manager realizes that they have been spending TOO much time, effort, and energy trying to corral Steve.

​I know it will be hard. But in the end, this will not only impact you and your leadership, but it will also re-direct your team towards positive actions and behaviors. Many members of your team might even say to you, “It’s about time you did something about Steve.”

​Looking for leadership development for your team? Let's chat.​

It's Friday The 13th - The Most Popular Posts.

Today I just hit 400 posts on my site. It's especially momentous when it happens on Friday the 13th. (Oh my!) Here are some of my most popular posts over the past three years:

3 Powerful Tips To Energize Your Team

It’s Friday. It’s been a hard week and you’re looking forward to the weekend. Doesn’t your team feel the same way? Here are some quick leadership tips to energize your troops and make them feel like a million bucks.

3 Critical Skills of Effective Leaders

Great leaders translate vision into decisive action — a skill that’s especially vital in tough times. But what are those skills? Do you have a blind spot? Should you be doing more?

Micromanagement Is Bad For You

If you’re a micromanager and want to change, you need to understand why you’re micromanaging and develop skills to allow your team to produce while you focus on leading.

Leadership Blind Spot: Recognizing Your Team

We all forget to do it. You focus on work, meetings, reports, etc. and ignore the most powerful leadership tool you have in our arsenal – recognition and acknowledgment.

10 Simple Tips To Attract The Best Clients

Getting clients is easy, hard, fun, frustrating, energizing and enervating. Most of all, you never know what to expect — one day no one is saying yes and the next, you close five clients. Here are my ten top strategies I use every day to make clients knock on my door.

2009 - The Best of Rich Gee.

It's almost 2010.

But there might be a lot of stuff that you missed in 2009.

So for everyone's benefit, I am presenting the Top 10 most clicked/read posts in an easy-to-scan format.

So here goes:

Breakthrough Click Here - https://richgee.com/?p=2069

10 Ways To Grow Your Career In A Bad Economy — Part One Click Here - https://richgee.com/?p=1870

10 Ways To Grow Your Career In A Bad Economy — Part Two Click Here - https://richgee.com/?p=1877

Five Reasons Why Leaders Fail (& Why Failures Lead) Click Here - https://richgee.com/?p=2030

3 Powerful Tips To Energize Your Team Click Here - https://richgee.com/?p=1802

Ethical Leadership — You Need A Mentor Click Here - https://richgee.com/?p=1439

How to Be an Effective CEO Click Here - https://richgee.com/?p=1265

4 Ways To Coach Your Team Click Here - https://richgee.com/?p=880

Great Leaders Empower Others Click Here - https://richgee.com/?p=749

Get Ready For Annual Reviews! Click Here - https://richgee.com/?p=2005

Enjoy and have an UNBELIEVABLE 2010! - Rich

There's A Talent War & The Ceasefire Is Over.

With so many companies focused on simple survival during the downturn, with so much job loss and anxiety among those who survived, it was easy to forget about the war for top talent. But the downturn was just a temporary truce; the battle is about to erupt again in full force. And ironically the companies are the most at risk of losing their best leaders are ones that responded most vigorously (but often misguidedly) during the recession. By Michael Watkins at Harvard Business Review.

Why? Because there is tremendous pent-up demand for new opportunities and advancement among high-potential leaders. According to a recent study just 10% of high-potential leaders lost their jobs during the recession (with many quickly securing new opportunities). But fewer than usual received promotions or moved to new companies. So at the first sign that the job market is heating up, many will be dusting off their resumes and seeking greener pastures.

Companies that did a clumsy job of managing cost-cutting and restructuring during the downturn are particularly at risk of losing their best talent as conditions improve. Given plummeting revenues and the need to get costs under control, many firms rightly went into crisis mode. But the way they went about making the reductions varied greatly. For some, it was a process akin to taking a meat cleaver to the organization, with rapid, often indiscriminate cuts, and the attitude that virtually anything could be demanded of the survivors (longer hours, reduced salaries) because things were so dire.

These same survivors, especially the most talented of them, understandably feel absolutely no loyalty to their current employers; they will jump ship the instant they feel it's safe to do so. In fact it's a wonderful time for strong companies to consolidate their positions and accelerate out of the downturn by cherry-picking the very best talent out of competitors who have (probably irreparably) damaged their corporate cultures. Some attention to effective on-boarding is also warranted as it will help you to retain the talent you hire.

If you are leading a company that fell into this trap, what can you do? If you aren't already highly focused on how you will retain your best talent in the next couple of years, you should be. In part, this means launching immediate efforts to rebuild the culture and restore trust. This may, unfortunately, require that you bring new top leadership that hasn't been tainted by what was done while the business was in survival mode. Beyond that, you should be looking hard for any sign that the job market is heating up and anticipate what you need to do to rapidly adjust compensation and benefits. Above all, you should have a clear view about who your top talent is, be communicating actively with them about their potential, and charting attractive pathways for them within your organization. And you should be doing these things now, because if you wait six months, it most likely will be too late.

What about companies that did a good job of managing talent during the recession? Are they in the clear? Well yes and no. One very fine company that I work with, a Fortune 100 firm, is a case in point. It did virtually all the right things during the downturn by moving quickly but deftly to reduce costs. Executives took the lead in pay cuts, job losses were managed through attrition to the greatest extent possible and then via merit. Alternatives were offered to displaced workers where possible. Above all, the company did a wonderful job of communicating through the whole organization why it needed to do what it was doing. And it continued to invest scarce resources in the development of its best leaders despite enormous pressure not to do so. The net result has been minimal damage to a people-focused culture, and the company is beautifully positioned to accelerate out of the recession.

So the good news is that this company's high-potential leaders harbor strong loyalty and are inclined to stay. The bad news for the company, and others like it, is that they will be very attractive recruiting grounds for firms that didn't do such a good job during the dark times. And the desperate need for those firms to recruit leaders to replace the ones they've lost — or are about to lose — is going to rapidly bid up compensation and benefits. As is usually the case when it comes to talent, no good deed goes unpunished.

Michael Watkins is the author of, most recently, Your Next Move.