This morning as I went to step onto my bus, a guy suddenly appeared and jumped on ahead of me. He was carrying a large bottle of coke, half full and given his high spirits for 8am – I suspected there was something more than coke in the bottle! It was one of those awkward public situations, where you know everyone is aware of something or someone, outside the norm – but we’re all just going to pretend we’re not looking or haven’t noticed! After annoying a few passengers via different means, eventually this guy went up to the driver… here we go I thought… and was pleasantly surprised when rather than ‘tell him off’ the driver just had a chat until they got to his stop – maybe another 5 mins down the road. When I got to my stop I decided to give the driver some feedback… “I just wanted to say I thought you handled the situation with the passenger earlier really well” to which he said thanks and seemed pleased about. So why am I sharing this story? I guess the situation was really interesting for me on a number of levels…
Firstly – the dynamic on the bus when people just don’t want to get involved always interests me – There are situations like this in the work place, as well as in public – you might witness a bully, someone behaving badly – everyone knows that it might be an issue worth confronting but no one wants to say anything!? This can be particularly detrimental when it’s a leader who is seen to be avoiding action. One of the biggest issues we hear from clients in relation to managing poor performance – is that leaders don’t! There is a lack of skill and confidence among leaders in the business to address poor behaviour and staff engagement survey results that we see, suggest the impact of this on performers in your business should not be underestimated.
The second thing that I reflected on, was my own emotion in giving the driver the ‘feedback’. I did think he handled the situation well – but even in giving that simple piece of feedback to the driver I felt emotion – like a nervousness. This surprised me and prompted me to consider that if giving a stranger a small piece of praise can trigger emotion so quickly it’s no wonder that giving negative feedback is such a challenge for people in organisations world wide! Through our programs on ‘giving and receiving feedback’ we recognise that confidence is often a key issue. Providing a few simple frameworks for having effective feedback conversations, usually gives people enough confidence to start addressing issues they may have otherwise disengaged with. Are people ignoring issues at your workplace because they don’t have the skills or confidence to have effective conversations?
