When it comes to staffing your office and building a team, it feels like “finding people” has become almost as challenging as “finding great people”, which has become almost as challenging as “finding great people with ambition and grit.”
Every single practice transition PA has been involved with in the past 18 months has mentioned team and staffing challenges as part of their day-to-day management issues. Those challenges go beyond hiring. They are often related to how to guide attitudes and behaviours that contribute to positive workplace culture. Culture that is also productive.
Putting out fires caused by tension between employees can feel as productive as redoing work that has failed. But it’s usually a process that’s guided by how you feel instead of knowledge and skill you’ve learned about negotiation with the people you work with.
Behavioural management and negotiation aren’t taught as part of our curriculum. Yet we use this every hour we work. Often we rely on our instincts to manage these situations. Those instincts are only as good as the education and practice they are founded on. Chris Voss, who wrote, “Never Split The Difference” says in his book, “When the pressure is on, you don’t rise to the occasion – You fall to your highest level of preparation.”
When it comes to curating positive culture and tolerating toxicity in your office, the balance seems to be presently weighed against the idea of not wanting to say the wrong thing for fear of losing a staff member. There are few things that rob freedom more than feeling like you have to walk on eggshells in the business you’ve built.
Negative communication usually comes in the form of either
(i) complaints, or
(ii) objections
Complaints have no purpose. They are noise, venting, and counter productive. Objections are based on a problem the recipient has with executing the task. These take problem solving with the appropriate team member. The team member to effectively help problem solve an objection is never someone in the same role. Taking an objection to a team member that is “lateral” to them turns that objection into a useless complaint.
With that in mind, I encourage you to enforce a communication policy in your practice that states,
(i) Complaints are not tolerated. They only drag everyone down and never EVER improve the problem or the culture. Gossip gets to be included here too.
(ii) Objections move vertically, but never laterally. An objection is welcome to be received by the team member that the individual is accountable to. Often that is the office manager or department head. If you’ve got a small practice, it might be you as the owner. But NEVER is an objection to move laterally. Problem solving objections requires adjustments to the approach or the request, which can only be fulfilled by the senior management directing the request.
(iii) Celebrations can move in all directions. Wins should be shared laterally and vertically in the team as often as possible. These ALWAYS contribute to positive workplace culture, community, and productivity. Wins are the virus we want to spread.
If you’ve felt toxicity in your workplace and it’s limiting your freedom, try implementing this policy today.
