When dealing with your people, no matter how terrible their attitude is, you always remind yourself to stay cool. You try not to ruin anyone’s mood by any means, because you just love them that much. They are your second family. Hearing how happy they are, and seeing how much they are enjoying their job makes you feel fulfilled. You believe that when everyone is happy, your business will have a better chance of performing even better. You love to be known as a business that practices happiness as its key working culture, thus maintaining its pre-eminence because of this. In addition to that, you believe that making your people happy would allow your business to spread its legacy. Everyone has an opportunity to learn and do something, no one would be left behind. But do your people see things the same way as you?
Everyone is born with their own traits, their own behaviour that distincts them from one another. However, some people are not their behaviour. They may act differently than who they really are, they do not show their true colours. When someone’s attitude is not favourable to us, sometimes the best way to tackle this is by accepting who they are first, then slowly taking steps to influence them to change. In reality, this is easier said than done. Of course anyone could be changed from bad to good, but the issue is will this change last in the long run? Will it be permanent? Could these behavioural changes move in the direction you deem to be for the better? This would be a huge challenge to you, especially when you are a boss attempting to change your people. You need to do this so that you could retain your people as long as possible. What should you offer to motivate them towards behavioural change? Is money the answer to everything?
When you are unable to retain your people, you jeopardise both your time and money. Why is this so? The reason is simple. When any of your people leaves, you need more time to start finding for the right replacement and this at the same time, would incur costs. Can you overcome this? Have you ever considered giving your people time to change or you would rather just let them go and hire new ones? If you want to give them time, how long should it be? It all depends on perspective. Some bosses opt to give their people the chance to change, but if this goes on and on and on, you still make losses in terms of time and money. This is bad for your business, especially when you are dealing with older staff who are reluctant to change accordingly, making you deviate further from your business goals. So, why lose so much when you can skip the hassle and just hire younger talents that are able to perform better?
Paul was on his way to expand his business into a higher level, where he had secured new investors and partners into his existing business. This was a huge leap for Paul’s business, he was very excited for this change! He conveyed this movement towards change to his group of existing staff, unfortunately their response towards this was nothing like what he was expecting. They were not keen to change, they were not ready for any new challenges. Paul further explained how this could benefit everyone as the Funding Road Map (FRM) was so appealing. The business would be capable of generating high share profits and high commission would be paid to everyone. “Who doesn’t want money, right?! This should make them perform at their best!” Paul thought to himself. Paul still went on with his business’ expansion. Within the first quarter, he saw negative results. 50% of his staff were not able to reach his performance expectations.
Despite this negative performance from his people, Paul did not resort towards firing them. Paul is soft-hearted and he loves his employees dearly, especially those who were his relatives. Paul was unable to let them go, but it was threatening his business too much! He was struggling to decide on how he should handle them as they were willing but lack capabilities in producing results. He tried hiring new younger and more capable people to assist in his business, but this too, was unsatisfactory. More conflicts and internal politics in his business arise instead.
Paul was out of capabilities in helping everyone; so to further resolve the issue with his people, Paul appointed a trainer to train them. In the beginning, signs of motivation were prominent but it faded over time. It was not long-lasting at all. Paul was at a standstill. One day, one of his investors proposed Paul to get a CFO to monitor the FRM, and at the same time, to manage his people. Paul agreed to this suggestion and he immediately sourced a CFO. This CFO proposed a personal coaching session to be held with all key managers in Paul’s business.
Among these three, time is the most difficult to attain or maintain. Unlike money and knowledge, there is no way you could replenish time. What’s lost has been lost because time and tide wait for no man. Therefore, in relation to making decisions on retaining your people, you have to consider time. Always keep an eye on time, HR expert will recommend FIRE fast HIRE slow.
How do you analyse time in relation to people? You can look at this from the Six Time Perspectives, from ‘The Time Paradox’ written by Phil Zimbardo and John Boyd:
1. Past-negative
Past-negative experiences, such as from trauma, are used to evaluate current situations. In some cases, some people would want to seek revenge.
2. Past-positive
In contrast to past-negative, past-positives arise from positive events. This is prominent in people who have a high involvement with their families.
3. Present-fatalistic
Fatalists highly believe that whatever happens in the present is bound to happen. Due to this, they usually treat money as if they do not matter at all.
4. Present-hedonistic
Hedonistic people enjoy things that will result in pleasure, and highly avoid things that will cause pain. Enjoyment is one of their biggest priorities in life. Therefore, present-hedonists would utilise money to create more fun and excitement. However, they tend to be less emotionally stable compared to others.
5. Future
When a person is future-oriented, they would always determine the future consequences from a particular behaviour. These people will have the perspective that time and money will offer broader possibilities in the future.
6. Transcendental-future
When a person is future-oriented, they would always determine the future consequences from a particular behaviour. These people will have the perspective that time and money will offer broader possibilities in the future.
To decide whether your people shall be retained or not, you have to study their perspectives towards time and what caused such thoughts.
In making a decision whether to retain a person in your business, you could always depend on performance-based indicators by setting them objectives for them to follow, and then reward them for successful achievements. If they are unable to follow and they are not motivated by money, you may start considering giving them a warning letter, or just simply remove them from your business.
But…. hold on! Rather than jumping straight into such decisions, you should check whether they are ecological. What is ECOLOGY? This simply means the extent to which the person’s presence or absence could affect your business. So, give them a chance. Ask questions to yourself to measure if your decision is ecological:
– For what purpose do you want this staff?
– What will you gain or lose if you have this staff?
– What will happen if you retain this staff?
– What won’t happen if you retain this staff?
– What will happen if you don’t retain this staff?
– What won’t happen if you don’t retain this staff?
If the answers to the above questions proves that they are ecological, it is relevant to RETAIN them in your business. What if this does not help you in making your decision too? You can resort to your final option, that is a coaching process called Taking Detailed Personal History.
This coaching process is accredited by Sebastian Leblond, Author of The Total Financial FREEDOM and Master Trainer and Coach of Neuro-Linguistic Programming to study the FIVE CLOUDS of a person, that hinders them from moving on to the next level. What are these five clouds? They are Negative Emotion (NE), Negative Thinking (NT), Limiting Belief (LB), Unwanted Behaviour (UB), and Inner Conflict (IC). With coaching, each of this negative cloud could be converted into positive traits, New Learning (NL), Positive Thinking (PT), Empowering Beliefs (EB), Good Habits (GH), and Value Realignment (VR).
All of these traits could actually affect a person’s level of performance and success, whereby:
Capabilities = Competency + Capacity
Performance = Capabilities [Competence + Capacity] – Negative Emotion [NE]
5 Clouds = NE + NT + LB + UB + IC
Evaporating 5 clouds = NL + PT + EB + GH + VR
Success = Competency + Confidence
Success = Competency [+GB +NL] + Confidence [+EB +PT+VR]
Therefore, the Taking Detailed Personal History coaching process would be utilised to identify the presence of the five clouds in a person.
Now, another common issue is when a person has too many clouds in them. Just too many where you cannot decide what exact method should be utilised to tackle the problem! In this case, my advice is that you should only use one coaching method. A suitable one would be Timeline Therapy (TLT). When you start tackling one cloud, unconsciously, you are also able to tackle other clouds as well in the process.
So what happened to Paul’s whole conflict with his people? Paul existingly had 10 managers in his business. With the help of the CFO, nine of the managers successfully changed their behaviour for the better in the long term, and one unfortunately left due to the inability to change. Paul realised that his people were not motivated by money, but they started to show motivation when Paul paid attention towards their personal problems as well. Love was the answer to build their motivation to change. The managers’ acceptance towards behavioural changes has significantly helped Paul’s business to grow even better, and as a result, the company successfully moved forward to the next round of funding, that is Series A funding. Paul was thankful for the CFO’s help, as he managed to retain the most important people in his business without spending more time and money on recruiting new people.