Please Don’t Wear Clothes with Profanity (And other things you never thought you’d have to say to your staff)

And other things you never thought you’d have to say to your staff

In my early days as a manager, I was deeply entrenched in the mindset that my staff should know certain things and I would become increasingly frustrated when they did not. Unfortunately, this frustration did not initially propel me to change anything, but it sure did give me a lot to complain about. After all, these were fellow professionals. Why was it up to me to explain that being on time was important? Or why they had to meet their deadlines? Shouldn’t they have just known this? Why was it up to me to explain it? (A ridiculous thought process, I am now well aware…)

When working with any professionals, especially young ones as I was, there will inevitably be moments where what seems obvious to one of you is far less obvious to the other. Instead of accepting and expecting it, far too many of us lament the situation rather than address it. Instead, we spend our energy complaining and wondering how in the world our staff could do or think or say such a thing. And when the staff does it again? More complaining and wondering. Again and again and again.

Like all human relationships, the relationship between a manager and her staff requires communication, and expecting the other person to know what we want without expressing it is as foolish as it is ineffective. Yes, life would be much easier if everyone we worked with simply understood us without any effort expended on our part. And every once in a while, for no more than eight seconds, it is okay to imagine a world that operates this way. Then it is back to putting in the necessary and incredibly rewarding work of building a staff that communicates and collaborates successfully.

There will be moments in your life as a manager, likely several, when you find yourself in a position of addressing something you never thought you would have to address. In my case, I can think of at least 17 off the top of my head. If I took the time to write them down, I’m guessing it would be closer to 117. And I am proud to say that, after unsuccessfully trying to wish away the first 30 or so, I learned to address them lest they continued to occur.

My first moment was, thankfully, an easy one as these things go, because there was no way I couldn’t address it. You see, one day, a member of my staff came into work wearing a t-shirt laden with profanity. You may think this was a potential judgement call- like when your kid says ‘sucks’ for the first time, and you’re not sure whether or not to react. This was not one of those times. The words on the t-shirt were words that require the Explicit Advisory warning on CDs, the ones that get bleeped out of TV shows, the kind you simply have to address when your staff wears them on their person. Especially when that staff works with children.

Other examples include but are hardly limited to: a staff member trying to bring her boyfriend to work every day, another staff sitting in his office while the 32 elementary children he oversaw played alone in another room, and yet another staff member asking to work two days a week while continuing to receive her full-time check. You can argue that the staff members in question should have known these behaviors were not acceptable- and it would be a pretty easy argument to make- but the truth is, they didn’t. And hopefully now they do.

It is impossible to prepare managers for these types of situations because each staff member is his own, quirky, idiosyncratic self. (And thank goodness for that!) The best we can do is never assume, always communicate clearly and address situations as they arise.

What about you? What situation have you had to address that you never expected? How did it go?