Counselling Tips For Business Leaders

Some managers gain their positions as logical extensions of their career path and training. They’ve progressively gained both academic knowledge and real-world experience, and have then blended those into every-day skills in a succession of roles of ascending difficulty so that they are eventually able to manage a wide range of people and situations efficiently and effectively.Let’s face it, these people are in the minority when it comes to all but the biggest of corporations, and even there many of the best managers have risen through the school of hard knocks and on-the-job learning. Many are “technicians who’ve suffered a promotion”.In other words, they are Accidental Managers.

Regardless of the path that brought you to your position of management (for we’ll assume you are at that point and reading this for answers) you are likely to find the following tips useful for managing one of the most challenging of management tasks – counselling unresourceful team members upwards in – or outwards of – the business.

There are no other practical alternatives, and to do nothing runs the very severe risk of having your best team members leave out of sheer frustration as they grow tired of waiting for you to do something to guide and correct another member of the team whose negative behaviour impacts upon them.
Counselling Non-performing Team Members
No-one likes confrontation! So, what do you do when a key part of your job consists of confronting unresourceful or non-productive behaviour on the part of a team member? How do you handle it when you just know it’s going to be personally painful for you both to open their behaviour up to discussion?

What sort of behaviour? Well anything which could be identified as being repeatedly:

• Disloyal (gossips, complains, criticises)

• Dishonest

• Bored, put-upon, annoyed

• Selfish, putting self before group

• Finding logical reasons not to do things

• Ill-humoured, carping, critical

• Miserable

• Guarded of tight boundaries on work life

• Flaring or grumbling under pressure

• Motivated only by self interest

• Rigid, un-giving, bureaucratic

• Ungiving of praise to others

• Self-promoting (yet acting from a negative self-image)

• Resentful of correction

• Imposed upon by everything

Counselling Tips for Managers
1. Have an Agenda; use a guide.
If there is a risk of your coming under emotional pressure, then the last thing you want to do in a situation of stress is to “wing it”, so either use this guide or develop your own and stick to it throughout the process.

If it didn’t work as well as you’d like, upgrade it and do it again.
2. Do your homework.
Get your facts straight: check your records, take a poll of other team members or clients or affected parties; list facts and figures that substantiate the issue upon which you require them to act.
3. Create rapport.
Things work better when people like each other. The secret to fast rapport is to like the other person first. That does not mean you have to like the behaviour they are exhibiting that is the subject of your intervention. It’s useful to draw a clear distinction between the person and their behaviour.
Choose to like and respect them and choose to be optimistic about the outcome. Tell yourself that whatever happens you will achieve a good result for your team. That puts a positive air on you and sets the tone of the meeting. Hold to that positive air in the face of any initial negativity.
4. Understand them first. 
Set out to understand the issue from their side. You will find that if you give them enough rope – if you ask enough questions in the true spirit of listening to and understanding their answers – you’ll either learn something new (you may even come to see that they are right); or they’ll put their head through the noose and tighten it for you.
Either way, you will now have more information with which to work.
5. Give them your side of the picture.
Be crystal clear on what they are doing/not doing, what the results of that behaviour are, and what that is costing the business (in terms of money, opportunity, efficiency, harmony, etc).

Invite their feedback but avoid “rights and wrongs” and focus always on “what works and what doesn’t” and move constantly towards “what we need to do next to get a better result”.
6. Seek commitment.
Your goal in counselling your team member is to gain a commitment from them to a clear course of future action – with a timeframe – that will produce the results that you and the business need.

That course of action could include their exiting from the business – no point in keeping someone on board who’s out of step.

They need to understand that this is an option and you’ll find that when they grasp that fact that it tends to focus them on finding a solution, or on facing reality at last.

Stay compassionate (everyone is doing the best they can with what they have right now) but remain pragmatic. What they have in the way of personal resources, and what they doing with those may not be enough to earn the right to a seat on the bus. That’s not their fault; it’s just a fact.
7. Remember the Rest of the Crew
For your own sanity, and for a sense of balance and perspective, focus on the good folk upon whose efforts your troubled member’s performance (or lack of it) is impacting (usually negatively and constantly). It’s easy, in the heat of discussion, to lose perspective and to have your focus overwhelmed by the immediate team member’s issues. Take care to repeatedly put this situation and their behaviour into the wider context of the business and your team.

As a professional Manager you have a moral responsibility to serve the sometimes-elusive “greater good” so constantly check to make sure that you are working towards a solution that will work for the majority of your team, and not just for the troubled individual in front of you.
8. Check Commitment Before Finishing.
OK, you’ve done the hard yards, and there was a fair bit of to-ing and fro-ing in there and a lot of stuff was said – but you did finally come to an understanding. Well, you think you did. Best to check if your understanding and theirs is the same. So ask them to articulate their commitment to action from here:

“Susan, just so we’re both clear on the way forward from here, can you give me back in your own words what you will do as a result of our discussion?” Then listen to ensure that they cover all of the points you have on your list of behavioural or outcome changes.

If there are any discrepancies loop back up to step 3. of this process and run down through the points for the items on which there is still a lack of clarity.

Doing any less than this is to risk a repeat of this process in the near future after further losses have been incurred, and further frustration on both parties’ part. Besides, your team member will have had plenty of time in the meantime to think up a whole bunch of reasons as to why you are wrong and they are right.

If you are going to do this process, commit to doing it once, and to doing it cleanly. You’ll all win: You, them and the rest of your team (and probably your customers and suppliers to boot).

For more help in team building, the development of leadership skills and business improvement generally, check the www.profitune.com website for free resources or give us a call to discuss customised solutions for your situation. Or contact us!