Musings from the CU Suite

Written by Anthony Demangone

A few months ago, I wrote about the important difference between conflict and drama. We should be willing to take on the former, but no one wants to deal with the latter.

The post was written from the point of view of hiring. How do we look for folks won't bring drama into the workplace?

I came across another good article about drama - but this one deals with drama that already exists. As much as we try to keep drama out of our shops, eventually, some will appear. The article is well-worth your time. This tip, however, stood out.

Promote Personal Responsibility. It’s often challenging for managers to promote personal responsibility. An indicator of irresponsible thinking is drama that manifests itself as complaining and excuse making; for example, employees running to the boss to solve a problem or tattle on another co-worker. Many managers are proud of their open-door policy, but this policy can make the situation worse. Employees may drop in at the most inconvenient time, and, as a result, the boss may multitask and merely act like he or she is listening – or worse, promise to get back to the employee but forget about the promise. This creates a lack of trust and contributes to workplace relationship problems between bosses and employees.

The reason employees participate in blaming, complaining, backstabbing and excuse making is because it lessens the pain and discomfort that taking responsibility requires. When a manager fixes the problem, the employee continues to respond from a victim mentality instead of an empowered and responsible mindset. Managers that spend excess time putting out fires instead of developing responsible employees end up wasting time and energy.

How to apply this principle: Putting boundaries and systems in place for dealing with complaints can be helpful. Instead of an open door at any time, managers can set office hours for registering complaints. In addition, they can train employees to come with specific criteria when registering a complaint:

1. What is the situation?
2. How does this situation impact productivity, customer service, teamwork or the bottom line?
3. What are some possible solutions or ideas?

That's good advice, and it would seem to turn the table - turning drama into something productive. 

But then it hit me - just how big of an issue is drama? Well, you can help me with that. Take five seconds, and answer the anonymous poll below.

Take this poll to let me know how much drama you deal with as a manager.

I'll let you all know what I find out! And here's hoping you have a drama-free week...