When Employees Complain About Each Other - Your Practice Ain’t Perfect - Joe Mull

In this episode of Your Practice Ain’t Perfect we’re talking about When Employees Complain About Each Other.

Joe Mull, M.Ed is a practice manager leadership trainer and keynote speaker who works with healthcare organizations that want their practice leaders to engage, inspire, and succeed. As an expert in employee engagement and healthcare leadership development, Joe gives physicians and managers the skills and tools they need to engineer teams that work hard, get along, and wow patients. After more than a decade in healthcare, Joe knows that when leaders develop skills related to leadership, communication, and teambuilding, they can stop putting fires out every day and prevent them from sparking in the first place. Bring Joe in to keynote your conference, design and facilitate a retreat, or beef up your practice leader training. For more info or to book Joe now visit www.joemull.com.

"In my popular Keynote “No More Team Drama,” I ask my audiences about how often they encounter members of their teams who come to them to complain about someone else. If you’re like most of the healthcare leaders I work with, this happens a lot. Sometimes the complaints are minor, while other times you’re faced with complex conflict that’s threatening to infect your whole operation. In either case, I’m glad you’re here, because in this episode of Your Practice Ain’t Perfect, I’ll give you some pointers on what to do when employees complain about each other. Don’t move.…

A few years ago, I encountered a leader who had just started a new job as a practice manager in a busy outpatient clinic. Just days into her tenure, a medical assistant named Janice came to see her, in order to “vent” about another member of the team named Kayla. Not two sentences into her complaints, the new manager stood up, went out to the floor, got Kayla and brought her to her office. She sat her right next to Janice and said, “Janice had some things to say about you, Kayla, and I thought you might want to hear them. Janice?”

Now obviously this leader wanted to send a message early on. And that day, this tactic worked. But it may not be the best way to handle that common moment when a member of your team has appeared in front of you, to give voice to her frustrations about something that someone else on the team has said or done.

90% of the time the best action in that moment is to re-direct the employee back to their colleague. And there’s a very simple way to do this that doesn’t sound like you’re giving orders. Ask this question: “If the roles were reversed, and your colleague was frustrated with you, would you want her first step to be coming to me?” Most employees say no, and that’s your chance to create some cognitive dissonance. You might say “So then you coming to me first, is actually kind of unfair, given what you’d want her to do in the same situation, right?”

Encourage your employee to pull their colleague aside, even if it’s uncomfortable, and share her concern directly. If you’ve done any kind of staff agreement work ahead of time, where everyone has discussed how to handle conflict as a team, then this redirection won’t be a shock. It will actually be expected.

There’s another crucial step, though, that you have to make sure you don’t skip over. Before your employee leaves, offer to help her prepare for that conversation. Ask her what she plans to say, and give her feedback on the feedback she plans to share, and be sure to challenge any assumptions she might be making about her colleague’s motives, because most of the time, we assume malice that’s unfounded. Lastly, be sure to follow up with the employee a day or two later to ensure that the conversation took place, to find out how it went, and to debrief that employee. It probably didn’t go the way she thought it would, and you should reminder her of that.

When employees complain about each other, it’s easy to say “knock it off,” or “work it out,” which is pretty much what my mother said any time my sister and I would fight as kids. But as a leader you need to go further. Get the team to agree that direct contact is the best first step and help your direct reports prepare for those conversations as needed. In the long run, you’ll enhance the communication skills of your team members and you won’t have to deal with nearly as much drama.

Now it’s your turn! How do you respond when employees complain about each other? Have you been able to reduce or eliminate this behavior? Tell me your story in the comments box below, and while you're at it, please take a moment to share this video on Linkedin, Facebook, or Twitter. Until next time, good luck out there!"

Joe Mull- Speaker, Author, Trainer
www.joemull.com
Twitter:@joemull77

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