Ten Tips: Difficult Dilemmas, Difficult Conversations

People lead complicated lives. You can always be a human.

Spring is here. It’s Easter and Passover and I just met with my landscaper on the next phase of cleaning up my still-in-progress yard. I can dream of sitting outside with a cup of coffee and my thoughts. I just visited with some of my very closest friends.The mobile dog groomer is pulling up to the house in mere minutes to clean up my shaggy dog. I feel like I’m Snoopy doing the happy dance with his nose in the air. 

So why not take on a really complicated topic?

In response to survey results, and given that stuff often pops loose in the spring, I’m writing this week about complex employee situations. You all know the ones - the one that you think about as soon as you open your eyes in the morning; the person you dread sitting down next to you in the cafeteria when either you know very well what’s coming towards them OR you are so incredibly frustrated at their behavior but you still have to make polite small talk.

And there are some situations where it’s painfully clear. You have to haul someone into your office, or the person has already stumbled across your threshold in crisis mode, and you have to hand them a cardboard box and give them an escort out to their car. This is hard and difficult but your hand has been forced by the behavior that you have seen first hand, or a number of people have witnessed first hand, or you have a copy of the unbelievable email the person wrote, etc. 

This post is about the messy situations. The patterns of weirdness that pop up and go away but keep coming. The vague feelings of discomfort that become something more troubling at the edges. The “one-person’s word against another’s” that happened every so often become frequent. Behavior that morphs from occasionally eccentric to chronically hostile. A person you really relied on who becomes someone you realized you didn’t know as well as you thought.

The vast majority of people are a mixed bag. People wax and wane, they have bad months or a rough year. And this has only been exacerbated by the pandemic.

You as a leader have to deal with complicated, high stakes human situations. Impacting someone’s ability to make a living is just about the most serious thing there is. And maybe even more serious is threatening a person’s very sense of self by having a hard conversation about their performance in a job they see as an avocation or even a calling.

There are entire books written about how to handle this stuff, and more and more, schools are adding some kind of human resources function. But as heads or senior leaders, you have power and choices to make to influence how these situations are handled. The ripples impact the entire culture. You aren’t just trying to protect the school from lawsuits and act in a generally ethical manner. The way you handle difficult personnel situations reveals who you are as a leader and is a measure of your integrity.

Beyond the books of advice and your employee handbook and HR regulations, it’s actually pretty simple - try to fully show up, firmly but gently enforce accountability and most importantly, be a human. The books of advice aren’t going to help if you use them as armor rather than as skills to employ in your genuine pursuit of being human.

If you really care about a school’s mission to develop kids into people of substance and good character, you will think deeply about these moments, engage, get over your own ego, and be a human. There will still be gossip and you will still likely be criticized or even pilloried because you can never reveal the whole story - but how you handle it matters to you as a person. You will know if you are concerned with protecting someone’s dignity as well as protecting the student experience and the standards of what it means to be an employee. And if you are being as generous of spirit, and otherwise, as possible. 

It is extremely challenging to rise to the occasion and sometimes we miss the mark. That’s also part of being human. But if you don’t give it your best effort, it will gnaw away at your soul and your character. 

Five Tips As You Ponder the Situation

People lead complicated lives

Faulstich’s First Rule of Administration. Life is hard. Baggage abounds. The superstar you hired a few years ago has a major life crisis that knocks them backwards. Marriages implode, parenting can present huge challenges, dealing with elderly parents is complicated, paying for a family’s life is stressful. And there’s a lot of well-treated run of the mill depression and anxiety that can get out of hand during a bad patch. The same with substance abuse. There are also the people where you had a faint red flag when you hired them - a brief stint somewhere that was awkwardly explained, maybe - but otherwise seemed like a solid hire and then after a strong first year or two, the person is struggling to just keep it together.

It’s all about the kids

You have to prioritize the student experience or for other nonprofits, the constituency you are mainly serving. There is being fair and there is the basic question - can we find someone who “does what this person does well (fill in the blank)” but also… does whatever the current employee person does poorly: “returns assignments promptly,” “is responsive to feedback” “is a collaborative colleague” “is a patient and helpful student advisor.” “consistently implements healthy boundaries.” And I’ll say again what I said in the parent post - “what you permit, you promote.” If I’ve heard it once I’ve heard it a hundred times - bad behavior or poor performance excused by “brilliance” in another part of their job. Or even bad behavior or poor performance excused by something totally outside their job that falls in the category of “good community member.” Is it brilliance, good community membership or a fear of conflict, change or blowback?

Performance improvement plans CAN work. But you can’t force people to reflect, or at least reflect effectively

Sometimes the context shifts and a chronic deficit that was never fully addressed becomes a major problem when the school embarks on a new priority. Structured PIPs can sometimes be the wake-up call a person needs and self evaluations and 360’s can really help shift someone’s perspective. (And sometimes a robust routine evaluation program can mitigate the need for this almost entirely.) But if someone refuses to elevate their self-awareness or look inside, it might be time to give up the struggle and be clear about next steps. 

Intimacy is the enemy of authority

You will be let down by someone you trust and of whom you are very fond. Maybe this is a little cynical but - this is work. I am a “can we please drop the family terminology” evangelist but schools and nonprofits are, generally, relational, relaxed workplaces compared to many professions. When you wear the crown, you wear the crown and it’s never invisible. And if it does go invisible to a few close co-worker friends, they don’t see you as the boss and if it goes pear shaped, it’s going to be painful. Because as we all know, close friends also lead complicated lives. And if the community has a sense that you are treating people differently because of a close personal relationship, it will short circuit your ability to lead effectively. 

You can be “friendly” with people and this actually covers a huge and not insignificant amount of interpersonal ground. You can work really closely together and come to understand an employee as a person. You can show vulnerability. You can be curious about their loved ones and kids and ask after them. You can be really fond of them. You can have a good laugh with them frequently. But you cannot lean on them as a pillar of emotional support. 

And it’s good to be friendly (in the commonly understood sense of the word) with the community! But also keep in mind, once something goes sideways, there need to be wider boundaries and more room for everyone to maneuver and preserve their dignity. 

Use a partner

Dealing with complicated employee situations are maybe the loneliest jobs on a long list of lonely jobs for the head of school. And it is also lonely for those other admins who manage people. So, don’t do it alone. Do it with the person who manages HR if your HR director doesn’t report to the HOS, or another appropriate senior administrator. But the head should do the dirty work to preserve the relationship between the person in the trenches with the employee. I was also super, super lucky to work with Shipman and Goodwin and I want to give a shoutout to Julie Fay, Morgan Rueckert and the now retired Henry Zaccardi, who were my wing people for many complicated situations. I could always pick up the phone and say “what do you think?” Invaluable. And never, ever have a sensitive conversation about someone’s job performance alone. Always have a partner, even if you are grabbing someone and making them sit there as an observer. It may be awkward and may need some finessing as you are trying to be a human, but it is absolutely necessary.

Five Tips for a Difficult Meeting

The harder the news, the shorter the meeting

If you need to let someone go, it will serve no one to take more than ten minutes. Clear and direct is kind. Offer a follow up meeting after he’s digested the news. There is no point in engaging in an argument either, if this is the meeting where you have decided to deliver that news. Cut it off if you need to and if you are really concerned someone could be irrational, don’t just have a partner in the room, have someone waiting outside your office to escort them out. 

Don’t give into the pull of the polite 

The person may know they are in trouble and try to pop into your office or corner you passing in a hallway - keep your mouth shut. Don’t let the power of polite take over. This can be extremely challenging because it is very hard wired in most of us to be courteous and chances are, you have at least some semblance of a relationship. But if you’ve made it clear the meeting is happening at x time and at x place, what can look like an innocent request can be a fumbling attempt at gaining control or manipulating the situation. If you are knocked off your game, you can end up promising things you can’t, or shouldn’t, deliver or have it come back to haunt you later. Be warm but firm that you are the one setting up the terms of engagement, not them.

Write a script

While I wouldn’t suggest keeping your eyes down and reading from the script, it can help to write down what you want to say beforehand and read it over a few times and then have it close at hand as a backup.

You never know how it might go

Prepare completely and then you can pivot. You might unexpectedly become someone’s confessor even if you are not renewing her and then you might want to let the meeting go a bit more than ten minutes. Or someone you thought would be emotional instead shuts down and instead of six minutes, the meeting is over in three.

Get crystal clear on what you can and can’t offer 

If you are implementing a performance improvement plan, be clear about how progress will be measured, who will measure it and when it will come to an end. If you are letting someone go, be clear if there is severance or a separation agreement and be prepared to answer the question as to whether or not you will provide a reference letter. And to emphasize what I said above, if you can be generous, choose to be generous. 

There are those unicorn situations where a person thanks you for what has amounted to a life intervention. Chances are, if you’re the person who ended up sitting in a meeting about a performance improvement plan, a non-renewal or a parting of the ways, generally something is not going so well in your life. She might be relieved. It happens. Very occasionally. You will be amazed and glad you were as generous as possible.

There are other options. We can use the playbook where you renew someone’s employment offer for the next year, but make it so unpalatable you cross your fingers he will opt to resign instead. (Personally I hate that one, but I get it.) You could choose to create performance plan metrics that are a stretch and hope for the same outcome. And sometimes you can coach someone out but often what you think is a stark blinking red light conversation is interpreted as a vague yellow by someone who is struggling. Don’t count on any of these leading to the person resigning. And if you choose one of these options, be sure you are going to be satisfied with the job they will perform if they do come back. It is extra not human to then treat the person as a pariah if you decided to renew them in the first place.

Not only do people lead complicated lives, we are living in complicated times. Labor shortages are real. Someone you may have evaluated out three years ago may look pretty OK in this context. Sometimes there’s been a lot of turnover and although if you are honest with yourself, although you are not hopeful the professional development you are offering will turn someone around to be what the school needs, it’s better for the community to have some continuity. It can be less than obvious what is best for the student experience when it is looked at through a variety of lenses.

So look through those lenses, give it the thought it deserves and then - be a human.

Spring is here - go outside. Feel the sun on your face. Be a human.

Until next time (and a new Mission Critical Communications post) -

Julie

Social media photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash