A scenario from work: Let’s say I have an employee reporting to me and let’s say there are some performance issues. And it is impacting her peers as well. I have a constructive conversation with her and feedback is received well. After a week I check in with her peers. Feedback is positive, and they are surprised by the progress made. As I am about to end the conversation one of them says – “Well, you know I thought that was the end of her.” I asked, “What do you mean?”. He explained, “Well, I thought that we would just let her go.”

In his mind, that was an option. In my mind, it wasn’t – that got me thinking about my style.

100% of Individual is the asset:
I feel strongly about this. When you show up at work – you show up as your entire person, not as 50% of person who shows up for work. Whoever you are – a product of your childhood, circumstances – that entire being shows up at work. If I try to work with you at the deliverables/policies level, then I am just scratching the surface, and it will always be a band-aid. It is a short-term fix – we are only fixing the symptoms – not addressing the cause.

Let’s say as a kid you have been very careless – like forgetting to turn off the light, getting into accidents because your mind is wandering. As you grow up (and assuming you haven’t done anything to address that) you will carry the same trait at work – that will manifest itself in forgetting to update the date in the status report, not remembering to add due dates to action.

Now, I can have a conversation with you about trying to remember to add the dates in the status report, but it might pop up in other areas because the cause of the problem is lack of mindfulness. So, the best way to get to the root of the problem would send the person to mindfulness classes. Unfortunately, our corporate culture is not evolved to that level yet.

So – to summarize keep in mind that you might not be addressing the root of the problem – set your expectations accordingly.

Longer Term View:
Depending on my tolerance level or my take on people I may or may not that let that person go. Let’s say I do let that person go – then what I have done? I have just passed the problem to somebody else who also is a part of the ecosystem I belong to. So, in essence, we are all impacted by it including me – I might not be able to connect the dots right away, but it is a zero-sum game. Most people forget about this and are just concerned about getting their team right. (And I also believe that if you there was a lesson for you to learn then the next person on your team will also display similar issues – you cannot outrun a life lesson)

This does not mean that you don’t put a band-aid on personnel issues or keep people on your team forever because you are looking at the long-term view. Just be aware and balance it with where you are in your journey. I hope this invites you to the think in different ways when it comes to people.