Ep. 82: You Can't Be Too Nice

Welcome to the Secret Sauce of Outsourcing podcast that's dedicated to making you better at working with OFS online Filipino specialists. This is episode 82. You can never be too nice. I realized recently that I have grown sarcastic with my kids as they've gotten older, as they've become teenagers. I have. I'm, like, not as nice to them as I should be. And I use sarcasm a lot to joke with them, but it's still. It's not acceptable. It's not a. It's not a good way to parent. And it's something I'm working on. Like, I and I have a long way to go, but I'm working on changing how I treat my kids, especially my teenagers. I just need to be nice. This is one of the things that people will comment to me about my how I manage my Filipino team. Like, I'm too nice to them. I give them tons of time off, or I put up with poor performance for a long time in hopes of changing it in the future, which is probably true. And often it does change in the future. And I get someone who's really, really dedicated then. But sometimes I don't. I don't protect myself very well from being taken advantage of. And sometimes that's okay. I'm just too nice. Here's an email that I got from Desi Desi O this week. I want to read through it and kind of describe the situation. So she says, I've done everything to be very accommodating and understanding to my Filipino worker. He has been with me over the years and we have had a good working relationship. But what I noticed recently, that it's one excuse after another from family members dying, which I'm sympathetic about and understanding to, to disappearing for two days in a row to. Then he reappears, apologizing, and I always understand and forgive him. It's like, because he knows I'm an understanding boss, he takes advantage of my kindness and takes it for weakness. She continues, I know you promote being understanding and kind to the Filipino workers, but at what point does one draw the line from being abused and taken for granted to where their actions affect our where their actions affect our business performance? His disappearance has yet again affected our targeted web design project completion dates. This has happened time and time again and he acknowledges it, but he's still doing it. At what point does one say enough is enough and fire? So I love that Desi is, like, going out of her way to try and work with her worker. I agree that it seems like she is Being taken advantage of. And that's not. Nobody likes that. So how do you prevent this from happening? What do you do when this happens to you? I can often afford to be nice because I set expectations early on. I tell my OFS team, and especially when they're starting, that I expect a daily report. It's. It's part of it. I want to see what they've done through their workday. I'll also set deadlines for critical things. They know that they need to focus on something important when it has a deadline and they have to get it done. I call people out when I know that things aren't moving fast enough. This week, I sent an email to one of my guys and said, hey, you're not being very productive. What's going on? You used to be really, really good, and now things are taking you a really long time. What's going on with this? And he responded, and we kind of worked through things. It's been months of, like, less production, but now I feel like he's back and he's going to be good again. Also often give a lot of feedback. I give good feedback. It's one of the things my team talks about. When I say, what am I doing well or what am I doing wrong? They tell me about giving lots of good feedback. I'm also not afraid to call people out when something goes really, really wrong. Like when something mindless happens, I'm going to say something about it, and they know that. They accept that from me because I go out of my way to try and be really good to them the rest of the time. So when it. When it comes time to say, like, hey, this is wrong, you know, like, what went on here, there's no thinking going on, or this not. This wasn't just you missing instructions. This is just lazy. They're accepting of that because I've been really nice the rest of the time. For Desi, though, you know, if you've gone through this multiple times, it may be time to let them go. If you have tried and tried to get them to do good work, it may be time to let it go. For me, often the decision comes down to how difficult is the process to let them go and replace them. Because if it's really hard and I would rather just put up with the lesser work, or I'd rather try and figure out what's going on than let them go. I'm willing. I'm willing to try it. If it's easy to replace them, though, then if it's. If it's poor, then I'm going to. I'm going to be. I'm going to move on and I'm going to replace them in terms of, like, them being sick and consistently missing work. So I've only really had two people ever leave because they were sick. One of them, we didn't want her to leave, but she just got sick enough that she couldn't work. And it was. We tried to keep her to stay, and she just said, no, I'm sorry, I can't. It's affecting things too much. The other one came back to work and took on more responsibilities than she did when she first started. Probably because we were so understanding of her sickness. She came back and really picked it up and has been really, really great. When someone starts giving excuses when. But when they start missing work consistently, I would say there's two things to do. Number one, ask. Ask, what is going on? Are you, you know, what are you stuck on? What's the problem? What is going on? Number two, see if they have another job. Like, ask, do you have another job? Or is. Is something else affecting your ability to work? I. I've had that situation too, where, like, oh, do you have another job? Yes, I do. Why? I just need more money because I have these medical bills to pay. Okay, let's take care. Let's work to take care of this together so that your productivity can get up again. So I'm so sorry, Desi. This is a hard situation, especially when you rely on them. Ask. Ask what? What are you stuck on? What is causing you these delays when you're causing my business problems? Do you understand how that's really hard for me? What can we do to fix this in the future? And if they don't have a solution then. And you can say, like, if we can't fix this, then I'm going to need to let you go because it's affecting my business.