From Gossip to Meltdowns: Dealing with Employee Drama

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Welcome back. We are back on this fabulous and fun week. This is super fun to make lots of podcasts. I kind of like it short and sweet, right? So yesterday we talked about lack of motivation and engagement. And today we're going to talk about. Oh, sorry, I hit my microphone. Today we're going to talk about employee.

Drama.

Emotional challenges, psychological challenges.

And general.

The general dynamics that happen in your business when it comes to people who bring the drama.

I like to say that this is the part about running your business that makes you either feel like a babysitter or a referee. It's interesting because one of my long, long term clients, she's amazing and has grown her business exponentially in the, what, maybe four years now that we've worked together. I think she started when she had like 6 million every year, and now they're well over maybe 30 at this point. Doing super well, tripled her staff size. So many things. But when she first started working with me, what we used to talk about was how employees would fight in the parking lot over parking spaces. And it was like killing her because she was like, this is not what I want to be doing. I don't want to deal with this. I don't. Well, how do I resolve? I don't. And of course I'm like, no, you should not be resolving this. This is all ridiculous. And yet right now, because you are the person, you do have to have a solution for this. But eventually, her business has grown. She's built an HR team. She has people who do that. She doesn't do that anymore. And I want to give you this vision that I hold for all of my clients, which is as you become, um, as you. I love this word. So I'm going to use it as you develop your leadership prowess. Meaning, like, you get more confidence, you get more skill, you will build a first team. These are people who work directly for you. That will be the people who will resolve all this. Because what I know is true is the bigger your company gets, the more people you have. And the more people you have, guess what? The more of the general public this in your company, which means there's more weird stuff that happens. It doesn't stop. You can't build. You can't just hire a team of people where there's no drama. Have you ever been part of any group in your life? Listen, I just started playing pickleball about a year ago, and now I play pickleball every morning and I love it to death. But there's pickleball politics just in My little part of the world, there's always drama. Okay, so people are drama, right? But when you're in the leadership role, you actually have some advantage, right? You have what I call positional authority.

And if we've done this correctly, you actually can leverage what the agreements have been that you've made and. And asked people to make when they start working with you. The reason that we end up with all this stuff over here in the long run is because we either didn't make our agreements clear when we hired people, when we invited them to come into our company, when we extended the invitation, which is how I like to think about that. You're not hiring people. They're not. You're not lucky. They came to work for you. This is a mutually beneficial relationship. They are here to deliver results. You are here to ensure that you're providing the sources in kind, I. E. Money, benefits, time off, whatever it is in exchange for those results. That's what this agreement is all about, right? And we have to be really clear about what the behaviors are that we expect of people through our values, when they work for us, when they work in our container, our ecosystem.

And then we have to honor that. 2.

So if you have drama in your business, which could be anything, y', all, I hear it all. People are sleeping together. People are. The roommates are breaking up because they got each other a job. People are gossiping about each other, stabbing each other, trying to malign one another. People are having emotional breakdowns, panic attacks, mental breakdowns. They're self diagnosing. Everybody's self diagnosing. Listen, all you have to do is spend two hours on Tik Tok and I'm sure you're convinced if you're a woman for sure, you have menopause, hormonal imbalance, adhd. You probably have depression, anxiety, like you. If you spend two hours on social media, you for sure, hard, neurodivergent. And you have a trauma life. You have trauma in your childhood. And this is not to make fun of anybody who. All of those things could be true. But you know what I'm saying, It's like fed to us all day. So we have employees who are like, well, you know, I really have ADHD and I'm struggling with my focus. Okay? Do you have a medical diagnosis?

Now, I'm no attorney, but I will tell you that if you have employees who come to you and they say, I have this. I'm suffering with depression, I'm suffering from anxiety. I have adhd, I'm neurodivergent I have dyslexia. I have this. I. Whatever it is.

In order to.

In order for you to be. To. To provide accommodation, they have to have a diagnosis.

Now, you run everything I say there about this through your attorney, because every state is different. But be careful before you start jumping through all sorts of hoops when there's no medical diagnosis. So I want to address that because a lot of people bring a lot. Right. I just had a client ask me the other day, how do I deal with this. I have an employee on my team, and she's going through a divorce, and it's a very messy divorce, and she's heartbroken, and she has already taken some leave because she's just suffering. And. But. And my client's like, how. How do I do this? How do I hold her accountable when she's, you know, genuinely going through a really, really rough time? And my answer was exactly as you're doing it. But we have to engage her in the conversation. So to me, what that looks like is when you have somebody who maybe their parent died, their spouse is ill, their children is. Their child is going through some sort of very significant event, you need. I mean, listen, we got it all. I know you do. Right. We have to engage them in the conversation. And here's how I would do that. I would say, hey, I. I know that this divorce is. Has blindsided you. I know that this is really difficult. I totally appreciate that you already took some leave. I hope it was useful to you. I want to have a meeting with you today to talk about how do we create a mutual engagement or agreement here that keeps you. Keeps us focused on the results that you are here to deliver in your role, but also is gracious to you during this time because the business doesn't stop. And I know you know that, and we have big deadlines coming up. But I also know we can't just ignore your life because you are who you are. When you walk through this door all the time, you don't check out of that. So why don't we talk about what that looks like?

Is that you going part time? Is that you working two days a week? Whatever the result is, what I want you to. Whatever our discussion is here is, what I want you to know is I will then figure out how to make sure that the business achieves its results.

So if you tell me today, no, I'm good. It's actually great. When I'm here, I can focus. I don't have to think about all of that, then I Want you to understand, I get it and I will continue to hold you accountable then to these goals.

But if you don't think you can achieve these goals, then today is the day for us to decide. And I might, maybe you need to go part time and I'm going to hire another part time person and then we'll decide in three months what the right thing is. We have to talk to people, but we can't talk to people just about their issue. We have to talk to them about their con, their challenge. But there's this goal, there are these results that they agreed to you. You have stuff that happens in your life as an entrepreneur, right? You don't get to just decide, well, I can't not work. I can't work for three months now. No, you have to figure out a solution because the results still need to be delivered. And I don't know why you wouldn't hold people to the same expectation. And if they are not able.

To do that, it's okay.

It doesn't make you a horrible person if you say to them, listen, I think that this fit right here isn't going to work.

Right. I think we struggle too much with just not. We. We think that being honest and direct is cruel. But I actually think it can be graceful and kind.

So if you have people on the team who are coming in telling you, I have ADD and I can't focus and I have too many things and I don't know what to first.

Do you have a medical diagnosis?

We have to know because before you start accommodating everybody, okay? And again, you don't have to be a jerk about it. Just say, okay. Our policy is that in order for us to look for accommodation, we first need to have medical diagnosis. And again, I would run that through your attorney before you make any of those decisions. The second thing is for people who are going through something in their life, they're normally doing great, but right now it's hard, honest conversation. And the third thing is the drama. It's the gossiper, it's the complainer, it's the person who is constantly walking around the office.

It's the pot stirrer. It's the people who argue, it's the people who are sleeping together and then they break up.

That is a conversation about our values.

So if I had a gossiper, I would bring that person in and I would say, I want you to understand that the way that I define gossip, which is honestly stolen straight from Dave Ramsey, he has a video called the Gossip Rant. If you haven't heard me talk about it. And gossip is talking to anybody about anything that they don't have the ability to solve.

So if you work in my business and I find out that you're talking about people and not to people, I would. I would address that, because that's in violation of our values.

And it's an unacceptable behavior.

So if. If you'd like to continue to talk about other people and use work time to do that, I can't stop you from doing that. But what I will tell you is that if you continue to do that, it is a performance issue, and we will move you through the progressive process, performance, disciplinary process, whatever your language is. If. If it continues.

If you continue in meetings to.

Talk about how things won't work, to talk about how things are stupid, to complain or point fingers about other people.

You can keep doing that. I just want you to understand that that's out of alignment of our values.

And that will become part of your performance issue. We. And we'll continue to document that. Now, in the Lead for Women program, there's a whole week that we talk about dealing with difficult people, difficult conversations, and difficult decisions. And we. I have a very specific process that I teach my clients for how to do all three, because what we have to remember is that the reason that you're likely allowing drama to consume the culture, the ecosystem, that you have is because you don't feel comfortable with how to address it.

But the truth is, addressing it is no different than addressing that, you know, someone missed a deadline.

But if we don't have our framework built, it's impossible, because then it just feels personal.

But anything that you tolerate in your business that is allowed to fester and grow will consume your ecosystem. Your culture, like black mold, consumes fruit. It doesn't take much. And the voice in the business that has to be the loudest in this case is yours, and not that person over there who is the rumor mill.

So if you need help with that, then you should totally be in Lead for Women, because I teach you how to do that. I'm giving you the tips, and I'm telling you what you can do right now. But I know that especially women, y', all, we're not taught how to have this conversation without not feeling like we're being a. Or we're not feeling like we're. We're being too aggressive or we're, you know, we're. We're taught to be people pleasers, to be codependents.

To just tolerate. And we're not going to do that. We can be kind and gracious and have very clear expectations. But if you stop holding those expectations even on these behaviors.

It will affect your culture and it will be very hard to hire high performers because high performers will want nothing to do with that. And you know I'm right, because you're a high performer. So why would you tolerate it from the people on your team?

Stop.

Get on the invitation list for Lead for Women. So today's Wednesday.

Lead for Women opens just for a minute for advanced registration on Friday. And it's only going to go to the women on our invitation list. You absolutely want to get on that so that you can see what these incredible offers are going to be for you to start or to register early? We start, we don't actually begin until October 9th at 11 o' clock Pacific. We meet every Wednesday for eight weeks. We're skipping the week of Thanksgiving. And I will be doing a deep dive and live coaching with you and other female entrepreneurs for that eight weeks. It's a, it's a program or a coach, a session that I'm leading specifically and I'm super excited for the opportunity to work with you. So go to the visionary CEO Forward sl Next step, get yourself on that list, the invitation list, so you have the opportunity to be part of the advanced registration. It's only going to be open for like 24 hours, yo, so you don't want to miss it. You don't want to miss this really cool opportunity. So thanks for tuning in. Today's bonus. I have another bonus coming for you tomorrow. See you then.