EP 55: Confronting the Unseen: Managing Employee Behavior You Haven’t Witnessed

CB_55. Dr. Renee Thompson Solo 7: Audio automatically transcribed by Sonix

CB_55. Dr. Renee Thompson Solo 7: this mp3 audio file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.

Dr. Renee Thompson:
Plants thrive and grow in a peaceful, nourished environment, right? Well, it's the same with human beings. But what if that environment is not so peaceful? What if it's toxic? Welcome to Coffee Break: Breaking the Cycle of Bullying in Healthcare – One Cup at a Time. In this podcast, you'll get practical, evidence-based strategies to help you cultivate and sustain a healthy and respectful work culture by tackling an age-old problem in healthcare: bullying and incivility. I am your host, Dr. Renee Thompson.

Dr. Renee Thompson:
Hi there! Welcome back to another episode of the Coffee Break podcast. I hope you're having a great week. I hope you're making progress in addressing disruptive behavior so that you can cultivate a healthy work culture. And I really hope that your ability to do that has been in part due to what you've learned on these podcasts. Today, you just get me, and I want to talk to you about something that is so common. It's almost every single time I talk to a leader during maybe a coaching call or for doing consulting; this issue comes up. You have an employee who seems like they're the role model for professionalism, but yet you have some of your employees coming into your office complaining about that employee. Let's say, and I'll give you an easy example, somebody curses like a truck driver or refuses to take assignments that they don't want, okay? But they never act that way in front of you, in front of you when you're there, again, they are the role model for professionalism. What I have learned in talking with leaders is that many times, leaders don't think they can do anything about that because "I haven't witnessed that behavior." I'm going to teach you that is not true. You can absolutely address their behavior even though you didn't witness it. So that's what we're going to talk about today. How do you address someone's behavior if you didn't witness it? And then, I'm going to give you a few tips on how to be aware of the landmines that you may step on when confronting this employee.

Dr. Renee Thompson:
Okay. So step number one, the first thing you need to ask yourself is, "do I believe that this is true?" Again, let's say you have people complaining to you, and you've never seen that behavior before, but some of the people who are complaining to you aren't the chronic complainers. These are employees who you trust. And you've heard this not just from one person, you've heard this from several people. You have to take a step back and ask yourself, "do I believe that this is true? Do I believe that they cursed a truck driver? Do I believe that there are times they refuse assignments and huff and puff down the hallway?" Whatever it is, get really clear on whether or not you believe it. Because if you believe it, have the conversation with that employee. Now I will tell you, I would rather you have the conversation and be wrong than not have a conversation and be right. So, have the conversation regardless, okay, and I'm going to give you some scripting that you can use.

Dr. Renee Thompson:
Okay, so the second step is you schedule a meeting with that employee, and you say this. "It has been brought to my attention on several occasions, numerous occasions, whatever that is that you have been," fill in the blank, "cursing," and if you can actually say this is the language, maybe not actually say it, dropping the f-bomb, the f-bomb, the whatever bomb it is, "in front of patients and in front of …, even in the break room that you've been cursing in anger, or that you've been refusing to take certain assignments, that you've been … You're very aggressive when you're talking to the charge nurse who made the assignments about getting your assignment changed," whatever the behavior is. So you got to get crystal clear on what that behavior is. "It's been brought to my attention on numerous occasions that you've been," fill in the blank. Now, before that employee can say a word, I want you to say this. "I have never seen this behavior in you," okay? Because you know right away. "Have you ever seen me behave this way?" You need to get there before they do. "It's been brought to my attention," blah blah blah. "I have never seen this behavior from you," and then dramatic pause, "but I believe that it's true." Okay. And that's a, look them in the eye, slow down your tone, "but I believe that it's true."

Dr. Renee Thompson:
Okay, so quick recap. There's a behavior that you keep hearing repeatedly from other people. And these behaviors are, you've got some of your employees who you trust. Now, it's a pattern. You have to ask yourself, "do I believe that this is true or could be true?" If it is, have a conversation with that employee. Bring them into your office and start with, "there's something I want to talk to you about. It's been brought to my attention on numerous occasions." Tell them what the behavior is. "I have never seen you do this, but I believe that it's true."

Dr. Renee Thompson:
Okay, from there you're going to get a couple of different responses. And these are what I refer to earlier as the landmines, you may step on. The first landmine, and we'll just call them the bamboozler. This is the person who gets extremely defensive, okay? Right away they may say, "who told you? Okay, they're lying. Okay, everybody's out to get me. Have you ever seen me do this?" And even though you may have said, "I've never seen you do this," they may bring it up again. "How could you think I'd be doing this? You've never seen me." All they're trying to do is bamboozle you. It's a distraction. Okay, they're on the defense because what they're going to try to do. And I'm not saying they're doing this deliberately, consciously, but what happens is, if you're not careful, you're going to start second-guessing yourself. Do I really know that this is true? I said I believed it, but I don't know. Maybe these people are just making it up or out to get this person. Whatever it is, be very careful. Just remember, when they start making you question yourself, just think, oh, wait a minute. That's a bamboozler. Don't let them bamboozle you. Okay, again, say, "you're right. I've never seen you do this, but I believe that it's true." And so you want to nip that in the bud right there, because that person going on and on is not helpful.

Dr. Renee Thompson:
And you have to be really careful that you don't get pulled into defending your decision to have a conversation with them, because the next landmine is the distractor, okay? They all go together. One big landmine, the distractor, basically will say, "aha, who told you? When did they tell you? What were they wearing? What did they have for breakfast the day that they told you?" Okay, and all they're doing is distracting you from them. They may even say," oh, you think I curse? Oh, you think I refuse assignments?" Whatever the behavior, it is. "What about Susan? She is always blah blah blah." So here's how you handle it. You don't get caught in that, I'm going to defend this. "I can't tell you. It's confidential." Don't even say any of that. Just look the person in the eye and say, "it doesn't matter who told me. It doesn't matter what they were wearing. It doesn't matter." Okay? "Whatever they say, this is about you." And when they start saying, "what about these other people? They're worse than me." "I'm not here to talk about these other people. I'm here to talk about you." You want to take all of that, because, remember, this is just a distraction to take the focus off of that person. And again, you have to be really careful as a leader because we start to second guess ourselves, and I want to help you to not do that.

Dr. Renee Thompson:
Okay. The third type of landmine is the tattletale. Now, it's so funny. I have two grandkids right now, they're three and six. And the last time I was visiting, my daughter does threaten time out. What's really funny, these kids, they can be screaming bloody murder, fighting with each other; as soon as you say time out, they stop. Like my daughter will say, knock it off, or you're going to go in time out. It's like this magic thing, time out. And if they don't listen right away, as soon as she starts the countdown. One, two. I'm telling you, it works because they don't want to go into time out. And I thought about this. Yeah, I would actually like to be put on time out. I would like to have to go sit on a chair, okay, not talk to anyone for a long time. Okay, I think it's like so many minutes per age. With Lucas, you can be three minutes. Olivia, now she is six, but what my daughter has started doing recently is threatening to put them into time out if they tattle on each other, because you know how kids are. Oh my gosh. Lucas did this, Olivia did that, back and forth. And my daughter's, "I'm not putting up with this. We don't tattle here." It doesn't even matter what they did. "We don't tattle. We take care of the issue ourselves." Okay, now you're talking a three-year-old and a six-year-old, mom has to enter, and dad has to intervene occasionally. But I don't know that we've stopped those behaviors as adults. People still run to the boss, and they tattle. And if they don't get what they want from the boss, they tattle to someone else. And here's something that happens frequently. Let's say you have an employee that acts in a way that's incredibly unprofessional. Maybe they're very self-serving. It's all about them. One of the resistors in your department, let's say you absolutely believe what people say about them, but you've never had a conversation with them. And through listening to this podcast, maybe you've been enrolled in some of our courses. We've done some work in your organization now, that's not okay. You have to engage in an honest and respectful conversation with people about their behavior, no matter how long they've been there, no matter what role they have. Okay. It's important that we have an honest, respectful conversation with people about their behavior. Don't assume that they realize that they're behaving in that way. If you have this conversation, "it's been brought to my attention. I believe it to be true. We're here to focus on you." Something might happen after. They may go to HR, or they may go to your boss and claim that you're bullying them. I've seen this happen so many times. What I'm going to recommend you do, because they're going to tattle on you. "My boss said this, and she's out to get me. She's bullying me." What I'm going to tell you is, especially if it's that person who's been there for a long time, maybe you've never had a conversation with them, before you have that sit-down conversation, especially about a behavior that you did not witness, go to HR. Tell HR, tell your boss. "Hey, heads up. I'm going to be talking with Tina about repeated patterns of disruptive behaviors that I have heard from people. I've never witnessed this, but I believe that she's doing this. So I'm going to have that conversation." Because there's a phenomenon that happens, and I've already talked to you about my grandkids, but I have two now adult daughters. Anytime you have, let's just say, two kids, and there's an incident, maybe they got into a fight, and they broke a vase. Okay, whoever gets some mom first or dad is believed more than the second person. So if Katie came to me and said, Mom, Courtney broke the face, and she told me this whole story, and then Courtney was going to defend herself to me, I'm gonna believe Katie just a little bit more. Why? It's because whoever gets to mom, dad, HR, first is believed just a little bit more, because that becomes the story. And then the next person has to almost defend their side of the story, but you're always going to be comparing it to what you heard first. It's just a natural phenomenon. Before you actually sit down and have a conversation with that employee, tell HR you're going to have the conversation. Tell your boss so that when you do have that conversation if they go and complain about you. They already know. You're like, "Yep, I expected this person to come into my room and tell me about what happened." You have to be very careful and thoughtful. It almost has to be, like, very intentional that you're like, "okay, I'm going to meet with them. This is the day that they're here. I'm going to meet with them on a Tuesday. That means I need to let HR know at least a few days ahead of time," because so many times, the first time you have a conversation with an employee about their behavior, they will pull the "my boss's the bully card."

Dr. Renee Thompson:
Okay? All right. Confronting disruptive behaviors is hard enough. It's even harder when you don't actually witness it. Now, I've framed this all under this umbrella of you've had multiple people coming to you, telling you about this person's behavior and ask yourself, "do I believe that it's true?" Then have the conversation. But sometimes then, that allows that person to continue behaving that way for a while until you feel that you've had enough Intel that now you're going to have that conversation. There's another approach that I want you to consider, and that is having like a conversation with that employee after any incident. Let's just say somebody told you and I'll give you a true story. Okay, oh my gosh. I don't make this stuff up. I had a manager tell me that they had a group of students who were doing a clinical rotation in her department, and the nursing instructor, actually, at the end of the day, connected with that manager and told the manager this, that one of the nurses, because it was witnessed by one of the students, actually changed the code on the staff bathroom door and told the students that they had to go to the public bathroom outside of the department two hallways down. And the instructor was obviously upset about that. Her students didn't know where to put their things. If they had to go to the bathroom, they had to go leave the department to go find the bathroom. And that manager had been off of the unit most of the day, that's why she didn't talk to her until later. So the manager and I talked about this, and it was actually the next morning, and she said, "what do I do?" I said, "okay, do you believe that this nurse would have done something like that?" She's, "yeah, maybe. I'm not really sure. Like sometimes, she can be a little snippy, but I don't know." I'm like, "all right, it's okay. You don't have to know for sure," because sometimes you're like, "oh heck yeah, I know that they would do this." Other times, like, "I'm not sure." So here's a technique you can use, it's one of my favorites. You bring that person into your office as soon as possible. Hopefully, it's within 24 hours. Okay, my golden rule, though, is you have to have a conversation with somebody within 72 hours. That's the ideal because that's when the brain remembers things the most. After 72 hours, your brain forgets, and it makes stuff up. Okay, your brain will make up things that never happened, especially if it's after 72 hours. Now I get it. I know somebody goes on vacation, it's not possible. Within as close as you can within 72 hours. And if it's an incident like this, if you can have that conversation within a few hours, that's ideal. But I taught her this technique, and I want you to use this, too, when the situation calls for it. So she brought this nurse into her office, and she said, "okay, we have to talk, we have to talk," and you have to be dramatic. So if you're listening to this, you can't see me. But if you're watching me, you can. I'm like, "oh my goodness, oh my goodness," not saying it, but acting like that. And then say, "okay, it was brought to my attention that you actually changed the code on our bathroom door and demanded that the students use a public bathroom." And then what you do is you put your hand on your heart and dramatic effect, say, "is this true? Is this true? Would you really do something like this?" So, you see, what this allows you to do, it allows you to bring it up without saying, I know you did this, especially if you didn't know and you don't have any proof, but it allows you to bring it up and confront them in a way that gets your point across. "This is ridiculous that you would do, is this true?" Again, you have to be an actor. And then after you say that, be quiet. Let them defend themselves. Okay, you don't go into how terrible, and I believe, you don't go into all that. You just say, "is this true?" And let them talk. Because what that does, whether or not that this person did this, again, they can deny it all day long, you confronted it. There might not be a resolution after that, but I guarantee the next time you have students in your department, they're going to think twice about changing the code on the bathroom door.

Dr. Renee Thompson:
Now, that brings up another issue. Sometimes, this happens where a leader will reach out to me asking for help about an employee, and they'll tell me certain things about what this employee has done, and they want to know how they can coach, how they can counsel. I'm going to tell you there are some things that people do. I don't know that I'd want them working in my department. I'll give you an example. There was a manager who reached out who said one of her nursing assistants and nurses got into an argument. What happened was the nurse kept asking the nursing assistant, "hey, did you do the blood sugar on this patient?" "Yes, I did the blood sugar." She's like, "where? I don't see a document." "I did the blood sugar. Okay, I checked the blood sugar. I checked." They got into an argument because the nurse's, "I need to give insulin, and I don't see a blood sugar," and then this nursing assistant admitted that she lied, that she never checked it. And the manager was asking me about how do you counsel someone like that. I said, "you don't. You fire them. I would never want somebody who would lie about checking a blood sugar." Okay. Think about this. There's, this is a character flaw. This nurse who changed the code on the bathroom door. This is a character flaw. A nurse who's refusing assignments. I don't know that's a character flaw, that might be something that's just the way they are. If they don't like their assignment, they give people a hard time. That is a, "we don't do that here. Help me to understand why you wouldn't. What's the reason?" And there are times where you have to figure it out. You engage in a conversation and you ask questions to really get to the "what is the root of the problem here?" But there are times when it's, "yeah, that's a character flaw. I don't want you working here being responsible for human life." So I always think, "if that was my mom. If my mom was a patient being cared for by this person, would that be okay with me?" If the answer is no, pretty much everybody is someone's mom, spouse, partner, child, grandchild. So I just want you to think about that.

Dr. Renee Thompson:
The issue is going back to what I said at the beginning. It's hard enough confronting people when you witness their behaviors. Okay, we've talked a lot about this, but what do you do if you don't even witness it? It's brought to your attention. You can still address it. But remember, you have to stop and think, "do I believe this?" Let's say so many people have mentioned this to you. Okay, it's probably true. You're going to have a conversation. What if it's a one-time incident? You can pull the, "is this true that you've done this?" The key is the more you're willing to confront someone about their behavior, whether you're right or you're not right, if your entire team gets used to, "hey, anytime there's an issue, you're going to get called into Kim's office." Okay. Just to say, "hey, this is what I heard. Not sure it's true or not, but we're going to have a conversation anyway." Don't fall into the trap of making sure that you have, like, video confirmation of someone's behavior because if you're waiting for, that might not happen. Although I've seen people actually deny, "that's not me on the video." "Yes, it is. Okay, it's the clothes you have on right now, and it is the same hair band," and whatever, but people will try to get out of getting in trouble. People don't want to get in trouble. I dpn't like to get in trouble. Most people don't want to get in trouble. So all the bamboozling, the distractions, the tattle tailing, that's all to protect themselves from getting into trouble.

Dr. Renee Thompson:
All right. I hope that helps you. Because, like I said, we need to start confronting these behaviors. And even though we might not have all the information, confront anyway and allow yourself to not always be 100% sure, but your team will then get used to the fact that, if our boss even suspects you're going to get called into the office to have a chit chat, okay, it can just be that. When you do that, you set that expectation that if there are any disruptive behaviors, we don't ignore them, we address them. Now, obviously, the goal is to have your team members address them with each other. You got to start somewhere, and that somewhere starts with you.

Dr. Renee Thompson:
Thank you so much for being here. I know you're busy. Thank you for taking the time to listen or watch this podcast. And if you like this podcast, if you could please rate, just post a review and share it with others. I'd be really grateful. That's how this all works. The more people who rate and review, the more likely this podcast is going to get out there to the masses, to the people who really need to hear these strategies. Again, I want to thank you for everything that you do to address workplace bullying and incivility so that we can cultivate healthy, respectful, and professional work cultures. Thanks, everyone. Take care.

Dr. Renee Thompson:
Thank you for listening to Coffee Break: Breaking the Cycle of Bullying in Healthcare – One Cup at a Time. If you found this podcast helpful, we invite you to click the Subscribe button and tune in every week. For more information about our show and how we work with healthcare organizations to cultivate and sustain a healthy work culture free from bullying and incivility, visit us at HealthyWorkforceInstitute.com. Until our next cup of coffee, be kind, take care, and stay connected.

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