Our Employees' Behaviori is a Reflection of our Management Style

Managing people and getting them to do things the way you, the owner, wants them done is always a challenge. People have to want to do what is expected of them because the days of flogging insubordinate workers are long gone! On the other hand, we need to distinguish between being friendly and being a friend to our employees. There is a huge difference between caring for your people and in coddling to them.


As most of you know, in my House Cleaning Biz 101 course's THREE Rs OF EMPLOYEE DEVELOPMENT, I suggest that while our business is cleaning homes for consumers, OUR job as managers/owners is "people manufacturing". SInce you cannot build a quality product with wrong-fitting and/or poor quality parts, you have to start by ensuring you have the right parts to end up with a quality product. It all begins with the 5-step recruting process in order to find the best components on which to build your organization. Hiring on gut instinct rather than utilizing a scientifically-proven, quantifiable system is a hit and miss proposition and one which more often than not leads us to frustration and disappointment.

Generally speaking, our employees' behavior is a reflection on our management style and ability - like it or not; accept it or not. I applaud Lisa Kirkpatrick for her attitude on this issue. Owners who complain about short tenured employees should take a peek at http://www.bucketsnbows.com/meet_our_staff.htm and witness a large organization owned by Debbie Sardone and see and hear some amazing overall staff longevity. This has not happened by accident and unless we all learn the importance of the second R (Employee RELATIONS) we will never, ever be able to grow a substantial business.

Other great examples are Tom Stewart of Castle-Keepers (http://www.castle-keepers.com/), David Kiser of Champagne Services (http://www.champagneservices.com/employees), Richard Wilson of Brittany Maids (http://www.brittanymaids.com/aboutus.html) and Amanda Collucci of Clean4Me (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XcJBl_G0nBY) -- just to point out a few.

One of my favorite books on the subject is, strangely enough, entitled "The Management Secrets of Atilla the Hun." (http://www.amazon.com/Leadership-Secrets-Attila-Wess-Roberts/dp/0446391069), The author Wes Roberts uses tongue-in-cheeck analogies of this once-feared leader of the marauding Huns to show how toughness can be combined with compassion and fairness to make a great leader with hordes of loyal followers.

Another great book entitled UNLOCK BEHAVIOR, UNLEASH PROFITS is absolute must reading for anyone who needs to hire, manage and retain employees. It begins with the assumption that people don't always do what you tell them to do. But it takes you step by step how to manage by A, B, C (Anticident, Behavior and Consequences). The Anticident is the training and instruction you pjrovide; the Behavior is what the employee exhibits and the Consquence is what the employee gets as a result of performing the Behavior. I suggest you check out my Blog at http://gary-goranson.blogspot.com/2010/10/managing-by-b-c.html for a more indepth explanation of the concept.

Billy Ray Cyrus is now bemoaning the fact that he treated Miley more like a friend than a parent. We are not doing any favors to our employees by emulating this mistake with them. But this does not mean we don't want to care about our employees anymore than being a good parent does not mean ruling our chilcren with an iron fist.

Just as our kids will let us down now and then, so will oor employees. And just as we cannot allow unruly children to run our households, neither can we permit unnacceptable behavior from our employees dictate how our business functions. If you are going to build a large, successful and highly profitable cleanking business, you need to come to grips with the fact that you are going to have employee-relatec challenges from time to time.