Advice on managing difficult staff

[Cluedoh]

I have joined a possible nightmare team.

Some applied for my job and didn’t get through, so they’re unhappy “outsiders” have joined and they need to train up the new staff. This is how recruitment works in our company. There’s a bit of resentment.

One member of staff has an entourage with the team and finds it difficult to convey management messages to them. They would rather say “yes” to team requests against business guidance and be their friends. Eg sending inappropriate ranting emails to the CEO to ignore policy, instead of managing the team’s expectation. It’s not what I expect from a manager.

Another is not concise in communicating to a detrimental degree eg stakeholders have stopped working with us because they’re spending too much time clarifying what they need and it still isn’t being delivered. I have noticed they tend to make 30 minute meetings take twice as long by going on tangents. They sends novels through email, sometimes sending upwards of 5 of these long emails per hour. It amounts to a waste of staff time to root through.

I clearly need to manage performance but ultimately it will piss the team off due to the odd dynamics. Any advice on landing changes correctly?

Any change often causes mass upset. My staff are all over 55, and trying to implement something new is like pushing water uphill with a fork.

I find it helps to say "I appreciate that things were done that way in the past and that worked, but now we've introduced X, we really need to do things Y way for the two to be most efficient". And repeat.

And most importantly, target the main ringleader/Queen Bee. Once you've got them on board, it does make life easier.

I find your post about over 55s quite offensive previous poster. If all the over 55s in my dept downed tools, there would be literally no service at all (clinical healthcare NHS). So maybe ponder that some before being so ageist.

Divide and conquer!

Have one to ones with them all to listen to their feedback about how the business is going and what their individual ambitions are.

What goes well for them, what could change to achieve business objectives?

Are they clear about what the business objectives are?

Make it clear you'll support them to deliver what they need to do and set some individual SMART objectives.

Keep having those one to ones at least monthly as well as team meetings to celebrate wins and working out what you can jointly improve.

Make sure you feed back areas for improvement - eg the slow person who's not delivering needs to speed up, but you need to present her with evidence and set a clear and fair objective for that, giving her the support she needs.

We've had a similar situation at work a few years back. Small team, internal applicants that everyone felt were well deserving and ultimately someone brought in from outside.
She's came in all guns blazing and was changing things with an air of blame to the team. She seemed quite confrontational and rubbed some people up the wrong way and ruffled feathers. (Mainly because as a team, people don't like hearing from an "outsider" that something they've done for decades makes them incompetent and slow and all else).

My advice would be to potentially come in knowing that things need to be implemented to improve service but not to go in with the attitude of what a troublesome or problematic team they are and how you obviously have to fix them. You want them on your side for managing change and improving the service. Not against you with their defensive feathers up because they see that you're thinking they're all a nightmare.

Our woman eventually won over the team by working WITH them, rather than seeing them as a problem to solve. They're people too and how they're doing things now isn't something to beat them down about. Find positives in it, use those positives going forward and pull them into finding ways to improve. You'll get further if they respect you and see you as part of said team!

Good luck!

And this is how you'll get their respect!

Okay so you have 1. Cool Boss/Rage Against the Machine Manager who's making a big show of speaking truth to power, and 2. Strategically Incompetent Keyboard Warrior.

I mean, the emails alone are Management issues alone. There is no way it's appropriate that a manager is sending rants to the CEO and refusing to implement policies--that's insubordination and probably really confusing for her direct reports. And the second one just sounds like a mess.

As you say, it's pretty straightforward to manage BUT I would tread very carefully and make sure you have senior management's full support and back-up for managing performance, up to dismissal if nothing improves. I'm really uncomfortable that this behaviour is so entrentched---it indicates that upper management is afraid of these people or that there are alliances that you don't know about. Without the support of senior management , any steps you take to manage these bananas could blow up in your face and then suddenly they'll "feel bullied".

Sorry that makes me sound horrible--of course do the one-on-ones and offer support but still it's worth checking in with upper management to ensure they're supporting you.

If you've only recently joined, I would just take a step back and not rush into making wholesale changes so soon. What's the rush?

You're seeing all these idiosyncrasies through a microscope as you've only just joined. You need to get used to them and vice versa. As stated above, meet each of your reports and show them you're interested in their roles, their challenges and their frustrations plus any good bits. Then pause for breathe and decide what needs to change. Don't make all the changes at once, pick your battles and don't be tempted to micromanage them.

Thanks for the great advice. I’ve written a list of changes I’d like to implement - I’ll start to think of feasible dates for implementation. I don’t intend to do anything soon, will definitely take the divide/conquer approach. Yes if previous/current senior managers didn’t want to document the bad behaviour and take action, I’m not going to set myself up for failure and try it myself! I do think the team has secret group chats, but I don’t think any have alliances with the senior managers. I think they just cba to deal with it.