Grapevine – The Blog

In case you are interested, our next teleseminar is on 10^th Feb on Dealing With Difficult People.

I’ll be covering a whole range of really simple easy things you can do with

• negative people,
• bullies,
• nit-pickers,
• thick-skinned insensitive people

and much more.  To book your place on this or any of our teleseminars use this link:

http://www.vinehouse.co.uk/teleseminars3.htm

To get your discount for several teleseminars use this coupon code JAN19TELE

It’s valid till the end of January.

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To add your comments and discuss the ideas in this email please go to my blog:

A few weeks ago I received a harrowing email from a Grapevine reader that completely grabbed my attention. I have made a few changes to keep the identity private.

A Really Difficult Problem

“I was hoping to seek your expert advice on a matter that has been bothering us. I manage an office of 10. One of my subordinates (an efficient worker) was recently diagnosed with a deadly disease. In my country the disease is much feared. None of my staff have a clue about it.

We are in a fix as to how to handle the situation. We can’t allow the person to continue without letting the other staff know about the condition, as the disease is feared to spread. We can’t even ask the person to leave, the employee is the only bread winner. My heart goes out to the person. We are based in XXXX, where lawsuits aren’t really a problem, so that is not what we are scared of. Can you help!”

Fortunately most of us will never be faced with such a dreadful dilemma. I spent a long time thinking about what to do and how I could possibly help this person.

I knew what I thought he should do: help the colleague as much as possible and educate his other colleagues. But I was also aware that it is very easy to give this advice from my safe little study where I do not have to deal with the cultural issues (which can be very hard).

What also preyed on my mind was the death, about 15 years ago, of a very dear friend of mine, from what I suspect was the same disease. Because of the stupid social prejudices of the time, our friend didn’t tell us he was dying, so we didn’t have a chance to say goodbye.

Whilst I know he got the best medical treatment that was available at the time, I still deeply regret that circumstances meant he couldn’t tell us.

The more I thought about this, the more I realized that our correspondent was likely to be a kind, caring person. Otherwise he would have simply fired the individual concerned. Perhaps even more importantly, I wanted his colleague and family to get the support they need.

So I cast about for examples of situations where people had done the right thing even though it was hard for them.

An Example

My mother’s mother, when advanced in years (certainly drawing her pension), was walking down the High Street one day and saw a ‘yob’ beating up a young Indian chap. She rushed up to him, brandishing her umbrella and shouted: ‘Put him down!’.

The ‘yob’ dropped his victim in surprise. They both stared at my grandmother. ‘Well run, you fool!’ She shouted, more on-the-ball than these men about a quarter of her age.

Over the years, I remember many occasions when my father made it quite clear to me that standing up for what was right was the correct course of action and nothing else was acceptable.

I knew he was right and that I had to give this advice, but had a concern that it would appear easy for me sitting in my comfortable office not having to live with the consequences. I sent some examples from my grandparents and from my father in the hope this would give our dear correspondent the support he needed.

A Week of Silence

I heard nothing for seven days. It was a long and worrying wait. Even though we had only exchanged a few emails I felt that this person was a friend in great need and I was really worried, for him and for his colleague. I wondered if I had gone too far and offended him.

Then, on 22nd Dec I had a really bad day. My mother-in-law was staying with us and she had not put the top on some soup properly so, when I reached for it, I spilled it all over my brand new fridge. I then had to spend half an hour cleaning it all out. As a consequence of rushing to leave I forgot two parcels I needed to post.

We left late. Then we got stuck in bad traffic. Then my mother-in-law decided that she wasn’t hungry and didn’t want to go out for lunch as we had planned. Then she changed her mind again. So I ended up missing my lunch (a nightmare scenario for me.)

When I got home I hastily wrapped the parcels I had forgotten from earlier and rushed to the post office to find it closed. I called Charlie to get directions to another, but the directions were wrong. Eventually I finally found one that was open, just in time to see the postman leaving. So I had missed the post. I felt very annoyed.

As I stood grumbling to myself in the queue waiting for a woman who took a full 10 minutes, I absent-mindedly checked my emails and saw one from my dear friend. Here it is:

The Rersponse

“Dear Nancy,

I cannot tell you how much I appreciate, you taking out so much time in writing back. Especially to someone whom you hardly know! The Lord has surely blessed you with a very kind and patient heart.

Thank you a million for the words of encouragement and wisdom. I must apologize for not having responded to you any earlier. But I surely spent the week working out and deliver what I now firmly believe is the right way to handle this situation. I actually took the liberty of sharing extracts from your mail with the other decision makers here. In a gist here is what we decided & actioned:

1. The Colleague can continue to work with us as long as possible

2. The rest of the staff were apprised about the situation and also educated

3. Their support was sought in ensuring that the disease or the matter be never discussed with the colleague, and every attempt be made to make the colleague feel comfortable.

4. Also take certain educational sessions on necessary precautions that need to be taken compulsorily

5. Provide all the necessary medical reimbursements to handle the course of the medication

6. All informed were sworn into maintaining absolute privacy about the matter. Its not to be discussed for any reason whatsoever”

The Best Christmas Present

I can’t tell you how happy I was to get that email. To know that someone had taken the  challenging but right path, in spite of the personal difficulties for him was truly inspiring. That’s why I’m sharing it with you.

I hope you don’t ever have to deal with anything like this, but we do all have smaller situations when we have the opportunity to do something to make others’ lives better, even though there is a cost to us (financial or otherwise).

Bullying

Recently I’ve been helping someone deal with being bullied his their manager. Happily he was able to get a transfer to another department. The question was, should he do something about the way the manager behaved (it was pretty bad) to try to reduce the chances of it happening to someone else?

And if so, what?

He just wanted to get away from the situation and leave it behind him, which is understandable, but in this case that means it is almost certain someone else will run into the same problem (we already know who that will be).

Do You Have An Opportunity?

What can you do to right a wrong? If we all did this on behalf of our fellow creatures, I suspect there would be fewer injustices in the world and perhaps more happiness.

Have a go.

Tags: Moral standards

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 21st, 2010 at 12:50 pm and is filed under Communication, Improving Performance, Management Skills. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.