Page 141 - How America's Best Places to Work Inspire Extra Effort in Extraordinary Times

128B RE-ENGAGE

employee recognition because we identified that as an area where
we needed improvement. We also train managers on generational
differences.
Finally, because we weren’t effective in selecting the right person
for the job in some cases, we started training managers in behavioral
interviewing techniques.

Q: How do you know all this training is working?
Lang: We know because we can see every day that managers are do-
ing a better job. We can see they are not avoiding confrontations.
They come to me for coaching, knowing they have to have a difficult
conversation and often they are dreading it. They ask if I will walk
them through how to deal with a tough issue with an employee or
sometimes with a peer, physician, or patient.
Beyerman: After attending training, I have managers who come in to
see me for the same kinds of discussions to prepare for difficult meetings
with employees. I have started suggesting that managers use the term
“learning conversations” rather than “difficult conversations” because
that’s what they are really trying to do—explore and uncover the em-
ployee’s perspective on why a performance or relationship problem ex-
ists. Usually, there’s something both the manager and employee needs to
know. I’ve been meeting with a manager recently who comes in and
tells me about an employee she needs to confront. I think she already
knows what she is supposed to do and say to this employee, but talking
it over with me gives her a rehearsal opportunity. She worries about
the risk involved—what the employee might think of her afterward
and the risk that she might lose control of her own feelings. So we focus
on keeping the discussion an interrogatory process, and on discussing
the impact of the employee’s behavior on colleagues and patients. We
always try to get managers to end the discussion with a request that
the employee change some specific behavior, so these discussions help
managers get clear about what that request will be. So the training we
do introduces the concepts, but these follow-on meetings let us know
that managers have taken the ideas and methods to heart and are try-
ing to make them work on a daily basis.