A great point, by being tough and having the difficult conversations you are able to quickly streamline the team so that those who buy in stay onside and you weed out those that arent strong or focused enough.
Sadly you dont often see this happening in the real world, but then thats the choice that people can make about their business or the management team they employ and I certainly wont be allowing that to happen in my business.
Thanks for the focus!!

Tom

I think this article relates well to one that Tim Ferriss put up the other day called “The Benefits of Pissing People Off”.

Here’s the link
http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2009/11/25/the-benefits-of-pissing-people-off/

I really enjoyed this article and yours is directly related.

To quote the quote Tim did in his article ““To avoid criticism, do nothing, say nothing, and be nothing.” – Elbert Hubbard

Cheers,

Brad

I am sharing this to my friends, and also I added your feed to my reader for updates of new posts.

Is there anyone who could share also their knowledge with me on this relevant topic? I am open for more ideas.

Every manager should begin with questions.

“What’s going on with this?”
“Why is it not going as I expected?”
“What’s your feeling or opinion about this?”
“If you were in my position how would you handle it?”

Assume that your employees are intelligent and employ that intelligence. If you make assumptions, and repremands exclusive of questions you look foolish, weak, and disrespectable. First find out what they’re thinking, THEN tell them what you want to accomplish. Then ask them how they would handle that.

Managers often look ridiculous because they make literal demands, things don’t go as expected, and then they blame the people who were taught to behave like frightened robots. They fear you, then they behave like robots.

They didn’t join you to conflict with you, so treat them like team members and business partners. You’ll get the results you always wanted when you trust people to take responsibility and use the brains God gave them.

SteveNewdell2009@yahoo.com

If you take bad clients as a freelancer is robbs you of your time to do stuff which is really more important. Like creating more leverage in marketing.

The clients that want the lowest price just demand the most, change headlines, pay late, mail late and don’t share test results.

Markus Trauernicht
Copywriter in Germany

The other thing I found was that people don’t work as well if you don’t spell out exactly what you mean but instead expect them to read your mind and understand your “short hand” in your emails!

Let me share a story on how the whiny employee who “I have to do everything!” suddenly saw the light.

Karla, my Sr. Receptionist, came into my office one afternoon, complaining about how the other 2 members on the reception team never did anything.

“I have to get all the phone calls, proof all the reservations, do all the check-ins”, etc. You get the idea.

So I stood up and said, “Well, that’s definitely not good. We’re going to sort this out immediately”.

We arrived at the Reception desk, at which point I told the other two girls to go home, take half a day, and we’d cover it with admin leave comp.

They were delighted.

I turned to Karla, who stared at me in disbelief.

“I will have not have dead productivity in my hotel. I will not have people here who are not doing their jobs, and hindering star performers. If they are not doing anything, and leaving it all to you to be done, I see no point in having the girls here on shift. Now the desk is all yours. Make it happen!”

Karla struggled that day. She nearly quit because of the monumental load placed on her shoulders. The hotel received numerous complaints that day, regarding the poor performance of the Reception Desk.

But you know what?

I never heard Karla utter the word “me” again; she became the biggest team player you’d ever seen, after that episode, and only then could she rightfully be called a Sr. Receptionst.

The lesson is much analogous to what Todd put forth. In this case, not only was I prepared to lose her, but I was also willing to take in the complaints as circumstantiated “one off” incidents of the day, in order to see her shine if she were to stay.

It worked.

-Josh Harris