Well Managed

What To Do (and What NOT To Do!) When One of Your Employees Starts Crying (part 4)

Here are parts one, two and three of this series.

There are three levels of crying intensity. Here they are, in increasing order of severity:

1. Tears and runny nose
2. Constricted throat, making it difficult to speak
3. Sobbing

Let's look at each of these levels one at a time:

 

Dealing with Level 1 is straightforward: Hand the employee a box of tissues and give her reassurance each time she apologizes. Usually you’ll get two or three apologies before she realizes everything’s okay and then you just carry on with the meeting. You don’t have to wait for the tears to stop, in fact you shouldn’t. She’d much rather focus on the issue at hand than on the fact that she’s crying. One very smart, very competent woman told me that when she cries at work she wants to tell her boss,

“Don’t worry about it. I’m not that upset, I’m just crying. Let’s keep going with the meeting.”

Some time ago I had a young manager come to my office to tell me about a serious personal situation that was going to affect her work. As she talked, tears started running down her cheeks. She expressed embarrassment; I reassured her. She apologized; I again reassured her. She then carried on as though nothing was happening. I thought she handled the situation maturely and professionally. It actually increased my already high opinion of her. She showed good composure in difficult circumstances.

 

Level 2 is more complicated because it’s hard to converse with someone who’s having difficulty speaking. If the employee is choked up and can’t talk, what you want to do is take the pressure off her. Don’t just sit and stare at her. It helps to talk while she tries to collect herself. One thing that has worked well for me is to tell a story that is relevant but not upsetting. There’s almost always something in my background as a manager that comes to mind. There’s something about chatting a bit without asking the employee any questions that gives her some space to get herself under control. At some point the employee will usually make a comment in response to some aspect of the story and if her voice is normal and unconstricted you know you’re out of the woods and can pick up where you left off.

 

I've only had employees reach Level 3 – outright sobbing – a few times and it was always about a personal issue as opposed to a performance issue. What I ended up doing was giving the employee a big hug, after getting her permission to do so, and that really seemed to help a lot. I realize this is probably contrary to what your HR director would advise, but in those instances it was clearly the right thing to do as a human being and as a manager and in each case it seemed to do the employee a world of good. A good hug is wonderful medicine and one of the nicest things people can do for each other. It’s a shame hugging has become so disfavored, which, of course is the result of some really lousy managers using hugging as an excuse for groping.

 

Whether it’s a good idea for you to give a crying employee a hug depends entirely on your ability to judge whether it will seem like a comfort or an imposition to the employee. If you’re not confident of your ability to make that judgment call, don’t do it. Plus, only do it if you are comfortable doing so, if hugging comes naturally to you. If you feel awkward giving a hug, your employee will definitely feel awkward getting it.

Well, that’s it for the “99 Tears” series of posts. One of my goals for this blog is to give new managers the kind of information I wish someone had given me years ago. I hope these tips prove useful for you (though not too often!).

What To Do (and What NOT To Do!) When One of Your Employees Starts Crying (part 3)

Here are parts one and two of this series.

When one of your employees starts crying in your office, bear in mind that it shouldn’t upset you or throw you off track. If you have any preconceptions or prejudices that cause you to emotionally overreact to crying, get over them or learn to see past them. Crying is simply an involuntary biological reaction. There’s no reason for you to back down and become placating, nor is there any reason for you to become angry or exasperated.

It will only make the situation worse if you allow yourself to be flustered in any way. Be patient, be understanding, and keep your composure.

Knowing how to handle this situation is part of your job as a manager. It’s a professional skill you need to acquire just like you need to learn how to analyze performance data and prepare a budget. It’s also an opportunity to be a good person, to treat another human being with compassion and respect.

The main thing is to maintain the baseline demeanor you had before the crying started. For example:

• If you were disciplining the employee, maintain the same basic sense of firmness and seriousness. (This assumes you weren’t being cruel. There’s never a place for cruelty in management. If you made the employee cry by being cruel, shame on you. Apologize for doing it and learn to deliver discipline appropriately.)
• If you were discussing a workplace conflict in which the employee was involved, remain interested but neutral.
• If the employee had come to you with a personal issue, remain compassionate and professional.

Your goal is to help the employee move past the tears. You want to refocus the meeting on the underlying issue and  pick up where you left off with the same demeanor you had before the crying started.

The employee will almost always feel uncomfortable about crying. This can range from feeling mildly embarrassed to feeling absolutely mortified and humiliated. They’ll often apologize over and over again, or express how horrified they are to find themselves crying in front of the boss.

Why does the employee feel bad about crying? There are several reasons.

• In our culture, we’re generally uncomfortable with crying in front of anyone except our closest friends and relations.
• We’re especially uncomfortable about crying in the workplace because it’s seen as “unprofessional.”
• If you can’t stop yourself from crying, you’re not in control of your own actions, and that is inherently disturbing.
• For employees who want to get promoted, they’re afraid you’ll see them as being unqualified for leadership positions.

The crying creates a bad dynamic because:

1. The employee was already feeling bad about whatever caused her to start crying in the first place, and
2. Now she also feels bad about crying in front of her boss.

Your job at this point is to remove the second issue, to help her stop feeling bad about crying. There are two reasons for doing this.

• You’re a good boss and you care about your employees. You should always seize opportunities to help your employees feel less sad and more happy. No act of compassion is ever wasted, and every moment of kindness makes our world a better place.
• You need to get the meeting back on track. The “I-feel-bad-about-crying” issue is an unnecessary and unproductive distraction. The sooner you can make the crying a non-issue, the sooner both of you can refocus on the real issue you were discussing in the first place.

The way you do this is pretty simple: just keep giving the employee reassurance until she stops apologizing for crying. At the same time, through your tone of voice, body language, and facial expression, demonstrate that you’re not getting angry, flustered, impatient, etc. In other words, serve as a role model for the message, “It’s okay that you’re crying, nothing’s changed, we can be comfortable with this situation.”

Be patient. Every time the employee apologizes or expresses a sense of shame, give another message of assurance. Here are some examples of useful messages:

• “It’s fine”
• “Please don’t worry about it”
• “Take your time”
• “It’s perfectly natural, we’re talking about a sensitive matter”

Don’t make the employee feel pressured or rushed because that will just make it harder for her to get her emotions under control.

In the next and final post in this series, we'll talk about three levels of crying and how to handle each one.

Here is part four of this series.

What To Do (and What NOT To Do!) When One of Your Employees Starts Crying (part 2)

Here is part one of this series.

In this post, we’re going to talk about one of the most important things NOT to do when an employee cries:

Don’t let crying, in itself, affect your thinking. Don’t let it change your opinion of the employee, don’t let it alter your judgment about the situation being discussed, and don’t let it affect your decision-making.

Remember, in this series of posts we’re talking about the simplest workplace crying scenario: an employee starts crying while talking with you in the privacy of your office or a meeting room. The employee is either upset about a performance problem you’re discussing or about a personal or workplace issue. Trickier situations like uncontrolled crying in an open work area or an employee who cries frequently will be discussed in future posts.

Before going on, we might as well acknowledge that the crying employee is likely to be a woman. In truth, I can’t recall ever having a male employee cry in my office. So in these posts I will refer to the crying employee as “she” and “her” because that’s what my experience has been. I’ve talked to a number of other managers and they confirmed that has been their experience as well, other than isolated instances of male employees getting a bit teary-eyed.

At this point I’d like to provide you with a link to the definitive study defining the differences between men and women when it comes to crying and what causes those differences. But I can’t, because as far as I can tell that study doesn’t exist. It appears this stuff is still pretty much a mystery as far as science is concerned.

However, I think a few basic facts are clear:

• Everyone cries sometimes, but some people cry more easily than others.
• A higher percentage of women cry easily while a higher percentage of men cry rarely.
• To put it another way, some women hardly ever cry and some men cry easily, but on average women tend to cry more easily than men.

I suspect this is largely genetic. It’s similar to the fact that some women are tall and some men are short, but on average women tend to be shorter than men.

The genetic difference is then reinforced with social conditioning. Because boys are given stronger social messages that it’s not okay to cry, by the time they become men they’ve learned how to control the impulse to cry. Plus for most men the impulse is not very strong.

On the other hand, it’s more socially acceptable for girls to cry, so many women enter adulthood without having learned how to control the impulse to cry. Plus, for many women it’s just about impossible for them to control it no matter what they do. It’s simply an involuntary biological response.

However, as a society we don’t see crying as an involuntary biological response, we load all kinds of negative cultural prejudices onto it. These prejudices boil down to this idea:

crying = weakness

Managers who have this belief react to crying employees in one of two ways, both of which are misguided and ineffective.

The first way is for managers to see a crying employee as a pathetic damsel in distress who needs to be babied and rescued. These managers are often so uncomfortable in the presence of a crying employee that they will do or say almost anything to make the employee feel better and stop crying. So basically they cave in. They might give the employee what she wants or take her side in a dispute. Or they might take back the critical comments they were making about the employee’s performance or quality of work, and assure the employee that “everything’s fine, don’t worry.”

The second way is for managers to react with contempt. These managers are also very uncomfortable in the presence of tears and they deal with their own emotional discomfort by judging the employee harshly. They often rule out the employee as a candidate for promotion into management. They also tend to dismiss what the employee tells them, or to assume that the underlying problem is caused by the employee’s own hysterical behavior. 

These are both bad outcomes. In both cases, the manager has overreacted to the crying and as a result has reached a bad decision or an inaccurate conclusion.

One of the recurring themes of this blog is that you can become a better manager by learning to look past prejudices, conventional wisdom, and all the other filters that cloud our ability to perceive situations clearly. If you can learn to see things clearly for what they are, you’ll understand them better and manage more effectively.

So when an employee starts crying in your office, the main thing to keep in mind is that nothing much has changed. Whatever issue you were discussing – a performance issue, a personal issue, a workplace conflict – is still there. It still needs to be addressed and resolved. If you can see crying as an involuntary biological response and remain perfectly comfortable and composed in the presence of the tears, then you’ll be able to compassionately help the employee get past the crying so the two of you can successfully complete your meeting.

We’ll go into greater detail about how to do that in the next post.

Here are parts three and four of this series.

What To Do (and What NOT To Do!) When One of Your Employees Starts Crying (part 1)

Today we’re going to talk about what to do, and what to avoid doing, when one of your employees starts crying. We’ll focus on the simplest scenario: you and the employee are in your office alone, or perhaps with one other manager present. In a future post I’ll cover more advanced situations like uncontrollable sobbing in the middle of an open work area.

The employee might start crying because of what you’re saying, for example if you’re being critical of the employee’s work or are disciplining the employee. Or the employee might be in your office because she needs to talk about an upsetting workplace issue or personal issue. The basic advice provided in this post applies in either case.

You must be prepared in advance by always keeping a box of tissues in your office. This might seem like a minor thing but it’s actually critically important. A box of tissues is an essential tool that every competent manager must possess. If you don’t have one, buy one today. And don’t buy some cheapo ones either, get the top of the line. Nice thick, smooth tissues that you can blow your nose into with confidence. Nothing says “I’m a bad boss” like handing a sobbing employee a crummy box of discount tissues that feel like fine-grit sandpaper and turn into a blob of mush as soon as they get wet.

When the employee starts crying, the first thing you do is get out the box of tissues and place it in front of her. Don’t get flustered or nervous. Take your time, do it slowly. And don’t shove it at her or slam it down in front of her, place it nicely in front of her with a kind look on your face.

This accomplishes several things. First, it gives you a little time to think before you start talking. No matter how many times you face this situation it’s a bit of a surprise and it can throw you a little off-balance. So while you’re getting out the tissues you can start gathering your thoughts about what you’re going to do.

Second, it’s a polite a way of acknowledging that the employee is crying and it shows that you care. Providing tissues is a very practical way of helping the employee handle a difficult experience.

Third, it demonstrates that you’re a competent, experienced manager who knows how to handle a sensitive situation. This is important because the employee is going to feel really lousy about breaking into tears in front of his boss. She’s likely to be shocked and embarrassed at what is happening. If she can at least feel confident about your ability to handle the situation professionally it will make her feel better. If you get flustered and don’t know what to do it makes things worse for everyone.

Now you can really see why you need to have a box of tissues handy. If you have to say “excuse me” and bolt out of the office to borrow one from someone else then you’re getting things off to a really lousy start and making yourself look like a rookie.

I keep the tissues in a drawer in my desk. I usually meet with employees at the conference table in my office. That way, I can get up from the table, walk over to the desk, get out the box, walk back to the table, sit down, and place the box in front of the employee. This not only gives me time to think, it also gives the employee time to pull herself together. In fact, sometimes that’s all it takes. The employee says “thank you,” the crying is over, and the meeting carries on.

But sometimes the crying is going to last for awhile. We’ll discuss what to do then in the next post in this series.

In the meantime, one final note on how to use tissues effectively: I don’t believe in placing a box of tissues on the table at the beginning of a meeting when you think the employee might end up getting upset and crying. First of all, if the employee doesn’t end up crying I think you end up looking kind of foolish, and it also comes across as sort of an insult to the employee. Second, it sends the message “I’m such a mean boss that I make people cry all the time and now I’m going to make you cry.” So I say: keep the box out of sight until you need it.

Here are parts two, three and four of this series.

Make Sure Your Employees Don't Talk Like a Pirate to Your Customers

I didn’t have much time for lunch today, so I zipped over to the local Jimmy John's sandwich shop to pick up a sub. Free plug: they make a darn fine sandwich. The bread is good, which I think is the secret to a tasty sub. It’s lightly sweet and has just the right chewiness.

Anyway, I ordered my usual, the "J.J. Gargantuan," which basically means they take every single ingredient they can find in the shop and stuff it into a bun. I paid for the sandwich and walked down to the pick-up window.

After a few minutes, the woman there looked at me and said, "Aarh?"

It was a noisy shop and I assumed I had missed something. I replied, "What?"

She repeated, "Aarh?"

Now I was really stumped. I felt kind of stupid, because she clearly felt that she was asking me a perfectly reasonable question, but I had no idea what she meant. The thought crossed my mind: "Is it Talk Like a Pirate Day? I thought it was next week. And if it is today, what does ‘Aarh?’ mean in Pirate talk?"

What I said out loud was, "I’m sorry, what?"

She leaned toward me and, making an effort to speak a little more loudly and clearly, said, "Gar?"

Now the light dawned: she was referring to my "Gargantuan" as a "Gar" and was inquiring whether I was the fool who’d ordered the monster sandwich. So I said, "Yes," hefted my sub off the counter, and headed back to work.

This is a minor example of a major problem: employees using internal jargon when communicating with customers. They make sandwiches fast at Jimmy John’s, everybody’s hustling, so it’s perfectly reasonable that they’ve developed short nicknames for their sandwiches. If I had to say "Gargantuan" twenty times a day I’d get tired of it too. But insider lingo is no good when you’re talking to an outsider. Even if the sandwich-making person next her said, "here’s the Gar" when she handed the sandwich to her, she should have been trained to turn to me and say, "Did you order the J.J. Gargantuan?" She could, in her own mind, add "you unspeakable glutton" if she wished. The key thing is, I would have understood what she was saying.

Just last week I experienced this same problem in my own organization. I’m creating a new program to do spot checks on telephone skills, which are very important in my business. We taped a few samples of employees talking to customers to get a sense of what the issues might be, how to set up the evaluation process, the best way to turn the tapes into positive learning opportunities for the employees, and so forth. Mostly what I heard was smart, friendly, talented employees communicating very effectively with customers. What I also heard was smart, friendly, talented employees using too much insider jargon. Like, "The PTP put your PD at 32 but the QME came back at 18 so we’re offering 25."

I don’t really blame them. It’s demanding, fast-paced work and all day long they’re talking to each other, their supervisors, and lots of other industry folks using terminology that’s familiar to all of us in the business. So it’s not surprising that when they’re on the phone with industry outsiders sometimes they’re going to use those same terms and forget to explain what they mean. They stop hearing the jargon as jargon, so when it comes out of their mouths it doesn’t occur to them that they’re not actually communicating.

So I’m going to create some refresher training that will sensitize them to the problem and provide them with some techniques for remembering to speak in plain language when they’re on the phone. If you have any employees who speak to industry outsiders, you might want to do the same.

The only other thing I have to say is, "Aarh, matey, that was a sandwich fit for a pirate king!"

The Walk of Fear

I like to get input from people, including my employees. Often, when I’m in a planning meeting with my managers that involves a particular work process, I’ll call in some frontline employees who handle that process so I can get the benefit of their perspective. I do the same thing when I’m in my office trying to figure something out.

Ideally, of course, one would recognize in advance the need for input and invite the employees to the meeting ahead of time, giving them a few days to think about the topic and put their thoughts in order. I do that too. But sometimes when an issue is being discussed or I’m working on a problem, it suddenly strikes me that a frontline perspective could be quite illuminating. So then I pick up the phone and call a couple people.

If you do this sort of thing, I'd like to share a little tip with you. If you follow it, your employees will appreciate it very much. Here it is:

When you call your employees and ask them to come to your office, tell them why.

I had to learn this lesson the hard way. My first title as a manager was Chief Operating Officer. I went from having never supervised anyone in my life (as an attorney I hadn’t even supervised my own secretary!) to being a bigwig in the executive suite. Shortly after I was elevated to this lofty post I called one of my best frontline employees and asked her to come to my office. A few minutes later she rather tentatively poked her head in the door. I asked her to have a seat and started talking to her about the problem I was working on that I wanted to get her insight on. She seemed a little odd and wasn’t saying anything. Finally, several minutes into the conversation she let out a big breath and blurted out, "Oh, thank God."

Well, that got my attention. I asked what was going on. She said "When you called and told me to come to your office I thought I was in trouble. The whole time I was walking to your office I was trying to figure out what I’d done wrong. I’m just so relieved that I’m not getting disciplined. Now, what were you saying?"

I tell you folks, hearing this was like a dagger in my heart. I had worked with this woman regularly in my previous position as legal counsel, we got along well, she did excellent work, and she was a person I liked and admired. Which is why I was seeking her advice. But I had unwittingly subjected her to the Long Walk of Fear to the Boss’s Office. No wonder she had seemed so tentative when she showed up at my door. I felt pretty awful about it.

Now on a rational level she had no reason to worry: her work was excellent, her behavior was exemplary, and she and I had a good working relationship. But rationality has nothing to do with the Walk of Fear. It’s like when you show up at the office one morning and your keycard doesn’t unlock the door. For a moment, you can’t help wondering, "Have I been fired?"

Maybe this goes back to childhood experiences of being called to the principal’s office. For many of us, that was our first experience with the Walk of Fear. Again, it does not have to be based on any rational concern. When I was a kid I was a great student: I got good grades, did not cause trouble, and generally enjoyed being in school. But whenever I got called to the principal’s office I couldn’t help but worry as I took that long walk down the hallway, even though it always turned out to be something innocuous.

If you're trying to build a positive workplace culture, you do not want to unwittingly inflict this unpleasant experience on your good employees. I was lucky that, early in my career, I had this experience with an employee who was so open and honest about being worried when I called her. The vast majority of employees, of course, will never mention that they had been worried when you called them to your office. They will just play it very cool. So it tends to be an invisible problem.

I recommend doing the same thing I have done, which is to develop the habit of telling employees what you want to talk to them about when you call them. I might say something like, "Are you free for a few minutes? We are discussing when to do an AME and when to skip right to a panel exam and we would like to get your input." That’s the best way to do it, because then they can actually warm up their thoughts on the topic as they walk over. However, sometimes the topic is too complicated to easily summarize, and then I’ll just say something like, "Could you help me out? I’m working on a project and I’d like to get your advice on it." That, at least, makes it clear that they are not in trouble.