Confronting an Employee Issue, God's Way
I've been having issues with one of my employees. He's normally a rock start and leads most of the projects in my company. However, for a couple of months, his production reduced dramatically.
I confronted him about his productivity and asked him to explain what's going on. He admitted that he's been demotivated because of recent changes as we're rebuilding the agency. The new structure has him reporting to someone whereas before, he was pretty much the top guy.
While I understood his frustration, I communicated all of the reasons why these changes were for the greater good of the bigger vision, and at the end of the conversation, he apologized and made a commitment to show up differently.
And to seal the deal, I gathered the leadership on a call with this employee and he shared his new commitment with the team so that we could all move past this minor speedbump in our quest to rebuild a stronger agency.
As entrepreneurs, It’s important that we get private and public ‘buy in’ from those working with us on the vision that we have. If we want to change the world, we need a team behind us that sees the vision and wants to help.
In the book of Nehemiah, we see how the integrity of those working to help rebuild Jerusalem was made public through an oath.
While Nehemiah was rebuilding the wall, it came to his attention that Jewish nobles and officials were unfairly taxing lower-class Jewish people...their own people! This was an outrage to Nehemiah. Not only was it an outrage, but it also threatened the rebuilding project because Nehemiah relied on some of these lower-class people to help him rebuild - those are his employees.
Nehemiah confronted the nobles and officials, called them out on their unfair behavior, and eventually, convinced them to change their ways.
Nehemiah 5:12 says,
“We will give it back,” they said. “And we will not demand anything more from them. We will do as you say.” Then I summoned the priests and made the nobles and officials take an oath to do what they had promised."
There are two key lessons to learn here.
First, as you rebuild (or build) your company, you need to confront any wrongdoings and get a commitment that things are going to be different moving forward.
Second, you have to bring your partner or other people higher up in the company together so that the employee can publicly declare their new commitment. This final step of taking a public oath is the secret sauce. See, although Nehemiah could have taken the nobles and officials at their word, he took it a step further and had them take an oath in front of the priests…representatives of God.
The major lesson here is that there's something magical about taking an oath in front of a group of people. It tattoo’s a commitment to the cause.
Are there any issues going on during your building or rebuilding of your company? Who can you confront privately about a change that needs to be made? Who have you confronted about something privately, that now needs to be declared publicly to others in the company?
Maybe YOU are the one that needs to make a public oath for something you realize you were doing wrong? Watch how integrity in your company is taken to new levels as you make the ultimate leadership power move of publicly declaring your commitment to new ways of operating.
All my best,
Alex Miranda
Get to know me at www.alexmiranda22.com
P.S. I did a Business bible study called 40 Days to Restarting Your Business, God's Way. Check it out:
A business Bible study to help you rethink, reinvent, and restart your business, but this time, God's Way!
We parallel Nehemiah's rebuilding of the wall to your journey in rebuilding your business.
Also, coaches and Christian business leaders, you can use, edit, and repurpose the teachings for your own tribe! Check it out.