A few years back I took a position as Senior Vice President and Chief Human Resources Officer for a multibillion-dollar healthcare organization. Prior to accepting the job, I was told by the search firm to be forewarned: you will have a couple of people on your staff who are not advantageous to the function and to the organization, and who need to be addressed and mostly likely removed from the company. It was not long after I took the job that the alarming behaviors came to the surface. The staffs of both of these individuals were afraid and intimidated and performance was low. It was time to make changes. But I was met with resistance from my superiors who felt these individuals had tenure with the organization and should not be removed – a common syndrome of the healthcare industry.

 

Performance managers need to be reminded of three important points regarding leading and inspiring associates, especially when things are not going as well as we would like:

 

1. Employees cannot perform to their potential when fear and intimidation loom over their heads every day. They have to be permitted to succeed and to fail. Failure on a task cannot be the kiss of death, but rather it must be an opportunity to learn.

 

2. Employees desire to be rewarded and respected for their accomplishments. I have never had a job in which the people under me didn’t know more than I knew about the operations, about how things should work. A union officer from the United Steelworkers told me something the first week of my first job working in a labor environment: “If you give the people the time, the tools, a fair wage, and pat on the back, they’ll do a great job and make you look good.”

 

3. Employees need to be free to demonstrate their potential but to do so means to be allowed to learn from both success and failures.

 

4. Leaders in all organizations must be held accountable for their performance.

 

I’ve learned a lot about leadership from both my successes and failures: as much what not to do as what to do. I expect I’m no different than any other employee, entrepreneur, or CEO. If we don’t try, we can’t succeed. And if we don’t empower our workforce: allow them to try and succeed, and occasionally fail, they also will not succeed.

 

Engage your team, empower them on the job, and stand back and watch them succeed! However, we also must have the managerial courage to make the tough decisions.