Truth 44. Discipline deepens engagement

Is there anyone who truly enjoys the discipline process inside his company? Even when managers are supported with rigorous and detailed discipline procedures, they’re still nerve-wracking for everyone involved. Employees in the hot seat know they’re possibly one step closer to being terminated; the manager is at risk for losing employees who once showed promise; and even the rest of the department is watching closely. Will the manager treat the employee fairly, according to the procedures laid out in the employee manual? Will the team lose a friend? Will a hardworking coworker get the break he deserves? Or will a slacker be allowed to stay on the job because the manager doesn’t have the spine to fire her?

Discipline procedures themselves are too specific and driven by local law to cover in this book. But you might find it reassuring to look at how formal procedures can actually support your company’s commitment to all its employees. If you follow them consistently, correctly, and humanely, you will be sending the message to your team members that they can trust you to fairly sustain the culture of excellence that you are building in less emotionally charged ways. As much as fairly applied disciplinary processes serve to correct the immediate problem with the target employee, they also serve to reassure all employees that the system works for them, mainly to the good.

Be discreet in your disciplinary process. Don’t share your thoughts and plans with the target employee’s coworkers. When you gossip about the private affairs of your employee, there are at least three victims (assuming you don’t count the company as a whole at risk because of a potentially actionable privacy breach).

When you gossip about the private affairs of your employee, there are at least three victims.

The first victim is the target employee, of course. Whatever he’s done or not done should never be held up as an object lesson to his coworkers. Suffering public shaming is in no one’s job description. The second victim is you. By gossiping, you have sent word to your entire department that your team can’t trust you with their vulnerabilities and flaws. Even the most unsophisticated employee knows that, as the boss, you’re honor-bound to keep the private concerns of your target employee just that—private. If you must talk, take it up with your own supervisor, whose job it is to equip you with what you need to cultivate excellence in your department.

There is also a third victim—one we typically don’t think about in the gossip daisy chain. That’s the person who had to listen to you talk about his coworker. You could be talking about that person’s friend, and now you’ve burdened the coworker with information and secrets he knows he shouldn’t have. Unless this is truly an unusual circumstance (such as a crime that involves the employees directly), your discretion tells your employees the most important thing they need to know: They can trust you.

Stick to a process of fairness, which is precisely what the formal discipline process gives you. As already discussed earlier in this book, when employees trust the process, they will be more likely to accept the outcome—even if they disagree with it. When you apply your company’s discipline procedures precisely as they are laid out in the manual, no one can argue that you were unfair. They might not like the idea that you punished—or even terminated—a popular coworker. But if they can see that everything you did was fair, they’ll come to accept your decision sooner or later—and respect you for making a painful, but possibly right, choice.

Your discretion tells your employees the most important thing they need to know: They can trust you.

People are only human. And almost everything that happens on the job speaks directly to their survival needs. So, as much as they may care about the person who just went through the disciplinary procedure, an essential question lingers in their heads: “What will this mean to me?”

Use the disciplinary procedure well, wisely, and kindly, and your actions will give employees this message: “This means that you’re working in a department that takes your work and career extremely seriously. I care about your personal well-being. And I’m ready to go through the necessary pain to make this department right again.”