Any manipulation in the long run is disastrous for the company. I saw more than 500 companies of different levels, different sizes, different structures and different types of management, but I have not seen a single company that in the long term on manipulative techniques would build a good, high-quality team with a strong product and good, successful, profitable work.
Causes of manipulation in the company
The fish rots from the head
In a company where the owner does not manipulate subordinates, subordinates do not manipulate other subordinates, do not manipulate each other. If the owner has an order in his head, he directly voices all his motives to the employees and gives them the opportunity to show their strengths, then the employees relate to the new linear employees in the same way. This allows you to recruit a team of strong people on values and not stumble further on problems with the manipulations of employees within the team.
Values Problems
For me, manipulation is one of the most serious symptoms. If I see that one of the employees wants to get the result from the manager, using hidden manipulative techniques at the same time, there is clearly something wrong with the company's management. Most likely, this is a problem with the values of the owner or top manager who runs this business.
I urge you not to treat the symptoms, but to treat the underlying problem itself. The underlying problem lies primarily in the communication of the owner and / or top managers among themselves. And then it is broadcast down in the most perverted manner, increasing with every step of the hierarchy. This problem is solved by coaching, joint training or, in extreme cases, replacing people.
Let's understand how employees can manipulate the leader and what to do in this case.
Types of manipulation by employees
Simulation of ebullient activity
When an employee wants to show his importance to the leader, and his focus moves from the result to the process, this is a symptom that employees within the team want to curry favor with the leader and / or you hire disorderly people who do not want to work.
What to do
Introduce clear metrics based on the value of each action for the client. For example, you want to ensure that employees work completely in the CRM system, and you set the motivation to fill in the lines in the CRM system. After a while, your employees, instead of communicating competently with customers, start just filling as many lines as possible. I met this once.
The problem is that you are not motivating what brings value. Contracts delivered on time, low failure rate, low rates of marriage bring value. But the value of filling CRM is not for anyone but you. And your task in this case is to sell employees the significance of the actions you need. If you cannot sell them, then, unfortunately, you need to either change you as a leader, or change employees and hire others.
Veiled Information
A bunch of terms and incomprehensible essence. It occurs in medium and large business, when behind big reports you can hide the main miscalculations, jambs or overt errors.
What to do
Demand clear information from employees. In one of the most interesting books for me recently, “Maverick” by Ricardo Semler, to solve this problem, the rule was established that all reports in the company, including marketing ones, should be presented in one A4 page format, in which the title displays the main report thesis .
Yes, all information of absolutely any nature can be presented on one A4 sheet. As Mark Twain joked, "I'm sorry for the long letter, I did not have time to think about the short one." Indeed, in long texts that no one reads, you can hide anything. Help employees express their thoughts more clearly.
For example, for all internal letters addressed to customers, we started using GlavRed service. When used repeatedly, it helps to see all the verbal garbage in the text and reduce thoughts to the point, to meat, getting rid of unnecessary fat and entrails.
Avoiding a topic
A very simple type of manipulation, when from a series of questions that you asked, you get an answer only to those questions that are most beneficial to the employee.
What to do
To achieve an answer to each of the questions posed, however inconvenient it may be.
An attempt to force a manager to do the work of a subordinate
Sometimes, under the pretext of the importance of the leader, the employee in one way or another makes the leader take on part of the responsibility for solving problems.
What to do
Do not take this responsibility and return it to the employee. You can play a small game - for example, imagine that a cup of coffee on a table is a responsibility. An employee comes to you and says that he called the company and they don’t want to solve the problem with him, but demand the head of the sales department. At that moment, the responsibility - this cup of coffee - is transferred to you.
What to answer? "I do not know what to do. What would you do? ” He says: "I would ask you to call so you can solve this situation." “Listen, I don’t understand why we are paying you money?” Maybe you still find a way to solve this problem? ” - "I already tried, I did not succeed." - "What do you suggest? What more can be done? ”
If this is a neglected case, and the employee does not take responsibility at all, shoves it, then there is no need to work with such an employee. Like in an Indian parable: “the horse is dead - get off”, you don’t have to kick and spur it.
Our society, including Russia (I don’t really like to generalize so deeply, but I get the feeling because I studied at school and at the institute), does not provoke people to make decisions for themselves. Therefore, often it is necessary to cultivate independence in good employees, not hopeless. To do this, they can and should be taught to take responsibility for everything that they do, and show what benefits they give the company. When you transparently tell how their actions influence the company's result, you ask them not the process, but the result. But each time your task is to return to the employee his responsibility.
Demonstrative indispensability
When an employee ties up all contacts, he makes himself irreplaceable artificially. For example, he communicates with a narrow circle of people in a number of companies, their contacts are not in CRM, but for some reason he has them in his phone book. And they call him on his mobile. Or when an employee in a conversation increases their importance in all possible ways.
This is the same version of a dead horse. In this case, the employee sets his personal goals in the company higher than the goals of the company in which he works. Theoretically, this is not bad, but only he does it to the detriment of the company - it turns out that if an employee leaves, the company will lose part of its contacts, part of its base, part of something else.
What to do
I would require mandatory communication in CRM and would not allow the possibility for employees to work somehow differently. This is especially easy to do for new employees that you display with certain rules.
For older employees, this will be some difficulty - they have worked all their lives from a mobile phone, and suddenly you only need to work through a CRM system. But if you know each other well and for a long time, trust each other, it is simple to do this: you need to sell them the idea of why you need it. Namely - not in order to displace them, but not to lose touch with the client, because each employee has the opportunity to change their position, do something else in the company. “So that this work is not wasted, I ask you to fill everything in CRM. I really need and value this, and I ask you to do it 100%. Because otherwise it doesn’t work. ”
Selling the employee the need to fill in the data in the CRM-system, you will get away from the need for the employee to show their indispensability. And with those who can not get away from this, unfortunately or fortunately, I would suggest saying goodbye.
Appeal through the head of the head
The situation when the manager jumps over the head of the sales department and comes to the director of the sales department.
What to do
The director of the sales department, to whom not his direct subordinate came, is to return the responsibility for resolving the situation to the head of the sales department back. An unacceptable situation is when a sales manager resorts to the owner and tries to solve some problem without first solving this problem with the manager.
The first and only question of the owner: did you decide this with the leader? No - go, decide.
Artificial time pressure for decision making
The situation when they try to drive the head into a corner and force them to make a decision without delay. Decide now, we need to urgently work with this client, for example, he needs to coordinate a discount.
What to do
One of the best solutions against any kind of manipulation is time. All cases that are described as the “best deal of the century” come regularly. And I very rarely encountered situations in business when a decision had to be taken instantly, and if we don’t take it today, then tomorrow it will be too late.
This is extremely rare for very rare categories of goods - for example, perishable. In all other markets, I am sure that this day can definitely wait, and during this time you will make a balanced decision.
Textual children's manipulations
Simple manipulations like “I did not expect this from you”, “the past leader didn’t do that”, “you always say that”, “I would look at you in my place” or “you know that I don’t know how” - all this is again an attempt to transfer responsibility or increase its importance by belittling the interlocutor.
What to do
First question: why are you talking to me in this vein that you want to say these words to me? Let the person justify his behavior.
It is better to discuss it separately, not in a group, but individually. If an employee in this vein communicates with his manager, then such an employee needs to say goodbye. Because this employee, most likely, allows himself to communicate in the same way with customers and takes responsibility off himself for someone else. Such an employee has no future - this is the same dead horse with which to say goodbye.
How to exclude manipulations
Any kind of manipulation is a situation when one side wins and the other loses. It is not worth working with such employees who allow themselves to manipulate colleagues.
I would never work with such people - I, as an entrepreneur and owner, are interested in working with strong, responsible and interesting people, and not with those who organize political intrigues, grievances, some kind of struggle for jobs and promotion within the team. These are tons of energy that is not spent on the result, but on the internal political game. Employees of this kind are either not interested in the work, or it is not their goal. Their place is definitely not in the company, so you should not take such employees. And if you have already taken it, my practice says that for cardinal changes a person needs from eight years.
This also applies to top employees. If your usual partner-director of sales, with whom you worked for ten years and started when everything was cool, starts to behave the same and tries to manipulate you, then this is a signal that it is time to leave him.
In my life I had to part with a business partner, because our values diverged. It was normal for him to throw one of the employees for money, but for me it was unacceptable. On this basis, we just broke up, and I believe that this was one of the most correct decisions in my life. This does not mean that I did not value my business partner, it means that we have different values, and we are simply not on the way.
I suggest that you relate to managers, directors, and employees in the same way, including sales managers. And if you look at your team and decide that you want to work with really strong employees, and you need sales staff, then contact us.