Coaching the Disruptive Supervisor: When the Problem Employee is the Boss

When it comes to a difficult frontline employee, we often use coaching sessions, progressive discipline, and the real possibility of termination to gain better compliance from the person. So if that’s true for a staff member, shouldn’t it also be true for a manager or supervisor with behavior or attitude problems? One simple but important message that every employee, at every level, needs to understand is that they could get disciplined or fired for having a lousy attitude and inflicting their hostilities upon other people.

The phrase to use in these coaching or pre-discipline conversations is “business impact,” as in, “When you scream at your subordinates, it hurts our business. It’s bad for the business of this department and it impacts this organization in a negative way. We want it to stop. You are paid for your results, but you are also paid to create a peaceable, fair, and comfortable work environment for the people who work with or for you. If you can’t make immediate changes in the way you treat people, we will move to discipline you, in accordance with our HR policy.”
In their defense, disruptive managers are a study in differences. On the one hand, they can be creative, energetic, and project-focused. They demand quality in themselves and others, and they are often quite good at making or saving the company lots of money.

On the other hand, they can be entitled, hostile, and angry, and all with a hair trigger. They can be tone deaf as to the impact of their behavior and not good as a mere group member if they are not fully in charge of the proceedings. As a result, they manage in a culture of fear, where employees complain bitterly (but privately) to each other, leave, or in the worst cases, threaten or file suit for claims of hostile workplaces.

If frontline employees don’t complain directly to their supervisors, then we may recognize the problem when disruptive managers irritate customers, clients, vendors, or even company board members or corporate counsel to a level where an intervention conversation becomes necessary.

Sometimes senior executives or the company owners can get caught up in the disruptive manager’s use of the Big Four: minimizing, denying, rationalizing, and blaming. Here, the manager on the hot seat says, “I’m not like this all the time! I only blow up when people push my buttons or things aren’t done to my satisfaction.” Or, “I don’t see what the big deal is. Since I’m their boss, my people need to learn to understand me better.”

One potential problem can arise when the disruptive manager enjoys sales success and positive customer or client feedback. This can lead to accusatory statements like, “How can you possibly criticize my supposedly `bad attitude’ when I’m tops in sales or the clients love me?”

The coaching conversation with this type of manager should be specific: “We know you contribute to our bottom line and we appreciate it. Your job here is not just about showing up on time, demonstrating technical skills, or meeting our sales goals. Having a positive, cooperative, and team-based attitude is a big part of your job as well.”

Coaching meetings about a disruptive manager’s attitude should not be about using labels to describe past problems; it should be about discussing very specific and immediate behavioral changes he or she needs to make.

Three acts of violence; same warning signs beforehand

Within the month of February, we have seen a disgruntled college professor open fire at her campus in Alabama; a disgruntled engineer crash his small plane into an IRS building in Austin, Texas; and a man shoot two students at a middle school near Columbine High School in Colorado. What is the common theme in each of these tragedies? That they were disgruntled is a given. (note to self: Why didn't I copyright the phrase "disgruntled ex-employee" back in 1994, when I wrote my Ticking Bombs workplace violence book in 1994? I could've retired on the royalties.)

No, the fact they were disgruntled was and is proven by the results of their actions: four dead, several wounded. The larger issue is that their irrational behavior was known to others prior to their actions. Amy Bishop had killed her brother with an "accidental shotgun blast" back in the 1980s. She (and her husband) were "persons of interest" in an attempted by bombing of a colleague she hated at Harvard. Several witnesses said she had brought a gun to her Alabama campus and threatened people with it.

The man who crashed his plane into the Austin IRS office had long-standing beefs with the government over his tax issues. On the evening before his crash, he had fought with his wife an apparently lit his own house on fire.

According to his father, the man who shot two kids at the middle school in Colorado "heard voices" and acted strangely long before the attack.

If one of the best predictors of future behavior is past behavior, then why do so many people rationalize the irrational behavior of others? Why do we (usually through the media reports) learn so many disturbing things in the aftermath? Why do we seemed so surprised when people who frighten their families, their co-workers, and others, go on to harm others and themselves?

We don't need to create a tattletale culture; we need to create a culture of honesty, where people close to those who are mentally ill, severely disturbed, and pose a danger to themselves and others, are not afraid to ask doctors, police, or others for help. We seem to want to wait for the "Big Event" in our world, and when it happens, we act surprised.

Dr. Steve Albrecht, PHR, CPP is a San Diego-based speaker and writer on high-risk HR and security issues. He can be reached at drsteve@drstevealbrecht.com.