Do You Want a Little Cheese with that Whine?

If you are a good leader, you spend a great deal of time working with people in your organization. You work to teach them how to be successful. You offer them training opportunities galore.

But, no matter how hard you work or how many opportunities you offer, you will in inevitably get that call from someone you have worked with telling you they are going to quit. And why are they going to quit? Well, they may have a lot of excuses, but it usually boils down to “the system isn’t working for me.”

Hmmm. It works for everyone else, so why not for this person? Well, again, there can be lots of reasons, but careful questioning reveals the problem. They aren’t working! They may be going through the motions; planning, setting goals, attending training, but at the end of the day, they haven’t talked to a single person.

No wonder this system isn’t working! So, what do you do now? You have to find some way to get these people to actually do something. Starting off by doing something small can be the key. If they can do something small and achieve success, they will be more motivated to move on to more complicated tasks (like calling two people a day instead of one).

There is nothing better than seeing someone achieve success. By creating a plan, you help them achieve the success you are both looking for.

Making this work takes commitment and follow-up. If you make a list of tasks they are to complete within a specific time period, be sure to call and see how things are going.

Do everything you can to insure that this renewed effort will be rewarded with some success. The dieter that follows a new diet, but doesn’t lose any weight will become discouraged. Like the dieter, the business person that is making an effort, but doesn’t see any results becomes discouraged will likely quit.

Obviously there are some people that will consistently whine but just as consistently refuse to do any work. While these people are likely to quit the business, do you really want these people in your organization anyway? No way! Tell them a polite goodbye and move on.

There will always be people in your organization that are not happy with the ways things are going. There are also people that will never do what they need to do to be successful. As a leader, you need to learn quickly which ones will respond when you try to help them and not waste time on the ones that will never change.

If you have time to whine and complain about something then you have the time to do something about it. Anthony J. D’Angelo.