A couple weeks ago at the bike race, I got a text from the race director. Keep in mind there are thousands of people at the race. The text that I got says:
“If you cause any more grief in the feed zone, you’ll be permanently banned from the feed zone.”
(The feed zone is the area where we’re allowed to hand a bottle to the racers.)
I was furious.
Out of my mind.
There are thousands of people at the race.
There were hundreds of different people in the feed zone.
I didn’t do anything different than any other person and I got singled out for causing grief, which I didn’t do.
My initial reaction was to lash out. I just wanted to tell her the whole story. I wanted to tell her what did and didn’t happen in the feed zone. I had this whole conversation in my mind about what I was going to say to her the next day if I saw her.
When I saw her the next day, I didn’t say anything. I was just nice and I let it go. The race ended and we’re fine. This will never happen again.
At the same time this was going on, Julia (who manages a team for our social media presence), is dealing with one of the people on my OFS team who is lashing out at her and lashing out at other team members. It’s making the team just not work well. It’s causing problems.
So Julia came to me for advice.
My advice was the lashing out just doesn’t work for our team.
You have to treat people well. We’ve tried really hard to treat this person well. This person is not treating others correctly. So it’s time to let her go.
We’re in the process of letting her go. She’s actually a really great worker. Skilled, reliable, shows up, talented. Her personality is just clashing.
I think part of the reason Julia came to me was because I’ve managed a lot of people. I’ve learned that people need to feel good about themselves. If someone is causing people not to feel good, work suffers. Having work suffer…well….
In managing your OFS, think about how they feel about themselves based off the way you’re treating them.
Thinking about this will help you prevent the disappearing Filipino problem.
John