How employees manipulate the leader

Any manipulation in the long run is detrimental to the company. I saw more than 500 companies of different levels, different sizes, different structures and different types of management, but I did not meet a single company that would build a good, high-quality team with a strong product and good, successful, profitable work in long-term manipulative techniques.

The reasons for the manipulation of the company

The fish rots from the head

In a company where the owner does not manipulate subordinates, subordinates do not manipulate other subordinates, they do not manipulate each other. If the owner has order in his head, he directly voices all his motives to employees and gives them the opportunity to show their strengths, then the employees to the new line employees are treated exactly the same. This allows you to recruit a team of strong people on the values and not stumble in the future on the problems with the manipulation of employees within the team.

Problems with values

For me, manipulation is one of the most serious symptoms. If I see that one of the employees wants to get a result from the manager, using the hidden manipulative technique - obviously something is wrong in the company's management. Most likely, this is a problem with the values of the owner or the top manager who leads this business.

I urge you not to treat symptoms, but to treat the most profound problem. The deep problem lies primarily in communication between the owner and / or top managers among themselves. And then it is already broadcast down in the most perverted manner, with each step of the hierarchy increasing multiples. This problem is solved by coaching, joint training or, in extreme cases, the replacement of people.

Let's understand how employees can manipulate the leader and what to do in this case.

Types of manipulation by employees

Simulating bubbly activity

When an employee wants to show his importance to the manager, and his focus shifts from the result to the process, it is a symptom that employees within the team want to curry favor with the manager, and / or you hire disreputable people who do not want to work.

What to do

Introduce understandable metrics based on the value of each action for the customer. For example, you want to ensure that employees work fully in the CRM-system, and you put motivation to fill the lines in the CRM-system. After a while your employees, instead of communicating well with clients, begin to just fill as many lines as possible. I met with this once.

The problem is that you are not motivating something that brings value. The value is brought by the contracts fulfilled in time, low refusal of work, low rates of marriage. But the value of filling CRM is not for anyone other than you. And your task in this case is to sell employees the significance of the actions you need. If you can not sell them, then, unfortunately, you need either to change you as a leader, or to change employees and hire others.

The veiled information

A lot of terms and an incomprehensible essence. It occurs in the medium and large business, when behind the big reports it is possible to hide the basic miscalculations, jambs or frank errors.

What to do

Require employees to understand the information. In one of the most interesting recent books for me - "Maverick" Ricardo Semler - to solve this problem, it was established that all reports in the company, including marketing ones, should be presented in one page A4 format, in which the title displays the most important thesis of the report .

Yes, all information of absolutely any character 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 short." Indeed, in long texts that no one reads, you can hide anything you like. Help employees express their thoughts more clearly.

For example, for all internal letters addressed to customers, we started using GlavRed service. With multiple use it helps to see all the verbal garbage in the text and cut the thoughts down to the point, to the meat, getting rid of unnecessary fat and cravings.

Care of the topic

A very simple kind 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, no matter how uncomfortable it may be.

An attempt to force the manager to do the work of a subordinate

Sometimes, under the pretext of the importance of the head, the employee in one way or another causes the leader to assume part of the responsibility for solving problems.

What to do

Do not take this responsibility and return it back to the employee. You can play a small game - for example, imagine that a cup of coffee on the table is a responsibility. An employee comes to you and says that he called that company, and they do not want to solve the matter with him, but they demand the head of the sales department. At this point, 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 that you can solve this situation. " - "Listen, I do not understand then, why do we pay you money? Perhaps, you will still find a way to solve this problem? "-" I already tried, I did not succeed. " - "What do you suggest? What else can I do? "

If this is a neglected case, and the employee does not take responsibility, pushes it away, then with such an employee it is not necessary to work. As in the Indian parable: "the horse has died - get off", do not kick it and spur.

Our society, including Russia (I do not like to generalize so deeply, but I have such a feeling, because I studied at school and at the institute), does not provoke people to make decisions for themselves. Therefore, often it is necessary in good employees, not hopeless, to bring up independence. For this, you can and need to be taught to take responsibility for everything they do and show how they benefit the company. When you transparently tell how their actions affect the company's result - ask from them is no longer a process, but a result. But each time your task is to return the employee his responsibility.

Demonstrative indispensability

When an employee contacts all contacts, he makes himself irreplaceable artificially. For example, communicates with a narrow circle of people in a number of companies, their contacts are not in CRM, but for some reason they have it in the phone book. And they call him on the mobile. Or when the employee in conversation increases his importance in all possible ways.

This is the same version of a dead horse. In this case, the employee puts his personal goals in the company higher than the goals of the company in which he works. Theoretically it's not bad, but only it happens at the expense of the company - it turns out that if the employee leaves, the company will lose some of the contacts, part of the base, part of anything else.

What to do

I would require compulsory communication in CRM and did not allow the possibility that employees worked somehow differently. Especially it is easy to do for new employees, which you deduce with certain rules.

For old employees, this will be some difficulty - they have worked all their lives with a mobile phone, and you suddenly need to work only through the CRM-system. But if you know each other well and long, trust each other, it's easy: you need to sell them an idea, why you need it. Namely - not in order to displace them, but in order not to lose contact with the client, because each employee has the opportunity to change position, to do something else in the company. "That this work is not wasted, I ask you to fill in everything in CRM. I really need it and it's valuable, and I ask you to do it 100%. Because otherwise it does not work "

Selling an employee the need to fill in the data in the CRM-system, you will leave the need for the employee to show its indispensability. And with those who can not get away from this, unfortunately or fortunately, I would propose to say goodbye.

Appeal over the head of the head

The situation when the manager jumps through 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 his direct subordinate did not come, is to return the responsibility for resolving the situation to the head of the sales department. The situation is not acceptable when the sales manager resorts to the owner and tries to solve a problem without first having to solve this problem with the manager.

The first and only question of the owner: did you decide this with the head? No - go, decide.

Artificial time pressure for decision-making

The situation when the leader is trying to corner and make a decision, not postponing. Decide now, we need to urgently work with this client, for example, we need to agree on a discount.

What to do

One of the best solutions against any manipulation is time. All cases that are described as the "best deal of the century" come regularly. And I very rarely met with situations in business, when the decision had to be made instantly, and if we do not accept it today, tomorrow it will be too late.

This is extremely rare and for very rare categories of goods - for example, perishable. In all other markets, I'm sure it can wait a day, and during this time you will make a measured decision.

Text childish manipulations

Simple manipulations like "I did not expect this from you", "the past leader did not do it", "you always say that", "I would look at you in my place" or "you know that I do not know how" It's all again attempts to throw responsibility or increase its importance, belittling the interlocutor.

What to do

First question: why are you talking to me in this way, what do you want me to say these words? Let the person justify his behavior.

It is better to discuss it separately, not in a group, but individually. If an employee in this way communicates with his supervisor, then such an employee should be forgiven. Because this employee, most likely, allows himself to communicate in exactly the same way with customers and discards responsibility from himself to someone else. Such an employee has no future - this is the same dead horse, with which you need to say goodbye.

How to exclude manipulation

Any kind of manipulation is a situation where one side wins and the other loses. With such employees who allow themselves to manipulate their colleagues, it is not worth working.

I would not work with such people - it's interesting for me, as an entrepreneur and owner, to work with strong, responsible and interesting people, and not with those who arrange political intrigues, resentments, some struggle for jobs and promotion within the team. This is a ton of energy, which is spent not on the result, but on the internal political game. This kind of staff is 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 they have already taken - my practice says that for a cardinal change a person needs from eight years.

This applies to top-end employees. If your usual partner-sales director, with whom you have worked for ten years and started, when everything was great, begins to behave the same way and tries to manipulate you, it is a signal that it's time to part with it.

In my life, I had to part with a business partner, because we had different values. It was normal for him to throw someone out of the employees for money, but for me it was unacceptable. On this basis, we simply parted, 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 simply do not follow it.

I suggest you also apply to managers, directors, and employees, 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.