Same road, different times of day. This week Maddie and I did our morning runs and afternoon walks on this same road each day. But, it looked different on the foggy morning, vs the super sunny one, vs at sunset.

This got me thinking about how one staff person can be different on one day than on another - or even at different times of the same day. We hire looking for continual growth, or at the very least consistency. The most consistent person, and even the person showing continual growth can show up foggy some days or sunny some days or anything but their usual self. Why? What to do about it? Is this ok? Do we need to do something about it? These questions occur to me because I’m not sure if we want people to be sunny every day. It seems obvious that we don’t want foggy - until I thought about how much we learn when we’re not clear about something. Sunset confounded me - sunsets are the end of the day so theoretically that means less productivity. But - sunsets are beautiful. And what about the people who do their best work at the end of the day? Clearly I have more questions than answers!

Maybe it will help to know the pluses and minuses of each state:

Sunset

*Good* - some people do their best, and most beautiful work later in the day (fastest, most accurate, most creative)
*Bad* - some people are spent by the end of the day or they’re so focused on going home that they can’t be productive

Should we do something about this? - If your objective is the highest productivity with the fewest errors, then yes, do something.

What to Do About the Bads

Part of our job is to help the employee notice their changing behavior and what triggers it. Is it a lot of foggy on Monday morning - they might be having too much fun on the weekend, or having a stressful weekend. Maybe it’s a certain task, working with a certain person, working in a certain location - they might need different challenges or different people to work with. Once they know what’s triggering their foggy behavior you can help them set a plan and encourage the actions they take. You might, in the case of new tasks or people, be able to do some of the action taking (create new tasks, help them learn, guide them to work more effectively with the person that’s a problem for them).

The other part of our job is working on our own skills -

recognition of the issue (some of us need to be more present so we can even see the fog vs sun vs sunset - and then we need to know the most successful way to approach the person)

ability to diagnose what’s causing it or the communication skills to allow you to discover with them what the cause is

creativity to come up with solutions that are immediately implementable so the person feels competent quickly

But What About the Goods?

Everything above is predicated on the belief that foggy and sunset are bad and brilliantly sunny is good. The Goods from the chart require the exact same skills and behaviors as the Bads - “help the employee” and “working on our own skills” (nice! - you don’t have to learn two different ways to do it)! Whether someone is doing excellent work or poor work and the cause is the fog or the brilliant sun or the sunset they need your help to:

know the trigger
set a plan and you encourage the actions they take
you do some of the action taking

Behavior management - be it change or maintenance - requires the same steps:

recognition of the behavior
diagnosis of triggers
set a plan to change the unwanted behavior and maintain the wanted behavior
In short — someone to guide, support and coach
Same road, different day - Same employee, different day

Employees: Fog, Sun, Sunset

What to Do About the Bads

But What About the Goods?

Same road, different day - Same employee, different day