Managing: Managing Tantrums@Work

MANAGING
MANAGING
Tantrums @ Work

Your star performer is also the king of tantrums. Should you suffer in silence, try to reason, or cut him loose?

By Moinak Mitra

III-tempered employees set bad examples

Nitish Kalra was in a fix. Barely moments ago, his star manager had walked into his room to deliver an ultimatum: that he be given a larger part of the sales territory or he would quit to join a rival organisation. As the all-India head of sales of a large FMCG company, Kalra (not his real name) knew that losing his best salesman, especially to a competitor, would be a disaster. Yet, giving in to the demands would have a negative fallout. On the one hand, it would mean reorganising the company's sales structure, which could lead to wide discontentment across the ranks. On the other, it could reinforce the employee's unreasonable behaviour and set a bad example for the others to follow.

Sensing that the issue was critical enough, Kalra decided to turn to the CEO for advice. The head honcho decided to meet with the star manager to try and change his mind. After some give and take, the CEO managed to buy time for reorganisation until the beginning of the next fiscal. But when the other territory managers heard about the development, two of them quit.

Playing Oddball

Sounds familiar? It should. For, no matter what business you are in, managing and rewarding top performers has become a complex hr issue. As companies intensify their war for talent, superlative employees are demanding more money, better career prospects and, indeed, constant pampering. When any such demand is not met, they tend to retaliate with temper tantrums, non-cooperation, threats of resignation, or mere sulking. And management, which ought to spend its time battling competitors in the marketplace, ends up wasting precious time and energy on mollifying difficult employees-often to disastrous results.

Taming The Petulant
Here's how you can deal with tantrum-throwers.

ť Do not seek to reason when the subject is in a fit; schedule discussion for another time
ť Know potential problem-makers in advance; ensure their buy-in-ahead of major changes
ť Use informal sessions to sense discontent--move quickly to cap any flare up
ť Employ a fact-based feedback system to eliminate emotion and subjectivity in processes
ť Put 'problem' employees in charge of change initiatives; they, then, can 'own' the initiative
ť No employee is indispensable; counsel the first time, warn the second, and at the third, fire
ť Build strong systems so that valuable information is not with the problem employee

That's what happened in the case of this Bangalore-based software company. After months of preparation and hard-selling, it finally managed to bag a big and prestigious outsourcing order. But when the time came to start work on the contract, the project leader played truant. First, he complained about not having a team that could deliver. Then, he asked for more coders for his team, and finally demanded that the company put him onshore at the client's for two months.

The real issue, however, as the company discovered, was that the project manager had got a job offer in the US, and was trying to create a situation where the company would be forced to let him go. But by the time the company unravelled his odd behaviour, the client had lost patience. The contract was cleaved in two, and only one-half remained with this company. The petulant project leader? He left too. Points out D.K. Srivastava, Head of hr, HCL Comnet: ''This is a typical scenario in a software company. People kick up a fuss when they have a job offer in hand.''

The Yes-No Dilemma

So, should you be putting up with tantrum employees? Yes and no. There are two things you need to keep in mind when an executive starts fomenting trouble. One is his criticality to the organisation, and the other is vulnerability. Will your relationship with a key customer sour if this person were to leave? Or would your sales and profits be affected by the departure? If your answer is yes, then you should try and accommodate the employee's demands, but quickly find someone who can gradually replace the troublemaker. So that the next time he tries to hold the organisation to ransom, he can be asked to go.

You could also indulge an employee if his quirks are harmless. For example, when Ranbaxy hired a German expat sometime back, the gentleman would bring his pet dog along to work. Obviously, the management was disturbed by this behaviour and barred him from bringing the pet to the office. So, the German started leaving the dog inside his air-conditioned car at the parking lot.

When the management asked him to explain why, he revealed that he had not yet found a house to live in and, hence, had no caretaker for the dog. Ranbaxy helped the expat find a house and the problem was solved. Says Rajendra Sinh, President (Group HR), HFCL, who was then a part of Ranbaxy's management: ''The gentleman had been head hunted and he was valued for the skills he brought to the company. Therefore, instead of merely curbing the effect of his problem, we decided to solve his problem.''

That, in fact, is the preferred strategy at most companies. Y.V. Verma, LG's senior Vice President (hr), for instance, counters tantrum-throwers with facts and figures. The best way to deal with such people, he says, is to hear them out ''and flesh out real problems from the perceived problems''. Sometimes colleagues can help correct troublemakers. For instance, at Bharti Enterprises there was this project manager who used to be very abrasive and personal in project discussions. He used to fret and fume and raise his voice over project overruns and process flaws. One day, his entire team got together and decided not to enter into 'discussions' at meetings. "Stunned by this one-sided communication, the man changed overnight," recalls K.P. Dutta, Vice President (HR), Bharti Enterprises.

Talking and counselling make sense because, as Purva Misra of Hewitt Associates points out, the type of employees who generally throw tantrums are those who have been disgruntled by the 'deal' given to them by the organisation, are caught in a slow career track, unhappy with rewards, or even those who think that they are indispensable to the company. Explaining, preferably with hard facts, why their perception is mistaken can often help correct their behaviour. Says Adil Malia, Director (HR), Coca-Cola India: ''Generally, people don't have a toggle switch between their personal and professional lives. So, the work tantrum may actually be a manifestation of some personal problem.''

But never hesitate to show a tantrum thrower the door if he is a. compromising on your corporation's core values, or b. negatively impacting the morale. These are non-negotiables. A good way of pre-empting such fatal tantrums is by letting your people know where exactly you draw the line.

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