How do you deal with employees that disrespect you?
That's a great question, and we're going to talk about that today.
Hi, there.
I'm Angela Brown, and this is Ask a House Cleaner.
This is a show where you get to ask a house cleaning question,
and I get to help you find an answer.
Now, today's show is brought to us by SavvyPerks.com
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All right. There's another thing that we're going to talk about today,
which is what do you do when your employees
are not being respectful to you? Okay.
What happens when you are the boss?
You are in charge.
You are not their friend, but you are a leader.
If you have stopped being a leader and you are becoming their friend, and you're just
playing nice, and we'll talk about that in another episode, is niceness killing you,
but what we want to talk about today is not niceness.
What we want to talk about, are you a leader, because we respect leaders.
We respect our parents.
We respect people in authority.
We don't respect our friends so much.
We're like, "Ah, you're full of it."
But with leaders, we respect.
If you've stopped being a leader and you're more of a friend, and you're being too nice,
that could create the environment where people walk all over the top of you.
The very first thing that we want to do is we want to be friendly but not friends.
What I mean by that is you don't want to let people walk all over you, and you don't want
them to take advantage of you, because when you are firm and you have your boundaries
in place, what that does is that creates an illusion of, "Oh, I don't have to be the one
that creates all the boundaries, because the boundaries already exist.
My boss has already created those for me.
All I have to do is show up and participate."
It takes a lot of responsibility off the employee.
Now, if they've run amok with your company, and they're going in all different directions,
and they're talking bad behind your back, and they're backstabbing you to customers
and all these things, this is something you need to rein in, sort of bring them in, and
the very first thing that I would do is I would explain to them the reasons why.
When you explain the reasons why to your employees, then they understand
what's going on in the company.
If you're making decisions behind their back and you're not including them in it, and you're
not letting them be a part of the decision-making process, they don't feel any ownership of
the company.
Why would they respect you and why would they be loyal to you if there's no ownership of
the company?
There's nothing in it for them other than a paycheck that they can go get anywhere.
You want to create this loyalty by saying, "Hey, listen, here's the reason why we're
doing this," and you explain all the different ins and outs.
There are lots of companies that don't want to explain how the company makes money, or
how the boss makes money, or how much the company makes.
A lot of these are private questions.
They're business questions.
But the more the employee knows, to a certain point, you don't want to go overboard and
you don't want to overshare, but if you include enough information that they get the big picture,
they can be your allies out in the marketplace.
You want to explain the reasons why.
When we're this tall, we ask our parents, "Why," and our parents explain to us, "This
is the reason why.
Well, this is the reason why."
We keep asking, "Why? Why? Why?"
Share your why with your employees.
Tell them, "This is why we treat Mrs. Jones this way, and we treat Mrs. Peterson this way.
This is why we have to get here five minutes early for this job, and this is why we have
to stay five minutes late for this job."
You have to explain the reasons why, because all the reasons are different.
But once the employees know, now they can participate in that information.
The next thing that I want to suggest is listening.
Do you have the ability to listen to your employees?
If they have a problem, instead of backstabbing you and talking it out with the customer,
I would rather them come and talk to you.
But are you a listening ear?
If you're not a safe listening ear, they're not going to come to you with their problems,
even if it's about co-workers.
They're going to take matters into their own hands, which is what it sounds like they've
done, and they're going to try to resolve those problems on their own.
Now, we want to empower our employees to solve problems on their own, but only after, only
after we've explained our reasons why and we've listened to them.
We need to understand where they are coming from.
"You did something today that was really interesting,
and I would like for you to explain to me
what happened here.
What was your judgment or what was your decision-making process?"
They may have a very valid reason for why they did what they did,
but if you just jump to conclusions,
now you've put them in a defensive position.
Now they're not going to be respectful to you because you don't understand them.
You haven't heard them out.
You haven't listened to them.
They don't know where you're coming from, and you don't know where they are coming from.
It's important to just call them in and say, "Hey, listen.
I'm not judging you.
Something happened here today.
It was a very interesting choice.
Please share with me what happened so that we can either make this the new policy or
we can make sure it never happens again," or whatever, right?
You have choices once you know what's going on.
All right.
Then the next thing that I want to recommend is that you pay extra attention, because in
our companies it's so easy to catch our employees doing things wrong.
But instead of catching them doing things wrong, what if you were to catch them doing
things right?
Now, on a daily basis, and this is so much fun for me, I end up working long after my
employees leave, and so there are things that I uncover during the course of a day,
things that malfunctioned, or things that malfunctioned and my employee jumped in of their own empowerment
and they solved the problem, and I'm just discovering it at 8:00 at night.
I sit there saying, "Wow, she really had my back," so I'll send her a text at 8:00 at
night and say, "Oh, my gosh, I just wanted to say thank you.
I just discovered that you solved a problem today that I should have resolved, and you jumped in.
You had my back.
You got me covered, and I really appreciate it. Thank you."
Then they text right back and, "Oh, thanks so much for noticing.
I hope what I did was okay."
Whether it was okay or not is irrelevant.
That they took the initiative to try to solve a problem is what counts, and they're going
to keep trying to match your efforts.
Now, if you only say, "Well, I'll see her again tomorrow.
I'll just say thanks when she comes in," that's not good enough.
You need to surprise them when you notice it.
There are things that happen all the time in my business and I'm surprised.
Somebody edits my video and I see something that makes me laugh, I'm like, "Ha ha, that's
so funny," and I screen shot it and I send it back to the editor, and I'm saying, "Oh,
my goodness, thank you.
That was so funny.
That cracked me up."
They're like, "Oh, she likes humorous things.
I will add more humorous things into her videos," or whatever.
There are things that you can do as a business owner, and my business is a little bit different
now from the average run-of-the-mill household cleaning, but there are things that you can
catch every day.
Let's say that a customer calls you and they have a problem, and you say, "Okay, of the
things that happened today, what did you like best and what did you like the least, and
if we could change one thing, what would it be?"
Then that information you can pass off to the house cleaner.
I would bring up the things that you can change in your next meeting, which would be a couple
days from now or at the end of the week.
The things that they did right, I would text them tonight and I would say, "Listen, I just
got off the telephone with Mrs. Jones, and she said X, Y, Z about what you did today."
They're going to go, "Oh, thank you so much."
Everybody loves praise and approval because that's what we're all seeking.
As house cleaners, we are people pleasers.
We jump through hoops to please people every day.
When the only feedback that you're getting is negative feedback, that you did this wrong
and you did that wrong, and, "I'm frustrated with this, and why are you doing this," and
you have all these complaints and worry, that mirrors back to you.
That's all you're going to get back in return.
There's going to be no love, no respect, no anything going on there except, "I just got
to go find me a new job."
It's mutual.
You're wishing these people would go find a new job.
It's not a good fit anymore.
But if you are their ally, and you've got their back, and you're watching for things,
and you're making suggestions and positive comments to the customers, customers will
see what you encourage them to focus on.
It's true.
If I tell you not to look at the color yellow, suddenly all you're going to see are yellow
things, trying not to look at the color yellow.
It's the same with customers.
If I tell you to focus on one thing, and I say, "Oh, you're going to love this about
Julia when Julia arrives to clean your house," all they're going to be looking for is the
amazing thing that you said Julia does when she comes to your house.
You want to focus on the positive things with your customers, with your employees, so that
when they get together there's a perfect match.
There will still be suggestions and things that are done wrong and whatever, but the
way that you handle that will build your respect that you've lost, because if you find yourself
as a boss and you have lost the respect of your employees, you've got an uphill battle.
It is just going to be an uphill battle.
But it's not too hard to stop and reverse the process by reversing your behavior.
It's going to take some time, because there's a pattern in place, and so you're going to
have to bust the pattern, and you're going to have to start doing things new.
My suggestion to you would be this.
First, catch your employees doing things right.
Very first.
Catch them doing things right and start to thank them off the clock.
Thank them before work.
Thank them after work.
Thank them during the middle of the business day.
Whenever you discover they did something right, stop and send them a note, just a quick text,
"Thank you."
Then the next thing is listen.
When they tell you something, "Well, so and so did such and such," "Oh, my goodness, that's
really important to me.
Can you share with me a little bit more?
Can you give me a little bit more details?
Can you tell me how it happened?
What was happening when this happened?"
Dig a little bit deeper.
Act like you really care.
Then act like you really care, and then do really care.
Really care.
See if there's something you can resolve, and maybe it means you've got to call another
co-worker in and say, "Hey, something happened here, and I'm sure you had a really good reason
for it.
Can you share your side of the story with me?"
Then you get them to share their side of the story.
Now they think that you care.
You act like you care, and then you really do care.
Then now you've got to piece it between the two of the employees that have to go back
to work tomorrow morning.
There are things you can do.
But if you share your reasons why, "Here's why I'm doing this.
Called you in for this reason.
Here's the reason why.
I'm patching the two of you back together.
Here's the reason why.
I'm sending you back to Mrs. Jones's house, even though none of us are getting along right now.
Here's the reason why," and you explain your reasons why,
suddenly everybody's back on board.
Then when you catch them doing things right, and you catch them repairing the situation,
repairing their friendships, rebuilding trust, rebuilding likeability, rebuilding loyalty,
rebuilding respect, reward that behavior.
The behavior you reward is the behavior that's repeated.
If you want to earn back the respect from your employees, the key word in this sentence
is earn.
You have to earn it.
Just stop where you are.
Don't beat yourself up.
It's not that you made any mistakes.
You can't fix something you don't know is broke.
Now you know it's broke and now you know how to fix it.
All righty. That's my two cents for today.
Until we meet again,
leave the world a cleaner place than when you found it.
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