#108 5 Strategies to Handle a Defensive Team Member With More Ease and Less Frustration

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Welcome to the 360 leadership podcast, the top rated show for driven women in senior leadership with new episodes released every Wednesday. I’m your host, Lucy Gernon, a multi award winning executive coach for women leaders and the founder of 360. Leaders Club exclusive high level membership for career driven family orientated women just like you. I created the 360 leadership podcast to share practical tips, actionable step by step strategies, and inspiring stories to support you to unlock the power and belief within to accelerate your impact and potential. So you can build a life filled with success, balance and happiness. So are you ready to achieve 360 degree success? No more excuses. No more waiting. Your time is now. Hi, there. And welcome back to another episode of the 360 leadership podcast. I am your host Lucy garden. And I am so excited to bring you this topic today that comes up quite a lot with many of the female leaders that I work with. And that topic is how to handle a defensive team member. So we’ve all been there, right? Where we notice our team aren’t performing, we need to give them feedback. And sometimes those conversations do not go very well. Which is exactly why today, I wanted to talk to you about this very, very important, important topic. So what prompted me to record this podcast today was that inside my membership for women in the senior leadership, which is 360 leaders Club, which is the an online membership for women in senior leadership, who want to really progress their career, while achieving work life balance, because girls, it is actually possible, believe it or not. And inside our membership, one of our members had this question, I thought I would pop on the podcast. So she’s an amazing leader, she already has a lot of leadership experience. She’s done lots of courses through work. But unfortunately, what happens to us is when we’re in these sticky situations, at times, we can just forget what we’ve learned, right? And we can allow our emotions to take over. And that is totally normal, which is why it’s super important that you have an outside perspective. And always, you know, try to see how you might handle these things in another way. So one of our members asked, and she said, I have a new team member who is getting defensive when I asked her why she sent an email to the business without checking me first. So this particular new person was only in the role by three months. And she had sent out this email without kind of, I suppose consulting her manager first. The email didn’t contain what it should have contained. And you know, yourself. We’ve all been there when one of our teams has sent out an email and you’re like, Oh, why did they say that I would have done it a different way. So this is the situation that happened. So when our one of our members of 360 leaders club brought this to me, I asked her what happened. And she said what she got really, really defensive. And she just kept saying to me, I don’t understand the process, I don’t understand the process. So I just thought I would teach you today, what I told her in the hope that it will help you to handle any team members who are more defensive with you the next time you need it. So buckle up, I’m going to give you five quick and snappy tips because I want you to have these in your pocket, it’s going to be a short and snappy episode that I know is going to be valuable for you. So here we go. The very first thing that I would invite you to do if you have a team member who is defensive to feedback is to look at your part in this. So when I did my coach training, one of the standout moments for me was like a lightbulb moment, which was relationships are co created. So I’m gonna say that, again, relationships are co created. So I remember my coach trainer explained that to me, and I was like, Oh my God, you’re so right. You can’t have a relationship without two people, okay, and we all act in response to the environment and the people around us. And if you go back to what I always teach you about when it comes to mindset and how your brains work, our brains are literally primed to look out for threat. So that’s why as a leader, it’s so important that you create that psychological safety for people so that they feel safe. And in this particular situation, obviously the Envy ego got invokes. Okay, so you want to remember that you have a role in this. So get curious about yourself and ask yourself, Well, what was my part in this? So maybe it was your tone? Maybe the way you deliver the feedback was loaded with judgment. And I always remember actually, my mother. You know, sometimes when you’d be having a dig with somebody on the day they know you’re having a dig at them, but it’s not because of the words you said. It’s because of the energy you brought. So I remember as a kid, like, you know, I’d be saying things my mother, you know, and like your parents annoy you when you were a teenager or whatever. And I’d be saying things to her, but she couldn’t really pull me off on it. Because the words I was saying were okay, but it was more the energy behind it was loaded with judgment and loaded with sarcasm. That’s what I’m talking about. Okay. So it’s really, really, really important that you manage your energy and you really get curious about yourself about okay, well, was I judging? Was I bringing my own unconscious biases into this conversation?

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Was it snappy? Did I have this conversation over instant message? Did I take the time to have the conversation properly? Was it the right time of day to have the conversation? There are so many things when you get curious about yourself, okay? That you can see that maybe there’s a way you could have handled this better, and we’ve all been there, okay, there’s no judgement. So step one is look at your part in this. Remember, relationships are co created, and ask yourself, what was your part? The second thing I’d recommend is to apply a coaching approach. So if your team member is doing something, again, I remember somebody told me years ago, and it just stuck with me, which is that much, you know, not very many people get up in the morning and set out to do a bad job. Most people want to get up in the morning, and they want to do a good job. So it’s about getting curious instead of judging. So if somebody’s doing something that, you know, they didn’t understand the sending an email, not the way you would have liked it to have been said, it’s about applying a coaching approach. So get really curious. Curiosity is your biggest friend. It’s it’s a foundation of everything I do in coaching. So I’m a certified about to be double certified, qualified executive coach. So I’ve trained up to the ICF standards, which is the international coaching Federation. And one of the competencies that we are trained on as coaches, professional coaches is embodying and courting mindset. And a coaching mindset really means being curious. Okay, Curiosity is massive. So instead of judging and making assumptions about why the person sent the email, or why they did this, it’s about getting really curious with them. It’s about removing your judgment and asking questions like, okay, so I’m hearing you say that you’re not clear in the process. What part of the process, don’t you understand? And then you listen, actively listen, without assumption. What specifically are you unclear on and how can I help? Okay. So you have to remember, your job as a leader is to remove obstacles is to support your team to do their job. That’s what true leaders do. Okay. Now, I know, in a lot of organizations that I’ve been there myself, we end up in the weeds. But if you want to really stand out as a proper, true leader and move from, you know, being that girl to this proper woman and untrue leader, it’s about really applying those coaching approaches. Okay, so get curious, ask questions, open ended questions without judgment, and you’re going to learn an awful lot. Okay. The third thing, and this actually came from one of the girls on the call. So again, inside 360 leaders club, one of our calls we have every month is a group coaching call, where I will always do some teaching, I give the girls a tool. And I you know, they bring their challenges that are happening. And what’s amazing about it is not only do you get me as your coach, in terms of all my millions of coaching tools and different tactics and strategies I have for different work related situations, you also get the perspective of the group. And what came up in one of the breakout rooms was this concept of situational leadership. So this term came up on the call. So what this really means is, as a leader, you need to be able to adapt your leadership style to your people. And it’s the same in life too. Okay? Unfortunately, leadership is hard, right? It’s not easy. You, you’re the leader, so you have to get to know your people. So in the example that I shared there a few minutes ago about the team member sending the email and saying she didn’t understand the process. Well, this guy was only new in the role. Okay, so she was only in the role, maybe three months. So it’s about getting to know your team, no one what makes them tick? No one, what could you say in those situations? So for example, years ago, I would have taken feedback really personally. And I just remember one of my bosses like, she knew that she knew me so well. She knew how to deliver feedback to me in a way that would not involve my ego. So once you’re once you know your people, and you can demonstrate the situation leadership, it’s going to be a lot lot easier, which is why it’s so crucial as a leader and if you’re multitasking please come back to me, this is a massive part of what you do is help you to free up capacity in your amazingly busy days, so that you actually have time to develop your team, so you have time to get to know them. Like, it’s so so important. One thing I would say, and I’ve said it on the podcast a million times is like, one of the biggest problems I see in the corporate world is that there are way too many meetings. And there is not enough time in the day to number one, do the work. And number two, actually empower and develop your team. I literally I’m just off a call with a client there now who literally listened to all of my tactics that I shared. So again, when you join 360 leaders club, you get access to what I call my 360 degree success path, which has seven key foundations to 360 degree success. And she followed these and she couldn’t believe the results because one of the tactics in there, I call my more time and five strategy and she literally pause this girl was so busy, she got off the hamster wheel, she got the value of investment herself, she literally paused and looked at her calendar out for a month, she canceled recurring meetings, that weekly meetings that she normally ends up canceling anyway, just so she had some breathing room. And by actually doing that she has freed up capacity to empower her team, she has freed up time to show them and teach them and help them to grow. And that’s exactly what you need to be doing as a leader to Okay, so know your people is the situational leadership piece. But in order to do that, you’ve got to free yourself up. Okay. The fourth thing, then I would recommend is really lean into your emotional intelligence. So one of my strengths is, is understanding people I understand people on a very spiritual level, I connect energetically with people, I’m just very empathetic and I’m highly emotional intelligence, okay. It’s it’s something it is a skill you can teach, you can be taught, alright. And actually, it’s step number one in my 360 degrees Success Path is mastering your emotional intelligence because it is so so crucial as a leader that you are emotionally intelligent. Okay, so what does that actually mean? So first of all, what it means is being compassionate, being empathetic, and putting yourself in the other person’s shoes. So in the example that I shared about the girl who was in the job for three months and sent the email, it’s about putting yourself in her shoes. So imagine you were in a job for three months. And you were still learning. Okay? What would How would you want your leader to respond? You’d want you’d want them to feel like you’re on their side, right? So your job as a leader is to listen, it’s to make time for your team to support them and remove roadblocks so she knows what to do. So again, going back to the example of the email, no one’s going to send an email that they think is gonna get them in trouble, like, who’s gonna do that? So does obviously a breakdown somewhere in your process, okay. And this is one thing, I always say I call it the process over person rule, which means you look at the process first, and then you blame the person, okay, because in like 95% of cases, there is a miss in your process. So again, in that example, I shared with the three months, you know, in terms of your onboarding process for your new team, have you built in time to get to know them? Do you understand their strengths? Do you understand what’s motivating them? Because it might not be money, right? Some people think go, they’ve been paid during the job, that should be enough. It might be the vision and mission of the company, they might be doing it to provide a better lifestyle for the family. You know, you need to understand your team’s motivators. And then you can speak their language and then you can tap into your emotional intelligence. Okay. So then finally, the fifth thing, and this is something that I didn’t consider, and again, it came up on one of our on the call in 360. Leaders club with my group was to consider neurodiversity. So one of our ladies who is neuro diverse, pointed out that people who are new neuro, neuro diverse neurodiverse, ie, things like ADHD and autism in some way, in different various neurodiversity. wirings, if you like, they can respond very negatively to feedback. So for example, if somebody has is on the spectrum, okay, and it may be even undiagnosed, they may not even know okay, I know for a fact that people who are on the spectrum, in a lot of cases in terms of autism, they can be quite rigid and quite black and white. So if they’re a process driven, and they’re following your processes, and they send an email or do something, but your processes aren’t going to support them, well, then they’re going to get frustrated and they’re going to maybe react defensively. Okay, so I actually have a A newer diversity experts coming into the ladies in 360 leaders club at some stage, I can’t remember exactly the date at some stage in quarter one. For any of you ladies listening actually, if you didn’t know that she’s coming in to teach you all about your diversity in the workplace because it is a topic that’s becoming more and more topical, more adults are being diagnosed with ADHD than ever before. And a lot of things are making sense for people. So I think it’s really, really, really important. Again, it goes back to understanding your people and being able to support them how they need best.

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So, I hope that that has been valuable for you just to recap on the five tips to handle a defensive meet team member with more ease and less frustration. Number one, look at your part in this. Remember, relationships are co created. Number two, apply a coaching approach, really bring in curiosity. Number three, apply situational leadership, meaning that you adapt your leadership style to the situation, the person you’re dealing with. Number four, use your emotional intelligence. So just be nice, okay, be nice, be compassionate, be empathetic, put yourself in her shoes, or his shoes. And remember, your job as a leader is to remove those roadblocks. And number five, consider neurodiversity. Just because somebody isn’t diagnosed does not mean that they do not have an underlying on you know, issue that hasn’t been diagnosed. So just consider that as well. And again, above all else, be kind, be kind, be nice to your team. They’re trying to do a good job. And I promise you, the more empathy and compassion you bring into your leadership, the more you’re going to stand out, the more your team are going to stay loyal to you, the more your team are going to bend over backwards and deliver for you. So be that leader, that is that shining light that I know you are. And if you’ve enjoyed this episode, there’s another episode that I think you will really really enjoy, which is episode number 85, which is three game changing techniques to manage your emotions, and revolutionize your leadership. We’re talking about how to handle difficult personalities at work. We’re talking about more about emotional intelligence, and the number one game changer that will really supercharge your communication skills. So after you listen to this episode, go check out episode number 85. I think you will really really enjoy that as well. So that is it for this week’s episode of the 360 leadership podcast. If you find this valuable, can you please do me a favor? Please share this with your colleagues because you know what? Somebody told me recently that the top 10 podcasts are always male hosts. And that makes me so mad. Okay, there’s very few females in the top 10 in the podcast, church charts. So if you can help me by sharing this podcast, this is the 360 leadership podcast, okay? You will be flying the flag for women all around the world, you will be helping me reach more people, you’ll be helping me grow my business, you’ll be helping me spread my message and helping me to empower and support more women leaders because you wouldn’t believe the amount of people when they find my podcast, they messaged me and go oh my god, how did I not know about this? I wish I had known about this sooner. I am very generous with my knowledge on this podcast. And in return. I would love if you could help me grow it. So please share it literally grab the link to it right now. Send it in your whatsapp work group, send it via email, send it to your female leader colleagues and I would really really appreciate it and you would be given them a gift. So that’s it for this week’s episode. I hope you have a great rest rest of your week and I’ll see you again same time, same place next Wednesday. Bye for now.