Turbo Leadership Systems^™

Change takes time

Sheila, controller for a Clark County construction company, told Session 6 of Turbo’s Leadership Development Lab (LDL):

“At Session 2 when we were given our ‘Pearl’ assignment and challenged to improve an important relationship, I chose one of my coworkers. She started working for our company 6 years ago. She was hired as the receptionist and AP assistant and has been promoted to Contracts Administrator. She is an important asset to our company. We can count on her projects being accurate and complete as long as they are in her ‘normal realm.’ She takes great pride in her work, but change is not a thing she handles well. In fact, if anyone makes a change or asks her to do something out of her normal procedures, you get the ‘wrath of _______,’ as we call it. She has become an extremely negative person. She spends a lot of time complaining and pointing out other peoples’ mistakes. She seems to feel better about herself when pointing out the mistakes other people make.

“She spent a leisurely summer this past year while others put in a lot of extra hours and effort. When it we set our 2013 goals, her main goal was to ‘delegate more to others.’ She often says, ‘I don’t volunteer ideas because I would end up having to do it.’

“I had a personal goal this year to surround myself with positive people, which caused me to push her as far away as I could, until the LDL. “At a recent Friday Admin meeting, I asked everyone to focus on a module of our new accounting software that I became aware of when we made the 2013 upgrade. This module tracks quotes and integrates them with the accounting software.

“I had asked her to go over it, test it, and see if it could help us. She was immediately on the defensive, crossing her arms and giving us dirty looks. I focused on the positive; her work is always fabulous. As we grow and need more flexibility and tracking, this new software module may offer us the tools we need for speed and accuracy. It was a very long 30 minutes with as much brainstorming as we could do. She was very negative through most of the meeting, but in the last 10 minutes, she finally started to see that it could work, as long as she didn’t have to go back and redo what she had already done this year. This was a start.

“Then this last week, out of the blue she mentioned the new tracking of quotes and how it would benefit us. I have to admit I was very surprised and pleased that she was trying to work with us on this.

“The lesson I learned from this experience is that patience and positive persistence can improve my relationships with others. The actions I call you to take are to be patient, positive and listen. The benefits you will gain are coworkers who are expanding assets.”

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