Archived Insubordinate TMs

[tgtguy]

I agree with you IF the team member feels comfortable going to the TL to begin with .

 

[RedMan]

It doesn't matter. The TM should follow the chain of command. If the TM doesn't feel comfortable talking with the TL, then how would he feel comfortable talking with an ETL? Sounds like TM is looking for validation from someone who isn't familiar with the situation.

 

[tgtguy]

You cant judge every situation by that standard. Situations are different as are the people involved. If this was true there would be no need for the Hotline...... We will just have to agree to disagree

 

[melvin]

I agree with you IF the team member feels comfortable going to the TL to begin with .

Part of growing up is supposed to be learning how to talk to people directly about these things. Unfortunately, we have increasingly become a society in which we enable people, particularly younger people, to not have to grow up. As you can see from these very situations, we do no favors when we teach people to avoid dealing directly with people and to have others do these sorts of things for us. What eventually happens is that you have an organization where few talk directly to others, the talk is done mostly behind their backs or behind closed doors and dissension rises and morale plummets because no one trusts anyone else.

None of this should be very complicated. It's management/leadership 101, really. I have never known a competent leader who would not tell an employee to first go talk to the supervisor in question before coming to them.

 

[melvin]

You cant judge every situation by that standard. Situations are different as are the people involved. If this was true there would be no need for the Hotline...... We will just have to agree to disagree

No, that is not true. There could be situations where an employee talks directly to people, moving up the leadership ladder within a store and nothing is done. That is not the same as going over the heads of people without talking directly about the issue with the sources of the problem.

 

[SalesflrTL]

Hello all,

I am a newly promoted Hardlines TL with only about 6 TMs reporting to me. I have been in role for just over a month now and my team members are not really digging my approach to leadership. The previous TL was very laid back and didn't care if they had their cell phones on the sales floor or took short cuts when completing a task.

Recently my ETL approached me and asked about the moral of my team, and I thought it was 'OK' and he said he was going to have some 1 on 1 chat sessions with the team members. Turns out they all complained about me, saying that I stress them out, and they want to quit because of me, and I am partially hurt by this because I tried having 1 on 1s with them as well and they mentioned the opposite, that they were happy and not stressed and were not thinking of quitting.

It's like I am leading a small group of high schoolers. Please help!

My ETL said that I should just try to pick my battles when instructing them to do tasks and to try to be a bit more laid back, my only concern is that I feel like these people are ganging up on me and I don't really have anything/anyone I can trust to vouch for me that I am doing a good job.

Any advice would be helpful!

I had this same issue taking over another part of the seafloor. The way I helped solved it is by holding chat sessions with my team members so they felt important and to receive feedback. Next when it came to setting expectations for them by the book I made sure to talk about them with my etl first so that if a team member complained, I know the etl would back me up.