You can tell a lot about someone by how they treat others. I remember being at a conference and learning a strategy that we use in our organization even today—the best way to learn a person’s true self is to take them to lunch (or dinner – tomato tomato). You see, when you take someone out to eat, you aren’t thinking about how they treat you, what you want to evaluate is how they treat others. This leader would inform the wait staff in advance that he was doing an interview, and intentionally have a waiter make mistakes with an order to see how the candidate handled adversity. How did they communicate with someone they perceived as “serving” them?
I recently had a situation with one of our customers that reminded me of this. You see, there was a service issue with the account, the engineer was working too fast and would miss a few steps in the process (which in IT can become a big problem). We were working with the leadership in the company to get the engineer coaching support and an optional additional resource. We spoke to the leadership and had a game plan. We found two senior resources and were going to have them onboard the following week. Everything was on track, and then suddenly the Service Coordinator entered the picture.
In the case of this story, let’s not call her an antagonist, but more so, a poor choice as a leader. You see, from the very beginning of scheduling the onboarding, her tone to our team was extremely harsh. She did not want to set up a service call, and in fact, did not even want to train the new resources on their organization’s best practices. She was abrupt in how she spoke to our service team and our Customer Experience Manager. I watched the interactions from behind the screen as I was CC’d in communications, letting my leaders navigate what was becoming a very difficult situation.
Finally, when she was refusing to even onboard the Team, I stepped in. I explained the conversation that we had with leadership, and suggested we set up a call to clarify each team’s asks and expectations. I’m not sure if she was upset that she wasn’t invited to the original meeting and intentionally making it difficult, but her tone of voice was clear, even in an email, she wanted nothing to do with us.
We got on the call with their President, Service leader and her. I had three service leaders, the salesperson and CX leader. We wanted to make the relationship work and wanted clarity on next steps. She was clearly upset. Throughout the conversation, her tone and expectations were that she was not onboarding someone or re-training new people.
I, again, explained our action plan, and what we, as two organizations that respected each other, were committing to making the relationship work. The leadership agreed. The conversation got so hostile, with her refusal to do a 30-60-90-day plan when our agreement ended in 60 days, that at one point, I clearly asked during the call if there was even any intention for us to work on this relationship, and if our team would even going to have an opportunity to make this work.
It seemed like she was completely against working through any of this and the hostility was radiating from her towards all of us on the call. The President then stepped in, assured me that they too wanted to make the partnership work, and that they would onboard and train the resources the next day.
Crisis averted, or so I thought.
That evening we sent out a request for a bi-weekly touch in to see how the new resources were working. She declined and asked that we cancel all future calls and set up one call with just the delivery head, their leadership and me. That there were too many people from our team, she felt overwhelmed and did not want that many people on the call. OK. I informed her that I would need to add the service leader from India, that is directly managing the team, but we could leave the others off. NOPE, not good enough, she pushed again. No, she didn’t want him on the call.
Now I know, you are probably thinking maybe something happened and she didn’t like the service leader, but she didn’t know him, he was new to managing the account and was an extremely senior leader in our organization.
I, then, received an email apology from the President and a request for a call. He asked me to invite whomever I needed from our team to be on the call and that he would address internally and asked to have a conversation with me directly. I responded to the coordinator that my service leadership would be on the call and sent out the invite.
This was a lot after a full day of Quarterly Business Review meetings, and Lord knows, I looked a mess and didn’t even have my battle armor on (a deep red lipstick goes a long way).
I responded back to the leadership that I was more than happy to have a conversation and discuss next steps. My concern was more so for the leadership capacity of the coordinator. You see, if this is how she was treating my team, how did she act with others within her organization? Harsh unprovoked language, an unwillingness and almost forceful approach to collaboration did not make a good leader, and as a service coordinator she was determining what work our team was doing. I did not want my team working with someone that would treat others with this tone of voice and behave in such a manner. Coaching was needed.
I appreciate strong women and will be the first to cheer someone one, but kindness is key. If you can’t be kind even in difficult situations, and this was nowhere near difficult, then what does that say about you as a person?
Now, I kept myself calm, because I don’t know what was happening in her world and what was causing this angst. All I could do was to protect my team. I would rather walk away from a customer, than have my team spoken to, or treated with such disdain and negativity. Where we work is a choice, and I value every team member in our organization.
Their happiness is my responsibility. I’ll have a conversation, hope we can make the relationship work, but more importantly, hope that the coordinator is put into a much-needed leadership coaching program. Being organized and managing a dispatch board does not make someone a leader. Leaders need to be able to treat others with respect, no matter the circumstance.
If you are a leader, take a look at your up-and-coming leaders, reflect on how they treat others and think twice before you put them into a leadership role. Leadership is a huge responsibility and not everyone has the temperament to lead your people, partners or vendors well. Each of these interactions reflects on your organization. Choose wisely.
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