Everybody makes mistakes. One of the important things to teach your workers is that not only do too many excuses erode the trust factor, they highlight a bigger issue when those employees refuse to own up to their mistakes.
By Jim Callahan
We’ve all heard the old saying: “You’re only as good as your weakest link.” It reminds us that no matter how rock solid your group, team, business or organization, you can only assess the whole by your weakest individual person.
You might say that a group of associates is only as strong as its laziest or untrained members.
When you begin looking at individual employees, the same comparison might apply to a person’s skillset or personal abilities.
THE WEAKEST LINK
Each and every one of us has strengths and weaknesses. This month’s column is dedicated to an individual weakness that can be harmful to any business organization. It might also be the easiest—or sometimes the hardest—to correct. In my 49-year career, I’ve encountered real examples of many individuals who make excuses to explain something away can indeed become the weakest link in your convenience chain.
Here’s a news flash for all employees: Management would prefer to hear that you overslept rather than “my alarm clock got knocked over” or “there was a power outage in my neighborhood” or “my car wouldn’t start.” Management has pretty much heard it all, in one form or another.
My personal favorite was “my pet ferret chewed through the electrical cord to my alarm clock.” Poor Billy took more than a month worth of razzing over that excuse and in truth, the incident was never really forgotten about by his co-workers.
And, not once did anyone sympathize with the probable demise of his ferret, which surely was shocked severely when it got through the protective plastic coating of the electrical cord to the live wiring below.
While in some measure, there was humor in his excuse, it generated more concern than humor. That’s because excuses, spread over time, are most often used as reasons to justify failure on the job.
In my mind, there are three negative implications about fibbing around the facts, though the ill-effects can be far more reaching. Essentially:
1. People who get into the habit of making excuses instead of simply owning up to their mistakes or poor performance weaken themselves tremendously in the eyes of friends, management, co-workers and even family.
2. Often his or her circle of contacts doesn’t take him or her to task for the bevy of excuses out of a sense of kindness, which in the end, the excuse maker takes as acceptance so there is no reason to change.
3. Sadly, the excuse maker ends up as one of the precious few believing the lie has some value and is now far down the path of a habit-forming problem.
Don’t get me wrong—we all make excuses from time to time, maybe so we don’t risk hurting someone’s feelings by not attending their party or assuring a loved one that they look nice in that new dress or pair of jeans he or she just spent a small fortune on.
However, multiple excuses in the workplace seems to have a direct impact on the quality of the employer-employee relationship. Too many excuses—whether its the weather, ferrets, just too busy to take care of a customer—are corrosive to a company’s mission.
POSITIVE REINFORCEMENT
So after making some obvious observations, this column suggests that the best thing a supervisor or manager can do for both sides is to curb the behavior immediately. It’s a delicate situation, questioning a worker’s honesty. We all have an obligation to address the excuse maker, as gently but firmly as we can if we are to salvage a professional relationship.
As I said in the beginning, these employees are likely to have great strengths of their own and perhaps just need a little guidance that may be lacking. It’s on us as leaders to assist in a way that can be a positive learning experience rather than an embarrassing situation for the individual.
Once the excuse problem is uncovered and addressed, the same individuals can begin to address their situation and begin to grow. As they grow, the overall chain grows stronger as well.
Remember, while the truth often hurts, excuses can be downright killers.
Jim Callahan has more than 40 years of experience as a convenience store and petroleum marketer. His Convenience Store Solutions blog appears regularly on CSDecisions.com. He can be reached at (678) 485-4773 or via e-mail at [email protected]