Office Dirty People
 

Hi, my name is Joe Dellanno this is my job.
 

People are people…boys will be boys and girls are made of sugar and spice and all that’s nice! Many of us start each day in the usual way, get out of bed, take a shower, grab a cup of Joe and head off into the maze of life for another exciting day in the Design/Build industry! We arrive at our place of work and start sniffing out our favorite parking spot hoping that one of our co-workers has not parked their fat SUV in our space! This often can make the day go from good to rotten and it is not even 8:00 am! You begrudgingly park your car in a different parking space and head up to the office with a ‘tude!  

You find your way to your desk only to find several pieces of mail, two memos and a bright pink notice that the office is taking up a collection for world hunger and the owner’s birthday gift! Your stomach turns with aggravation, your blood pressure is rising and it’s not even 8:15 am! The phone rings and that familiar ring tone begins to rattle your brain as if to signal your inner programming to welcome you to another fine day of dealing with people and putting out fires.

The morning continues as it usually does and by the middle of the morning a parade of artificially happy people starts making their rounds like a well staffed psychiatric hospital. After the ninth, “hi, how are doing” conversation your fingers starts to form into a fist! Your voice mail light is blinking, work is piling up and you would like to escape into a Southwest Airlines commercial, “want to get a way?”

Working with people is difficult and if you want to see this story in action pull up a chair, turn on the tube and watch, “The Office” on Thursday nights at 8:30 pm on NBC.  Enabling poor communication, passive-aggressive behavior or accepting excuses causes the work environment to be non-productive, chaotic and wasteful of valuable business time. People are trashy and they will bring their mental head trash to your business and it will show up at a most inconvenient time.

True story
A mid-sized Design/Build Company owner asked me how to stop his lead carpenter from asking questions about how to build the project. I asked a few questions. “Is he competent enough to produce the project, does he speak English, can he add, subtract, multiply and divide numbers, does he have a cell phone, did he accept his position duties and responsibilities at the end of the interviewing process”? To these questions the company owner replied, “yes”. I asked him if I could make a suggestion and the company owner said yes. I asked him to take a piece of paper and write the following in big letters. “If I were not here what would you do?”

I then told him to post it on the outside of his office door. The next day the lead carpenter came into the office like clock work, read the note, turned around and headed back to the job site.

Leadership starts with good leaders who will inspire others to want to produce, be creative and give more than what is expected of them. Poor leaders are consumed by guilt, fear and self doubt which often produces high employee turn over because they have little to no trust in the company and its financial future.

The work place is a dirty people place. My name is Joe Dellanno and this is my job.