logo 19 • CAMLOG Partner Magazine • December 2018 Example I An employee (A) who helped set up the practice and who already has many years of dedicated service, is regularly given – also unwittingly due to the friendly relationship with the practice owner – attractive and effective tasks with which she can distinguish herself. A newer employee (B), with significantly greater expertise in some of these areas, is not asked. Employee B feels ignored and not valued; disharmony arises. In her opinion, whilst employee A is in the limelight, she feels degraded. Employee B’s willingness to perform decreases; she is no longer keen to become involved. The relationship between B and A is now overshadowed by rejection. A has the feeling that she would quite naturally be entitled to these tasks, that the rejection refers to her as a person instead of to the situation and expresses irritation. The boss is perplexed and blames his team for the sensitivities and tells A and B to discuss this among themselves. The fact that this cannot be instrumental becomes clear when looking at the systemic principles: it is not the employees themselves who have the duty to intervene here, but the supervisor, as he was also the cause. The fact is: long years of service in the practice do not entitle having greater rights, but must nevertheless be valued, as the system owes its existence in part to the employee. However, priority must be given to stronger performance, greater knowledge and special skills (4th principle). From a systemic point of view, the assignment of tasks in the team should have been based on the expertise and this decision should have been clearly formulated. If employee B is acknowledged according to her abilities, communication at eye level can be restored again. Other tasks which do not explicitly concern technical know-how should, however, of course be delegated to senior staff. Employee A would thus be acknowledged because of her long affiliation. Mutual respect and esteem can be restored. Example II Employees A and B are very active in helping with the founding of the new practice, beyond the call of duty in fact. Years later a new employee (C) is hired. After a short time, C asks if she can be granted an expensive and very high quality training course, which will also enable her to achieve a higher position in the practice. The manager of the practice takes her employees A and B aside and asks if they have anything against this. Nobody speaks out and employee C is given the go-ahead. After a while it becomes apparent that absenteeism occurs more frequently. The new employee C is excluded from various things by employees A and B, a tendency to mobbing can be noticed. From a systemic point of view, several principles were violated here: as employees A, B and C all have similar qualifications, the “right to recognition of the chronological order” as well as the “right to recognition of the higher commitment for the greater good” apply. According to the understanding of employees A and B, they should have been first in line for further training due to their long affiliation and commitment. However, too piqued to ask, both remained silent. They felt this decision was an affront to themselves. This violated the principle of balance: the debtor has a right to a reminder. Employees A and B should have expressed their displeasure under four or six eyes. The felt offence turned into frustration and now deep trench warfare and work to rule are the result. This led to the unclear feeling that no matter how hard one tries, this is neither seen nor rewarded. If the clinician had not informed her team personally, but left this up to employee C or even to chance, as soon as employees A and B would have heard about the sponsoring, even more violent reactions, such as giving notice, could not have been ruled out. The solution from a systemic point of view would have been to ask employee C for time to make a decision and then to explain the request to employees A and B and to generally bring up the topic of further training and the associated career opportunities in the practice. It may well be that there are completely different preferences and interests that need to be explored. Once a decision has been made, the entire team can then discuss the topic freely. This can then lead to appreciation on all sides. It should be the objective of every company to maintain the performance and satisfaction of its employees at a permanently high level. But good leadership is more than just avoiding mistakes, because compliance with the systemic principles plays an equally important role with regard to sensitivities within the team. Although there is no suitable systemic solution for every situation, knowledge of the systemic principles helps to deal professionally with foreseeable conflict potential and to keep disagreements to a minimum. Having dealt with conflicts and leadership errors in the last two articles, I will now devote myself to the topic of motivation in the following issue of logo. PRACTICE MANAGEMENT 33 Andrea Stix, M.Sc., MBA Consultant for Communication Strategy and Practice Marketing Coach, NLP-Master, Specialist for personality diagnostics
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