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Retaining Troop Talent by Emily King

Emily King is a nationally recognized expert on military transition, working with leading organizations to accelerate veteran integration. She is the author of Field Tested: Recruiting, Managing, and Retaining Veterans. Contact her at Emily@militarytransitions.biz.

Emily King

Onboarding Veterans into the Civilian Workforce

Fall 2014 - The Public Manager

Guidance for public managers on partnering with nonprofit organizations.

To Partner or Not to Partner, That Is a Public Manager Question

Spring 2012 - The Public Manager

Retaining Troop Talent

April 2011 - TD Magazine

From Boots to Briefcase: Conquering the 18-Month Churn

I once had a nurse manager come to me and ask, “How do I tell a master’s-prepared registered nurse that sleeping at their workstation is unprofessional? In many of my previous management jobs, finding an employee sleeping at their workstation was a fireable offense. In this environment, the employee appears to see no difference between sleeping in a designated break room and sleeping at their workstation.”While it may not always be an employee sleeping on the job, managers in all sectors need to address a variety of unacceptable behaviors. But how can you do so without causing drama?When I ask people what feeling comes to mind when I use the phrases “talk about a problem” or “address an issue,” the most common response is “Ugh!” – which isn’t really an emotion, but you probably get the idea. So, first tip: recognize this as a simple gap between what you were expecting and what you are observing. Your job as their manager is to describe the gap and partner with the person to close it. Here are three suggestions for how to do that:Master Your StoryYou will be far more effective at holding this conversation if you can suspend judgement. For example, even if you believe everyone should know that sleeping at the workstation is unprofessional, hold open the possibility that maybe this person was trained or taught differently. Or maybe, just maybe, they slept at their workstation all through school and no one ever got up the courage to give them feedback about it. After all, it is easy to mistake silence for approval.Catch It EarlyThe time to talk about the bad behavior is the first or second time it happens. Imagine how easy it would be, the first time a new employee falls asleep at their workstation, to gently shake them awake and kindly say, “We want all our nurses to sleep in the breakroom, not their station. Let me show you where it is.” When you catch it early, you are kindly onboarding a new employee and making sure they know what they need to be successful.When you let the poor behavior go on for a while without addressing it, two things happen. First, your own irritation likely builds, fueling your negative story. Second, you make the issue bigger. Now it is not just once or twice that this has happened but months’ worth of bad behavior. When you make the issue bigger through delay, you are more likely to create embarrassment and subsequent defensiveness in the other person.Have and Share a Good IntentIf you use the first two tips, it will be much easier to use the third one. Before any gap conversation, stop and ask yourself: what do I really want for this person? For them, not from them. Asking and answering this question will require you to flip your perspective 180 degrees. After all, we step up to gap conversations because the gap is causing a pain or problem for us. We are acutely aware of how their behavior is affecting us. The question you must ask is: How is it affecting them?What do you want for them and how will sharing this help? It can be as simple as, “I want you to be successful here and that is why I want to talk to you about this.”When you care about someone, and they know you care about them, gap conversations become about improvement, not reproof.

3 Tips for Addressing Unacceptable Behavior in the Workplace

As a department of one, you have to get creative by finding free resources or repurposing tools available in your organization. It's often hard to obtain funding for resources that would be useful in e-learning development. In this session, you'll explore the existing organizational resources and tools that may be available for you to use, either for free or at low cost. These will include graphic design, project management, and authoring tools. Through the creative application of what's used in other departments, you can discover ways to use them to meet your needs. We'll discuss the kinds of resources and tools that are optimal for e-learning development and workarounds with what you might be able to find. This session was recorded at the ATD 2019 TechKnowledge conference in West Palm Beach, Florida.

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