Supervision Q & A with Ivan Silva – Issues with Listening Styles and Attention SpansPosted by Luis on March 19, 2010

Question: Diversity also applies to listening styles and attention spans; how have you dealt with folks who can’t handle people’s differences? Do you embrace the jargon lovers, or keeps things as simple as possible?

a. This goes back to you as the supervisor and leader, your must set the bar, the example of what is acceptable in the working environment. You must delineate expectations and guidelines very clearly and have a very open and working relationship with your HR department so that you are always on the same page. The HR department is typically the one who deals with issues that are requiring paper work to be filed and or reported and if the employee has concerns about their rights being violated so when any issues like this come up you should keep the HR representative abreast of what is going on even if you are not ready to formalize the concern. This ensures that you are inline with company policy and also with the plan the company has for you as a supervisor. You must create an environment that is pleasant but balanced out by the rules that inappropriate, harrassive, rude and illegal behavior is not tolerated and will be dealt with disciplinary action, which may include up to termination. There are many tools you have at your disposition such as suspending employees, cutting hours, citing a report in their records, counseling, coaching and even bringing in outside help for the entire staff to teach them to work together better and enhance work place communication and minimize issues within the staff.

b. Jargon lovers; each person has a manner in which they like to speak. They find it more comfortable; however if the manner in which they speak is crude and/or lewd you must be proactive once again and bring it to their attention before another employee is made upset or insulted by it—these situations can escalate into legal matters or you as a company can be liable for not having provided a workplace free of threats or harassment. Employees expect to come to an environment that is free of negative things such as those previously mentioned. If a person is using language that is too technical and tends to confuse others around them creating a disruption or to where it affects productivity then you should speak to those people on their own and let them know that they may want to reevaluate the words they use because they are creating confusion or are causing a problem in productivity. The job at hand is not only supervising staff but to ensure that your staff is productive and company goals are being met. It is important that you keep your communication at a level that the average employee you bring can understand. Remember you are the one who hires people and you set qualifications—you know where your employees stand and should not create an environment that is not within the standards you requested.

About Ivan Silva: Ivan holds a BA Journalism with an emphasis Advertising/Public Relations, in years leading up to now he spent nearly all of his work life in middle management overseeing hundreds of employees. You can find his resume on his site, http://www.IvanSilva.com

About the interview: The multipart interview took place this January as part of the curriculum for a management course I (Luis) was enrolled in. It was good enough to earn me an A and high praise, so now it’s yours to read.

via Supervision Q & A with Ivan Silva – Issues with Listening Styles and Attention Spans | Luis Rocks.

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