Unhappy at Home

Sometimes an employee's personal life follows them to work, creating a negative influence on job performance. While these outside factors have many different forms which lead to a wide variety of on-the-job issues, today's post deals with an employee who is unhappy at home. Essentially, at this point in her life, the employee's home life is just not what she hoped it would be, and her unhappiness causes her to come to work feeling blue and depressed. Because of this she tends to keep to herself, it severely limits her interaction with co-workers and it diminishes her ability to take an active role in the department team. On the other hand, her boss believes that if she could just leave the outside influences at home, she could be a great team player.

I liked her boss's comment. But how to do it? Since the influences come from the home life, the boss probably can't do much about eliminating them. Except of course to offer empathy, compassion and understanding and to "point her in the right direction" of available help and resources should she seek the boss's advice and counsel.

What the boss can do, with a reasonable possibility of success, is to make the employee's work experience so interesting to her that it motivates her to want to "put her all" into her job, which in turn will help her forget her outside troubles, at least while she's at work. In essence the boss should work toward giving her a sense of social interaction (becoming a member of the team), a feeling of accomplishment (by achieving higher levels of performance), an enhanced ego state (through increased self-esteem and the camaraderie and appreciation of other team members) and a sense of self-fulfillment (by developing new skills and exercising new talents).

Is it easy to do? Not necessarily. But it shouldn't be overly hard either. The boss recognizes her potential. He realizes the source of the trouble and the impact on the department. The department is team-based. What the boss needs to do now is to take the time to guide and coach her in a direction that will combine her interests with those of the team and move her toward becoming an integral and interested member of the department team. And the boss also needs to get some of the stronger team members to extend a hand in helping her become a better team player.

About Pelleyblog. This blog covers topics of interest to managers, particularly those at the first-line supervisor level. Occasionally we include topics of general interest, topics about Dan Pelley's background and experiences, and a rare occasional rant. We welcome your comments on this or any other post.

Copyright © 2009 Daniel W. Pelley
All rights reserved.