Anne Loehr - Managing the Unmanageable: How to Motivate Even the Most Unruly Employee

This innovative guide to motivating the toughest members of your team will inspire managers in every setting. With passion, common sense, and clarity, Anne Loehr and Jezra Kaye demystify what makes employees unmanageable, and show, step-by-step, how to turn them around.

Tom Ward, managing director, The Leland C. and Mary M. Pillsbury Institute for Hospitality Entrepreneurship, Cornell University School of Hotel Administration

Finallya really practical approach to dealing with unproductive employee behavior and how to evaluate the cost/benefit of making the effort to turn it around. I wish Id had this book in my management tool kit twenty years ago. Loehr and Kaye provide an effective, no-nonsense method for engaging in the work of turning an unmanageable, subversive employee into a productive team member that also results in gaining valuable insights into your own management style.

Christine Salem, managing director, Outsides Go magazine

Whether youre leading a group, spearheading a project, or wondering what happened to a formerly great colleague, this book is a must-read. But be warned: Once you start Managing the Unmanageable, you wont be able to put it down! The powerful and invaluable ideas that pour from each page will help you analyze, understand, and stop disruptive behaviors by successfully engaging even the most unmanageable employee.

Cynthia de Lorenzi, CEO, Success in the City

Managing the Unmanageable brings into clear focus one of the issues many otherwise successful executives simply ignorethe problem employee. This book provides a compelling call to action to not ignore that person, and then it clearly presents a proven, nonthreatening method to help both the manager and the employee become a star. Applying these techniques quickly cleared up a lingering problem for me.

Scott Thacker, COO, Ivory Consulting Corporation

Where were Anne Loehr and Jezra Kaye when I needed them?! Before starting Savvy Navigator Tours, I managed hundreds of airline industry employees, and this book could have saved me a lot of headaches! Read it nowits vital to your own and your teams success!

Jeffrey Ward, owner, Savvy Navigator Tours

Having worked with both Loehr and Kaye to successfully hit my companys targeted goals, hone my management skills, and advance my communication, I knew the value of their work and saw the direct, positive impact of their ideas on my companys bottom line. This book was what I expected from their style: a practical, step-by-step, and often humorous guide to handling difficult employees.

Steve Goldenberg, CEO, Interfolio

How to Motivate Even the Most Unruly Employee

ANNE LOEHR AND JEZRA KAYE

Copyright 2011 by Anne Loehr and Jezra Kaye

All rights reserved under the Pan-American and International Copyright Conventions. This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, in any form or by any means electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system now known or hereafter invented, without written permission from the publisher, The Career Press.

MANAGING THE UNMANAGEABLE
EDITED BY JODI BRANDON
TYPESET BY GINA TALUCCI
Cover design by Wes Youssi
Printed in the U.S.A.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

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To our clients and employees, who taught us everything we know.

We have each been fortunate beyond words to work with dedicated mentors, talented teams, and generous colleagues who have pushed, prodded, and helped shape us into more powerful leaders and better human beings. Naming each of you would be impossible, but wed like to acknowledge those people without whom this book would not have seen the light of day:

Our partners in learning: Joan Fletcher of Winning Ways, whose input set us on the track, and Rose Rubin Rivera, whose support helped keep us there.

Our agent, Grace Freedson, and our editors, Kirsten Dalley and Jodi Brandon, who guided us through this publishing adventure.

Our parents, siblings, nieces, nephews, and cousins, who love us unstintingly and kick our butts when we need it.

Finally, to our wonderful husbands and daughtersNeel and Ariana Inamdar; Jerome Harris and Laurika Harris-Kaye: You cheered us on (or at least put up with us!) through long days and nights of brainstorming, writing, editing, and hair-tearing. Thank you for your love, strength, support, and encouragement. We hope you know that we believe in you every bit as deeply as you believe in us.

This book is the result of two very different journeys.

Annes first management experience was in East Africa. She and her husband had both just graduated from Cornell Universitys School of Hotel Administration. Eager to test their skills in the world, they seized the chance to run the Turtle Bay Beach Club, a dilapidated 300-bed hotel in the tiny town of Watamu, Kenya. The caveat was they had to sell it in two years, at a profit!

Although Annes husband had grown up in Kenya, she didnt know one safari animal from another. Yet there she was, a general manager with 12 male, Kenyan direct reports. These department managers were all older than she, and none of them had graduated from high school.

Meanwhile, Jezra was working as a jazz singer in Boston. After 18 years of following that dream, she moved to New York City and decided to pursue a career in corporate marketing communications. While Anne was wrestling with creating a modern hotel management system from scratch, Jezra was writing hundreds of speeches, delivering her own keynote addresses, and coaching executives and employees on how to communicate with audiences and each other. She learned that clear and respectful communications have tremendous power, and when she launched her own thriving communications coaching practice, she learned that these skills can be taught.

In 2003, Anne came back from Africa with a fully formed business philosophy and a set of successful coaching and training practices that she has used to coach hundreds of executives, managers, and employees in the military, non-profit, and private sectors. At the core of her success is the knowledge that attitude is the best predictor of a groups performance; that treating individuals with respect is the best way to nurture a good attitude; and that, under the right circumstances, everyone has a contribution to make.

Of course, the reverse is also true. When circumstances change, or when contributions are blocked, even the best employee can feel frustratedcan act inappropriatelyand can, ultimately, become unmanageable. Turning that situation around is what Managing the Unmanageable is all about.

Anne Loehr, Reston, Virginia
Jezra Kaye, Brooklyn, New York

This book is about managing an employees bad behavior.

Not bad behavior in the criminal sense, but behavior that is costly, disruptive, divisivetrouble. If you purchased this book, theres a good chance that youre seeing this kind of behavior in your own organization: Employees who are rude. Egomaniacs. Slackers. Employees who go AWOL when you need them, miss their deadlines, screw up assignments, chase away clients, and fracture your teams morale. The list could probably go on forever, because there seems to be no end to the new and creative ways that employees can find to become unmanageable.