Episode 95: Turning Blockers Into Champions: How to manage employees blocking change

Paul: Blockers are powerful. They can block you because they are powerful. So they’re probably in some kind of position of authority. You have to either cut off them or remove them from the problem or remove them from working for you. There are no other choices. And the longer that you leave someone in place who is preventing you and your team from experimenting and trying new things, the longer it’s going to take for you to get to success. It’s as simple as that.

Voice Over: You’re about to listen to an episode of What the Hell Just Happened. Join Paul Edwards and his guests as they discuss interesting HR topics and solve some of our listeners’ submitted questions.

Paul: And occasionally I’ll off topic to talk about whatever I want. Think barbecue, space exploration, growing your business. Things that interest all of us.

Paul: You know what a lot of people don’t realize out there is that in order to get, to make a big change in your business, it often takes many attempts to get there. You have to try it sometimes over and over and over again to get it right, to learn from that process. If you have somebody on your team who won’t even let you learn from that process because they’re kind of getting in the way and maybe muttering under their breath, or when you leave the room with a new idea to tell everybody else ‘He’s, you know, he always does this. We don’t have to worry about it’. If you got that kind of person in your practice, maybe this podcast is for you because Michelle Richards and I… Michelle’s got some great experience from the outside world that she’s going to share with us. We’re going to talk about blockers in your practice, commiserate a little bit around this subject and hopefully you’ll get a couple of tidbits out of it that will help you get through it. The one thing that we really didn’t get into is setting an expectation. So the way to corner someone who’s blocking is to bring up the problems. Talk about everything that Michelle and I are going to talk about here, Take the approaches, read the articles that we’ve provided for you guys. But in the end, you set the expectation of what you plan to see as you go forward. So this person has to participate. They have to produce the end product. They have to talk to you about why it did or did not work. They have to talk about it and there’s no way around it. And then you have to hold yourself accountable to have those conversations. And you may have to do it over and over and over again until a new habit is formed.

Michelle: Love to work with blockers. Nope, they scare me. They are kind of intimidating.

Paul: They can be. That is the nature of a blocker. So everybody, welcome to the podcast today. I’ve got Michelle Richards with me. Michelle is one of the wonderful advisors and HR experts that you talk to over at CEDR. And the reason why Michelle and I are talking about this is, and we’ve talked about this before, Michelle, so I’m not revealing anything. Michelle used to work for a large retailer, and so that’s what we do over at CEDR. We look for all kinds of different HR experts from all different walks of life. Some of them have, like you, Michelle, you had a ton of experience. I mean, you work your way up, but what were you when you started?

Michelle: I was a cashier.

Paul: So you worked your way up from cashier into management into a pretty extensive role in HR.

Michelle: Yeah, it was, it was super cool. I worked there for 12 years.

Paul: Wow.

Michelle: And it was awesome to be able to start at the entry level position and then work my way up. And eventually, you know, I was… I was done with retail. The schedule was, was pretty harsh. And then I came to CEDR, and I’ve been here almost six years, Paul.

Paul: Is it six years now?

Michelle: Kind of crazy, almost.

Paul: So have seen six more years before you’re sick of us too.

Michelle: You have a little bit of time.

Paul: Yeah, I have a little bit of time. I think we may have crossed it on some days.

Michelle: I love it here, so we’re good.

Paul: I’m glad you feel that way. So, you know, we were kind of chit chatting and I just hit the record button, everybody, we just went right straight into this. We’re going to talk about, I wrote this article about blockers. And to define what a blocker is, this is an employee who works for you, who is blocking some kind of effort.

Michelle: Yep, the effort could look like a lot of different things. Could be a new process you’re trying to roll out. Could be a culture change you’re trying to make.

Paul: Could be just about anything. Could be… yeah. Like you said, it could be a new process. Could be a new way of doing things. I want to hark back to this guy named Greg Stanley. Greg passed away last year. We missed you, Greg. Greg was a coach in dentistry, Whitehall Management and God man, Greg was so great. And you would sit and listen to him and he would impart so much knowledge during a day or two of his, you know, one of his conferences and you would just leave inspired. Like you had just learned so much from this man who cataloged everything and could repeat it to you and tell you how it applies to you and what it will do for you. And if you ever grabbed anything that he did and executed on it and executed well, you would get good results. The problem is, is that we hear all this sitting in a hotel conference room maybe in Scottsdale with nothing else going on, and you bring back all those great ideas and you’re inspired by everything. And maybe your team was with you, maybe they weren’t. And you show back up at work and your practice is running and it’s a lot harder to implement something to cause change to, you know, to get good results when you’re in it, you know. When you’re up and running in the business, everything is hunky dory. And Scottsdale, after a couple of scotches and some, you know, some courses.

Michelle: Yeah, in theory, these things sound great sometimes, right? And I think as you all are going to be listening to kind of some examples, we walk through some potential solutions that you guys can take away. You might hear and go, ‘Wow, like, okay. I know the person that’s a blocker. I have some ideas, some solutions’.

Paul: ‘I know how they’re blocking’.

Michelle: Exactly. And you walk into your office next Monday and it’s busy. Things that are crazy, someone called out. And now it kind of gets put a little on the backburner. Ultimately, I just want you to kind of hear this and know that we get the challenge of applying these things, but we’re excited to be able to at least share this so we can get you thinking about how to address these blockers.

Paul: So they come back with these great ideas and then their longest term employees, they look at the rest of the employees, ‘Oh yeah. Yeah, he goes these things all the time. He’s got some great ideas’. However, it’s going to take some execution and some follow up, and we’re going to see how that goes. And that’s a form of blocking. I almost can’t blame that person because they are reflecting what their experiences have been and nobody has come back through the door, you know, for the fourth time and said, ‘I know I sucked in the past and I never did these things like I was supposed to. But I’m begging you all, please reset. Please help me out. Let’s let’s go try this’. So you know, everybody, it manifests like this. I’m your employee and you’ve just made the announcement in the morning huddle and you’ve left the room. And now I’m your employee. And here it comes ‘We’ve tried this before. He’s tried this before, and it never works’. It’s some form of this. ‘This is just going to create more work. I’ve seen this, done it before. We do all the work, we create reports, we give him the reports, and he’s so busy, or she’s so busy’.

Michelle: All of us are in jeopardy at some point of becoming blockers ourselves.

Paul: I’m a blocker. I’m- a No no. I’m a ‘No’ first, everybody. I’m a ‘No no. I don’t want to do that’. And then you give me a minute and, sometimes maybe a week, and I’ll change my mind.

Michelle: Let it settle in a little bit.

Paul: I love your point there, though.

Michelle: Yeah. I mean, you know. As Paul is, you know, painting a picture of history, you know, my HR history and work experience. I’ve been in HR for almost 12 years. And I was thinking about it, I was like, ‘Well, if I’m in HR for another 12 years, 15 years, maybe for the rest of my career’, I’ve seen it happen where you just slowly but surely it’s just been one degree off. You become a blocker little by little. And there’s ways to avoid it, you know, by being self aware and understanding what a blocker is. Thinking about this from that perspective that even though they might have a negative impact on your day to day, there’s hope that you can help to manage this. Get them back where they need to be, get them back on track.

Paul: So I want to address why you have to get them back on track. Because the simple solution to this is ‘Let’s just fire the blocker and get them out of the way’. But there’s a problem with that because typically in order to be a blocker, and to be an effective blocker, you have to be of some value. Your opinion counts, you are a leader either by designation or de facto. It’s because you’ve been there so long that of course people turn to you for your opinion. Of course the doctor turns to you for your leadership, even though you may not be holding a title. Or you are the manager and you’re the blocker. I think if we talk about kind of some of the characteristics of blockers, your typical blockers are going to be chronic complainers. Their instinct is like mine, their instinct is to resist. I’m almost always a no first before I’m like, ‘Okay, we can add gravy to that, that’ll be fine’. And other things- I don’t think it’s inherent in everybody, but it’s a little bit of a victim mentality to it, which is something along the lines of ‘This is not in my job description. This is going to cause more work for me. You know, every time we say we’re going to do one of these things, I’m the one that has to be the one that does what everybody else is supposed to do’. You know, that victim mentality of which there could be an inkling of truth in that. And no wonder someone would resist that, when the whole team goes, ‘Yay!’ and then they look to her to do, you know, to do all the work. And then the last one is, is they just like practice at critical thinking. They lack those critical thinking skills. Another sign that you may have a blocker on your team is that they are an incredibly hard worker and they’re completely overwhelmed and overworked within your practice, trying to keep your practice running. And again, no wonder that this person is a no to one more thing to try and change. Even though ultimately it may make their job better.

Michelle: Right.

Paul: The worst blockers, they kind of escalate things. They’ll escalate minor issues and make them bigger issues. So that’s one kind of blocker. That’s less likely going to be a manager, but not entirely. I mean, we’ve all had those people that, have they know all the problems.

Michelle: Right?

Paul: They know them and they’re willing to tell you where they are.

Michelle: Oh definitely. Where they can be inflating a minor issue and then kind of breezing past the issues that will actually make a difference if they solve.

Paul: Yeah. So we’ll get caught up in the minor issues instead of the kind of looking at things and trying to fix them going forward. Obviously somebody who’s resistant, any kind of resistance that you meet is an innovation roadblock. Innovation is often hard to implement, to accept. You know, sometimes I’m just begging people, ‘Let’s just try it, let’s just do it for a while and let’s measure it. And if it’s not working, let’s stop doing that’. Let’s have some integrity around that.

Integrity, meaning is you do what you say you’re going to do when you’re going to do it. Another form of integrity is if you’re not going to do it, you say you’re not going to do it. There’s some power, I believe some real power in that. Telling yourself you’re going to go to the gym every Monday and never going to the gym on Monday is really a massive block to you. I think on a mental and intellectual level. And you can flip that by getting up, going to bed on Sunday and going ‘There’s no way I’m going to gym on a Monday’, and you’ll be in integrity because you ain’t going. Now you have to flip that sooner or later because you know the gym’s waiting, but saying you’re going to do something and then not doing it is just guilt. And it’s just everything else. And I don’t know why I got all the way down that rabbit hole. But anyway.

Michelle: You know, as we’re talking about what this could look like and how it’s impacting your practice, one thing that I see a lot in the Solutions Center is it impacting team morale. It’s quite often that I will get a phone call just how this one person, the bad apple ruins the whole bunch.

This is a real situation, a real problem that we often, unfortunately, often see in the Solution Center.

Paul: So bad apple and blocker kind of go hand in hand oftentimes. Yes, I think almost all the time.

Michelle: They’re oftentimes respected employees. Other employees look to them as an example for guidance. And if that person is blocking in a way that is impacting your morale because of their attitude. Maybe it’s their eye rolls at huddle, when you say roll out a new process.

Paul: The huffing and the puffing?

Michelle: Yup, yup. These are examples. These are things we look for when we’re kind of, when we’re asking about, ‘Well, how is this actually impacting your practice? How can we actually manage this’? We need objective things to be able to share with that blocker in order for them to kind of see and understand their behavior and what might need to change.

Paul: Hey, Paul here. If you like the podcast, do me and yourself a favor. Join CEDR HR Solutions newsletter, click the link in our show notes.

Paul: And the other problem with blockers is this It’s a habit. They’ve built a habit. And you know, there’s that saying that if you do want to go to the gym, you’ve got to make it a habit.

And that is the habit that you have to keep multiplying. Same thing works in the negative. A blocker just develops these habits of always being a No, and they’re not really entertaining ideas ever. They’re not special like me. She’s laughing. I just, on the record she’s laughing. You could laugh straight into the mic so everybody knows that’s funny, Michelle.

Michelle: I’ve been told I have a loud laugh. So you know, when I do these things I kind of back away from the mic a little bit. You can always hear me down the hallway over here at CEDR.

Paul: Okay, So I have a personal blocker story. I mean, nothing negative about it. I kind of like to relate things that actually happen in business. You know, part of my podcast here is I’m always trying to, I don’t know, I’m trying to talk to you all from a perspective of a business owner and this HR expertise. Things that I’ve developed and that I’m so thankful to be a part of to help other businesses. And so it’s okay to kind of relate something that was going on and has been going on in this company. And there’s two things I’m going to talk about. I’m going to talk about our software and i’m going to talk about our education. I’m going to tell you that 12 years ago, longer, 14. What year is it?

Michelle: 2024.

Paul: Is it really? You know, I just discovered the other day I’m 62, and not 63?

Michelle: That math is good, going backwards.

Paul: It is good. But I’m just saying, I’m not always exactly- I guess at some point I was like, ‘I guess I’m going to be 63. And then I decided I was 63. And so 14, 15 years ago decided that we needed software and we started with timekeeping and we actually built a really cool timekeeping system, which we used for several years. But then we ran up against lots of challenges and roadblocks, and we decided that we would integrate with another company who, they live, eat, and breathe time-keeping. The part of the story that I want to relay is, is that it took me, gosh, it’s still ongoing. I’m still trying new things and I’m still moving forward in the software. And we moved from timekeeping to our interface and we’re integrating other things into it. I still don’t know everything and thankfully I wasn’t blocking myself and we just kept going and going, going and we kept discovering what we needed, what our members needed. And we and we’ve really gone back to that process and honed it and it’s driving what we’re doing right now. I had people on my team who thought that our investment into software was questionable. There was this thing which, ‘We’re an HR company, this is what we do. I don’t think we need to be doing software’, and they had reasons for it. I just want to say they had reasons. They may have been good reasons at one time. And I think really in the beginning their reasons were pretty strong. I may have even given them the critical thinking skills and the insight to say that this might not be the best idea or it might be. Nonetheless, they fought against the software and fought against the software. And this is people who are, they’re higher up, they’re moving up, they’re here longer, they’re growing in their positions. And yet I have them in the background blocking what I’m doing. And their private conversations with their underlings. They’re making comments like, ‘You know, I don’t know why we’re doing this. We’re doing this because he said so’. That’s not what you want a manager telling someone else, ‘We’re doing this because the higher ups told us this is what we’re going to do’.

Michelle: Right.

Paul: That is not how this company operates. ‘We’re doing this because Paul said to do it, get your-’ no, that’s not how we do things. And so, you know, that’s an example of a blocker here. And then the other thing is our education. Now, I think on our education, which by the way, everybody self-promotion for CEDR. We figured it out, or at least we think we have it figured out.

And with that statement, it’s only going to get better over the years. But we’ve started creating some great courses. We’re starting to release them. You guys are reacting to them, you’re watching them, you’re watching them all the way through. So we hope that they’re providing some value, but doing education, saying you want to do courses, ‘We want to do courses, and you’re going to do them’ and create them and get them to work has really been difficult. It’s been a slog. However, once I moved the blockers out of the way in that process and I got people in who maybe, they’re pretending and they were humoring me, but I don’t think they were. And I got people in who at least said, ‘I’m bought into whatever this message is that we’re going to create here. Let’s go ahead and create the mess’, it is that part of moving forward that got us where we are today, which is remarkably different than what we said, that we how and what we would be doing eight years ago.

Michelle: And as an employee, you know, I’m just a little old advisor here. I can feel a shift, you know, even if I’m not directly involved.

Paul: It’s in our confidence, isn’t it?

Michelle: Yep. Yeah, sure is. It’s exciting.

Paul: It is kind of exciting. But if we had allowed the blocking to prevail, we would not even be doing- what we would have given up.

Michelle: Yep.

Paul: So blockers take a toll just because you don’t- it really screws with your innovation and your growth and all these things.

Michelle: You know, oftentimes when I’m helping coach a member through… an employer through a situation like that, and understanding that the employee, we’re going to give them the benefit of the doubt that they’re not trying to wake up and ruin your day. Right? When you sit down and talk to them, be human. I think it’s easy to be intimidated by HR speak and you know, HR talk. And I can’t say this, and I have to say that. Certainly you need to be careful. And we’re here to help you navigate that conversation. Or give you tips on how to stay away from the no no’s.

Paul: They can read the article.

Michelle: You know, really just connecting with them person to person and listening to where they’re coming from. Acknowledging that you understand, as Paul said, maybe they have some very valid points and acknowledge that, that you hear them. Employees often just want to be heard. But then your job is to also make sure that you’re redirecting them.

Paul: Call up them, enlist them.

Michelle: Get them excited, right? Get them excited. Like in the example you were sharing that CEDR has gone through. Get them bought into your vision. That’s going to look different for different personalities that you’re dealing with. That’s the ultimate goal is listen, empathize and redirect them where you want to see them go. It all sounds great and maybe you’re going to see a change. And we hope that you do. Sometimes you don’t, right? And sometimes that’s the reality.

Paul: Or it’s temporary.

Michelle: Exactly. It’s not a consistent change. It’s not a sustained change you see.

Paul: So we get everybody excited and we’re all excited on day one. But on day three, we’re not so excited by day Friday. We’re not caring about those reports anymore.

Michelle: Yup. You know, these things can turn into performance issues where you do need to, you know, escalate to disciplinary action.

Paul: I love that letter. When you roll your eyes and huff under your breath. I love that line. I used to love to write that line in the corrective action.

Michelle: It’s still- conduct corrective actions are my favorite.

Paul: They really are. Let us just talk about…

Michelle: Let us nerd out on the HR things that we like to write. You mentioned consistency, Paul and I think that’s important, right? You don’t just have this conversation once and you set it and forget it. You’re going to have to put in the work to at least have follow up conversations, right?

Paul: Especially if this person is a leader. Especially so. You’re in a corrective conversation.

You know, when I say corrective like, you’re kind of gently admonishing them for what it is they’re doing and trying to enroll and enlist them and kind of shift them over. But you are talking to one of your leaders. But again, we defined that earlier, either by title or by de facto. You are talking to one of your leaders because they’re knocking things off the trail. You kind of got to bring them along. They’ve got opinions. They’ve been with you for a long time and you may not want to lose them. I mean, I think that’s the other thing that keeps us from going after our blockers is they’re so good in so many other areas. And I’ve said this so many times about other HR guidance. They’re so good in so many other areas that you’re like, ‘Well, I guess it’s just, I’m going to have to I have to put up with this or I’m going to cut them out of it, or I’m going to try to isolate them’.

Michelle: When we have that meeting, let’s schedule on a day they’re on vacation. I mean, these are things that are going through your brain. Don’t deny it. You’re thinking about it. You’re saying ‘I’m going to sweep that under the rug. I want to have that conversation when they’re not here because it’s going to make my life easier’. I want to just share when I was in my mid twenties and I got into leadership-

Paul: Which was like, four years ago.

Michelle: Don’t make me do math on my age. The fact I can say when I was in my mid twenties, says enough, right? So when I was in my mid twenties and I went into management, I was new, right? Same company, but I was new to leadership. I had a lady we’re going to call her Barb, we’re not going to use a real name here. Barb, she was a blocker to the nth degree. She was blocking everything. But I’ll tell you what. She’s scared me, first of all, because she had a strong personality. But when we needed things to get done, when we needed her to stay on track with payroll, she got things done.

Paul: If you could get her on board, that strength of blocking was she turns into a… it’s called the lead back in football. Yeah. The lead back when you… Well you have a fullback and before they run through the hole you send another back through that hole to clear everybody out of the She just becomes that lead back. On the other side, she’s a linebacker and everything you try to do, she slams to the ground so she’s playing both sides. I know everybody, you don’t care about sports ball but whatever. Whatever.

Michelle: Exactly, I just wanted to share that because it is intimidating. And for those of you that might be new to ownership, new to leadership, new to managing, it’s scary. It’s intimidating. But I would say it’s worth it because it’s really a bummer when we have the opportunity to speak to someone and they’re excited to have these conversations, make a change. And then we hear back maybe six months later because the conversations stopped and or they kind of ignored the situation a little bit longer because it was intimidating and nothing’s changed. If anything, maybe it got a little worse. So our hope for you, you know, is that you can identify who might be blockers in your business and you have some solutions here, right? Some ways that you can approach this and hopefully correct it so that those individuals with this experience, with strong personalities, that they’re behind you, helping you drive these new initiatives in your office.

Paul: Look, in small business, you’re not having trouble recognizing who the blocker is. As a small business, we are all constantly needing to innovate and try new things. You guys are out there trying to take care of your patients. I’m trying to take care of my members. I always try to frame things to our teams and our managers, to the people that they’re managing. There’s a reason why we’re doing what we’re doing. And when you can tie what you’re asking of someone to the why and they can buy in to that, it’s just so much more powerful and you stand a chance in heck of getting for what the hell just happened is that you had to get rid of somebody because they were blocking. But what the hell just happened was you finally got Barb to come over to the light side. And it’s not that Barb doesn’t hang out in her spare time. She’s over there doing her nails, smoking a cigarette on the dark side. But when you’re in the room, she’s like, ‘I’ll put this out’, and take a breath. You need that. That’s all I need from you. Fake it til you make it girl, that’s all I need from you. So yeah it’s show notes everybody. There’s an article in there where we go much further in depth with all kinds of stuff that you can do to hold blockers accountable. I know you’re all experiencing this in one way or another. I think what you just have to do, and I’m not great at it either. I let it go on for too long, but eventually you got to figure out a way to call up that person. If you can’t call up somebody and get them on your side, do you don’t have much other choice. You’re going to have to move them out of the way in order for you to be able to go forward. Anyway. Michelle, thanks for sharing your real life stories.

Michelle: Any time, Paul.

Paul: What the hell just happened is you got a blocker and we recognize that and good luck with that.

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