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February 2023 – Question Of The Month
February 28, 2023 - By Wendy Lambourne, Director, MA Industrial and Organisation Psychology, Registered Psychologist with SA Medical & Dental CouncilShare by Email
Question: How should supervisors deal with problematic behaviour?
Answer: A supervisor’s response to poor behaviour is often to close her eyes and hope the problem will go away. It rarely does, and often it gets worse.
There are really only two ways to address poor behaviour. The one is through clarity of expectations and the other is through consequences.
The supervisor needs to communicate in clear terms what the person is doing which is not acceptable and why. She then needs to be explicit about what she does expect and the consequences of the person not meeting those expectations. The consequences then need to happen, both negative (if the expectations are not being met) and positive (if they are).
Clear expectations and consequences are what set people up for success.
