Within the team of employees you have, you are sure to have some very different personalities. This is a good thing – the more differences and points of view you have in your staff group, the more varied the ideas will be from your collaboration sessions.
Aside from this positive aspect, there is a downside – you need to be able to effectively manage different personalities in different ways, just like you would purchase corporate furniture for different situations. For example, an extroverted member of staff will need to be managed and encouraged in a different way to a very quiet and perhaps shy member of staff. In some situations, women may need to be managed slightly differently to men, although this will come down to the type of personality they have and whether your workforce is equal in genders, or it has a larger percentage of either.
It’s about getting the best out of every single one of your employees and knowing the ways to do just that.
So, what do you do if you have a particularly sensitive member of staff? You will need to manage and encourage this person in a very different way to someone who is very confident and outspoken in their approach to work. Whilst a more extroverted member of staff may find it easy to sit around a conference table and air their views, a more sensitive, quiet person may find that difficult.
This doesn’t mean one employee is more valuable than the other, it simply means they need to be approached using different methods.
So how can you do that?
Know Your Staff Well
According to a survey by Mental Health.org, a huge 74% of workers in the UK in the year 2018 admitted to feeling overwhelmed and stressed at some point in the previous 12 months. That’s a huge amount of people, and we all know that stress can be extremely detrimental to health and productivity. Whilst you might want your staff to sit around the boardroom table and chairs and thrash out new and exciting ideas with abandon, that’s not going to happen if your staff are stressed and bogged down with their workload. Knowing your staff and being able to pick up on cues they’re not feeling great is therefore vital.
Of course, this can be difficult if you have a large workforce, but in this case you would probably have line managers or supervisors who could be delegated this task. You’re on the lookout for things like facial expressions, words, body language, and tone of voice which gives you a clue that the person is feeling particularly low or sensitised to a subject.
You should also have an open door policy which allows staff to come to you if they have any problems, either personal or professional. This shouldn’t be a formal setting, sitting around a glass conference table and having a meeting, it should be an informal drop in session. In that case, if something adverse is going on in their personal life, you will know about it and you can adopt your management style accordingly. By being understanding and sympathetic to a problem, you’re building up a bond of trust and that is vital when dealing with particularly sensitive employees.
Know Their Limitations and Triggers
By knowing your staff members well, you will also be able to identify possible triggers which may make them feel uncomfortable or out of their comfort zone. In this case, you can delegate that task somewhere else, and avoid a possible meltdown or problem.
Everyone has limitations and provided this doesn’t adversely affect their work, this is a normal part of being human.
For instance, if you’re having a brainstorming session and you’re all sat in the meeting room on boardroom chairs, that situation might make a sensitive person feel out of their depth. They might want to speak up, and instead stay quiet. The problem is, they might have some great ideas, but they’re not confident enough to speak about them. In this case, add at the end that if anyone wants to speak to you in private about ideas, your door is open.
Allow Them Personal Space
This subject is such a fine line, because on the one hand they need to do their job, but on the other hand, you need to reassure and comfort them in order to be able to get the best out of them. A good way to do this is to ensure that they have personal space and privacy when they need it. Desk pods and quiet zones are a great way to ensure this happens, and can also be multi-use, e.g. for quick meetings too.
Speak in The Right Way
A sensitive employee is not going to respond well to being lectured or talked to in a loud or brash way. It’s important to be able to speak to different employees in ways which they will respond to, and this type of employee requires a softer, more emotionally connected approach. This doesn’t mean you can let them get away with doing nothing because they might become sensitive and perhaps have an emotional reaction, it simply means knowing how to get the best out of them – it’s in there, and they are a very valuable part of your staff.