Yesterday we took another look at the effects of, and how to deal with, jerks in the workplace. Today’s guest post by Ariel Schur addresses a different problem, i.e., colleagues who don’t pull their weight.

Most of us have dealt with a lazy colleague at some point in our professional career. They do the bare minimum, but just enough to fly under the radar. Coworkers like these unfortunately have the capability of single-handedly undermining group work or projects with looming deadlines. Yet, somehow, they have managed to remain employed – and some even manage to get ahead! Are employees simply supposed to grin and bear it? What can we do when we’re saddled with a lazy coworker?

There are effective ways to combat this issue at work and potentially change that colleague’s behavior moving forward.

Speak to your colleague directly

Approach your colleague with your concerns, relate their performance back to how it affects you. For example, “I’ve been taking on a lot of your work assignments lately and it’s preventing me from getting my own work done”, or “I had to re-do your part of the project because it didn’t follow the requirements”. Making them realize how their shortcomings are affecting the performance of yourself or the group is the first step if you want their behavior to change. From there, talk about ways to hold each other accountable and hold up each end of the bargain for future collaborations.

It is usually best to first try approaching your colleague with your concerns before going to your manager. Not only is this proper workplace etiquette, but why take the problem to someone else if you may be able to solve it on your own?

Document all correspondence

Any e-mail, conversation transcription, group notes, etc. will be helpful. Keeping a paper trail of all written (or verbal) communication is important for two reasons; 1) so you can remind your colleague of all the times you talked to them regarding the issue, and 2) you’ll have examples to bring up to your boss or manager, in the event that you do have to talk to them about the situation. If it does need to be reported, I suggest going directly to whoever is overseeing the project or would hold you responsible if the work is not completed.

Keep a Positive Attitude to Avoid Adopting Their Work Ethic

It’s easy to let a coworker’s laziness affect your attitude at work. You may even feel tempted to think “well, if they’re not going to do it, neither am I” – but that’s a bad idea. Your reputation is directly correlated to your performance and that is not worth risking. If you talked to your colleague and/or supervisor and do not see a change, do not let it influence the work you’ve put in. Always remain professional and continue to be the conscientious worker you are!

Dealing with lazy colleagues is never easy. Talking to them about the issue is often times enough for things to improve, but in some instances you may be required to take extra steps. Try to work with them, keep track of all the problems that arise as a result of their slack, and do not let it affect your own performance. Taking these steps to combat the issue are sure to make your life at your job easier moving forward.

Ariel Schur, LCSW is the CEO and sole founder of ABS Staffing Solutions. Her high-touch, service-oriented approach has been a refreshing change to the industry. Ariel prides herself on developing highly customized relationships with clients so that they can find the right employee matches for any and all employment needs.  Ariel has set a new standard for the “boutique” approach to staffing. Her work model is time-intensive, specifically tailored to her clients’ specific needs, and all-encompassing to provide the highest quality experience.

I read an interesting article about hard work vs talent by Ed Latimore.

For those of you (like me) who never heard of Ed Latimore, he is a boxer (12-0 w/7 KOs), who also writes books and is a motivational speaker.

Take a minute to read the whole thing, but here is the most important take-away.

If you have nothing particularly special about your mind or body, you always have hard work. The ability to work your ass off is underrated as a talent because we consider talent something special, unique, and largely unteachable. (…) working your ass off is a talent you can learn.

Along with hard work, you need to develop your initiative.

Initiative is a muscle and you have dozens of opportunities to exercise it every day.

It’s simple.

Anything you notice, large or small, that needs to be done, do it.

That’s all.

Do it and initiative becomes a habit, just like hard work.

And I can pretty much guarantee that those two habits will take you almost anywhere you want to go.

Image credit: Ralf Peter Reimann

Have you ever noticed that you have a conversation or meet someone with an unusual name and within a day the same subject/name keeps popping up?

Yesterday I wrote about working long hours for bragging rights, along with the resulting perils.

This morning I got up to find a great post from Steve Blank in my mailbox.

In Working Hard is not the same as working smart Blank talks about the fallacy of measuring effectiveness in the 21^st Century based on hours worked.

In the 20^th century we measured work done by the number of hours each employee logged. (…) This was perpetuated by managers and CEOs who had no other norms and never considered that managing this way was actually less effective than the alternatives.

Blank recommends three actions to start building a better measurement system than hours.

• Define the output you want for the company getting input from each department/division
• Define the output you want for each department
• Ensure that the system does not create unintended consequences

You can get the details in the original post.

And I’ll add the following

• Focus on the human side
  • Make sure you have full buy-in from all managers
  • Be sure your team understands completely
• Monitor the human side and correct as necessary

Finally, never forget that excessive hours are the result of bad management and are unsustainable.

Image credit: Judit Klein

A Friday series exploring Startups and the people who make them go. Read all If the Shoe Fits posts here

Did you see the story of Drizly Bear by founder/CEO Nicholas Rellas on LinkedIn?

Rellas wanted to disrupt the way liquor is purchased.

The idea was pure and incredibly simple: Alcohol delivery, connecting consumers to local retailers at the touch of a button to have alcohol delivered in just 20 to 40 minutes.

The problem is that liquor regulation makes the taxi industry look unregulated.

The question, given the amount of regulation and the fact that it differs state-to-state and even city/county-to-city/county within each state, was where to start.

Where many would have chosen to start in the least regulated market to get traction Drizly took the opposite approach.

We started Drizly in Boston, MA, a city steeped in alcohol lore and one that is so tightly regulated that there are no happy hours.

If you think he was crazy, then he was, as they say, crazy like a fox.

The definition of a tough (or hard) question is one of the the most critical things that everybody needs to know.

And it’s incredibly simple, too.

It’s something that every salesperson learns immediately, but it applies to any industry, field, situation or effort.

A tough question is any question that can draw a response of ‘no’.

Rellas believed if Drizly could address every regulation in Boston, then they could address regulations anywhere — and he was right.

What we formed was a cookie cutter model of adding supply to our network that now scales with minimal capital and human investment and has allowed us to expand to over 18 cities in as many months.

Rellas wraps your take-away perfectly.

So ask the hard questions. Answer them upfront. Be truthful about your answers. There are reasons why great ideas won’t, or didn’t, work. We fight those every day. Some are insurmountable, others are not. Knowing which mountain to climb is as much of the challenge as the climbing itself. But by not asking and answering the hard questions, for a new business or a new line of business in an existing one, we’re doomed to fail from the very beginning.

Image credit: HikingArtist

When I’m writing for a client I lose track of time; I don’t even notice when someone walks into my office.

It’s called being “in the zone” and it happens when you are seriously interested and deeply engaged with what you are doing.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, a psychologist at the Claremont Graduate University, has been studying this latter phenomenon for decades. He calls it flow: the experience we have when we’re “in the zone.” During a flow state, people are fully absorbed and highly focused; they lose themselves in the activity.

It’s a proven fact that self-control is mentally fatiguing, but new research shows that high interest results in lower mental fatigue.

Bosses who use contests and gamification to drive interest are missing a good understanding of today’s workforce—and it’s not about age or even self-interest.

People get interested because a project is meaningful and they can see how their work contributes to the larger picture.

Even on minor projects they can see how what they did helped achieve the outcome.

No busy work; no incomplete information and no doing [whatever] for the sake of doing it.

In short, if you want to generate interest in a task it must be meaningful and provide an opportunity for the worker to add value.

Flickr image credit: Beverley Goodwin

CandidProf is a Professor of Physics and Astronomy at a state university. He’ll be sharing his thoughts and experience teaching today’s students anonymously every Thursday—anonymously because that’s the only way he can write really candid posts.

Last week I wrote about what is involved to be a good teacher. What I described takes a lot out of me.  It means that for every hour that I am in lecture, there are several hours outside of lecture associated with the class.  Every now and then, someone in the state legislature points fingers at the college faculty saying that we are overpaid because we don’t teach 40 hours per week.  A full load is considered only 5 classes per semester.  Depending upon the institution, some of that requirement is met by mentoring graduate students, and some is met by research in lieu of lectures.  But, that doesn’t look like much.  It doesn’t look like much, that is, until you look what some of us put into what we do.

For us, this isn’t just a job. It is what we do.  I feel responsible for my students.  I have dozens of students who sign up for the class expecting to learn something.  I feel that I am letting them down unless I give my all.  So, that is what I do.  And, that is what makes me successful.

Teaching is leading students.  You lead them to learning.  You can’t force the knowledge and understanding into them. You have to lead them to where they can learn.

Good leaders realize that leadership doesn’t stop at the end of the work day.  Sometimes, the leader has to put in extra hours just like everyone else.  As I see it, how can you actually be leading if you are not working as hard as those you are trying to lead?

What do you think?
Is teaching too easy?
Is compensation fair? High? Low?

Your comments—priceless

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Image credit: ajmac CC license