As a manager, how do you deal with someone that is genuinly stupid (and lazy). I've got a kid, who's a nice enough guy. But christ almighty he's a freaking brick. He cannot remember tasks from one day to the next, nor can he follow simple instructions (as in simple written instructions with pictures).
I'm just really at a loss, I've had tons of people working under me at one time or another and have always felt that I did decent by them...but this poor bastard...I can't believe that he ties his shoes by himself.
Same situation at my job. They finally realized this guy wasn't going to get any smarter, so they hired someone new, and will be knocking the dumb guys hours down until he has to quit. I really kind of feel sorry for this guy though, nothing gets through to him. He really tries, but he just makes himself look even worse.
Is he retarded -- and I mean that in a clinical sense -- or does he have such severe ADD that he can't focus long enough to learn a task?
Working with my son's special-needs baseball team this summer has been an eye opener. With the retarded kids, you have to constantly remind them to stay on-task. The autistic kids are the same way, but for different neurological reasons.
The best athletes, on this particular team, are the two with Down's syndrome. But one stopped showing up after a couple weeks (no idea why; his parents seemed nice and he was clearly into it), and the other is one of those rare kids with Down who has a terrible, terrible temper.
Physically, she can play the game, but she gets so angry she can't concentrate. Worse, from the get-go, she's had a natural antagonism with my son. They can't walk past each other without getting into it.
The whole idea of challenged people playing baseball is weird, but in a good way, since the kids clearly love doing it. But the constant squabbling between a female thug with Down and a squirrely kid with Asperger's is weird, in a bad way.
Getting back to the original question, if the kid can't do the work, you have to move him out. Does he have parents or relatives who can get him into a program that'll prepare him better for the work force? Sounds like that's what he needs.
A lot of parents won't get their kids diagnosed because they think it reflects badly on them (or they're as stupid as their kids, or don't give a damn, or some combination).
Maybe firing him, with advice to get help for his problems, is the best thing you can do for his future.
Personally, I don't think anyone is helped by being paid to do work they can't or won't do.
How did the kid become your employee in the first place??? Did you hire him or inherit him? I guess that doesn't help with your immediate problem but I thought there might be more to the story that might help (me anyway) understand the situation. As Lou said, if he's simply incapable of doing the job, the normal consequence is termination but it just sounds like there's a reason why you are spending the inordinate amount of time to try to accommodate his incompetence.
Since I work for the State, it's particularly hard to fire people and I'd rather not (it's the best job many of them will ever get) so I've learned to not look at my staff with the old football team analogy. I don't approach it as though I've got to make this person a better center and that one a better quarterback, etc. I've found that it works much better to throw the "we've always done it that way" organizational structure out the window and put people in positions where their set of skills and level of skills better matches their job expectations. I spent years agonizing over people I inherited in certain positions who just simply couldn't do their jobs (Peter Principled out). When I reorganized around what they did best - and it was radical - they became stars at what they were doing instead of me riding their asses all the time. We're ALL happier and accomplishing a lot more. Back to the football analogy, it meant changing the rules of the game which you can't do in football but, then again, we don't have free agency or people cycling in and out to provide opportunities for improvement within the existing structure so this was the only way I could see to fix the problem.
So, if you are set on keeping this person, can you simplify his assignments possibly to a written check list (or something) that he can follow? If not, it sounds to me that you are doing a disservice to your position and all the other people who DO perform by keeping this person on and spending all your time trying to "fix" him.
If you can show them the door, do it. If you can't and they're coworkers let them hand themselves...I did that at my last job. They hired some superstar who claimed to know all, when the poo hit the fan he didn't know half of what he said. I was leaving on vacation an hour before the problem hit, my boss (who hired this idiot) wanted me to leave contact info - so I left the coordinates of where I'd be.
keeping with sports teams, seems to me like you used the little league mentality. Not realy young little league, but 4th/5th grade little league, where kids could jump around in their positions until they found something they were good at it, and then it stuck.
Anyways, nice way of working out problems you were given!
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backtracking a bit. I'm in the Air Force, and the fella in question has been recently donated to me on night shifts where it's just going to be me and him. With me getting ready to PCS I'm only really going to own him for a month or so which isn't nearly enough time to get him kicked out (he's a former army reservist, my senior by 5 years, one grade lower). I can't accomadate him by letting him find a job he's good at or make things any more clear as far as written directions and checklists. We already have both...and he has historically failed horribly at both. I don't know how.
Working together (we've worked together for the past couple of months...but now I'm working singularly with him) I'm starting to change my thinking about him a bit. Rather than being just dumb or lazy...I think he doesn't care. This said on the extreme in a way I didn't know existed. He puts so little value on any particular task that he's doing that it takes 20x as long as it should (regardless of how little the task), and he asks questions constantly thru the entire process. By itself asking questions is good, and encouraged. However it's questions that are so menial. And he asks repeatidly...you'll answer the same questions tomorrow as today, when in all honesty they shouldn't really have been asked the first time.
Example..."I can't get the monitor to power on" "Is it plugged in?" "I don't know" "could you check?" "ok"
Example2..."Ok before you can get on the network you need to physically attack it to the network...like this *shows how to plug in network cord*" "Hey I can't get this computer on the network" "Did you plug it in?" "I don't know" "Remember how I showed you to plug it in?" "uh huh" "Did you do it?" "Let me check"
I do some stupid stuff pretty regularly, forget things, have a lazy streak, ect. But I'm really starting to think that he just REALLY doesn't care.
He's applying to get out, to go work somewhere and live with his folks. I don't have any personal connection to him or any real obligation. But in a way I'm kinda feeling like I'm failing as a supervisor buy not doing whatever I need to do to get thru.
I tried the "honesty" method a little bit ago. I thought. "Ya know...mabey he just needs a little sit down. I'll express my concerns and observations, he'll understand what's going on and we'll start off with a new basic respect for each other."
Yeah...that failed. Apparantly he's the shit and I'm too dumb to recognise it. DAMN IT!!!
Ah well. On the bright side I've been force feeding him "think on your own"...and he's making some progress.
I think I'll slam the car door on my head a few times just for a change of pace.
What I have found is you need to find his currency...what motivates him, obviosly its not being competent at work. To take a page out of behavior modification text books can you shock him...(j/k)
I hear your frustrations my only advice is to document all your corrective actions, date time etc. and let him know you are...some people just don't get motivated by being competent.
If it helps your sanity you may give him irrelavant answers to his questions..."I can't get on the network?" "Put the red tires on the chair."
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After your reply, I was wondering if the guy is simply putting on. The thought occurred to me before but didn't know the circumstances. If he really doesn't want to DO anything or to force someone to move him out, maybe he feels the best way to do this is to just pretend he's dumb as a stump and CAN'T do anything. That way, it wouldn't be that he refused to do stuff, he just couldn't do stuff. ...???
Tinman> I keep my "organizational behavior" book handy for reference at all times [img]smile.gif[/img] . That sort of class should be required for everyone that ever might need to manage people IMO. The information is well worth the price of the class.
Q> That's what I'm begining to lean towards. He's made a couple of pretty decent steps here the past couple of nights when I stopped helping him and threatened to staple his nutz to the desk if he didn't yank his head out of his ass and act his age\rank.
He has a really peculiar way of looking at things, which I don't think I can do anything about. The best that I'm looking at right now is to instill some sort of pride in doing the job to the best of his abilities...which are determined by me vs what he thinks his ability level is. I'm not sure if he's ever been truly held to a standard before, and has been brushed aside when he's failed vs being forced to learn and adapt.
It's really just a difficult position for both of us. Between bouncing in between jobs, you may or may not ever be "good" at anything. We have too many people willing to overlook folks and not give them the tools they need to benifit our organization or themselves...which is a damn shame.
I don't use rules to manage people.
I pretty much go person to person. So without seeing and working with him this is....at best...a guess.
"This is what I want....how will you do it? how well will you do it?...how long will it take you?
Hmmmm"
They will volunteer answers, no matter how dumb or unresponsive they are...then they feel they have to live up to them...they have to...they were their answers!!!
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Regret for the things we did can be tempered by time; it is regret for the things we did not do that is inconsolable. -- Sidney J. Harris
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Regret for the things we did can be tempered by time; it is regret for the things we did not do that is inconsolable. -- Sidney J. Harris
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