HOW I CHANGED AN AVERAGE EMPLOYEE TO A SUPERSTAR PERFORMER
A few years back, I interviewed a young woman for a job in my company and she performed exceptionally well at the interview, so I gave her the job. When she started the job, I was surprised by her low productivity and constant mistakes. I was on the brink on firing her after another mistake; so, I called her into my office to read the riot act to her! As a transformational coach, I noticed that she was always too careful in executing her tasks, so I asked her ‘do you think you are always being judged?’ She paused, looked down for a few seconds and her teary eyes messed up make-up; so, I called for tissue and allowed her to cry. After a while, she pulled herself together and told me this story. My mother and father divorced when I was very young, and I ended up living with my dad with his new wife.
The stepmother was the cruelest person I have ever seen even up till this moment! I suffered a lot of verbal and physical abuse in the hands of this woman. Whatever I do, no matter how hard I tried; it was never good enough for her. You will never amount to anything, you are just so useless, you are a waste of space, etc. These were some of the milder daily dose of verbal abuse I suffered but cannot even repeat the very intensely bad ones. When I was 14, my stepmother brought her brother to live with us. He was a teenager but much bigger and stronger than his age which was around 18 at the time. We were left at home one day and the brother raped me’ She broke down to cry again. She recovered to continue her
story. I felt so dirty and ashamed that I couldn’t tell my dad. I did muster enough courage to tell the stepmother, but she blew her top with rage; accusing me of trying to send her brother out of the house.
So, I never told anyone until today!’ I was very moved by this story and I promised to help her eliminate the harmful effect of that experience. When your employee is not performing, it’s not because they are stupid, it may just be that they have had an experience that damaged their self-worth.
As a coach who has helped so many other people get through their limiting self-beliefs, why wouldn’t I help this young woman who is so talented but stuck in the horrible experience that wasn’t her fault? The reason why she was traumatized daily wasn’t because of the violence she suffered which was bad enough, but it was due to the shame. In the map of consciousness by Dr. Hawkins, shame is the lowest on the map with calibration of 20. I will write on this at a later date. I worked with this girl to get her life back on track by a method I called ‘Enquiry Sequence’ and some NLP methodologies. I gave her time off to reflect and recharge her batteries. When she came back to work, she became the best staff and all her colleagues were amazed at the transformation. She is now an entrepreneur with her own business doing exceedingly well. Why am I sharing this story? People are not computers or machines that you can get productivity out of consistently and at will. People must be treated with respect, ‘everyone is a genius’ said Albert Einstein. As a leader, you must find that genius in your employees, if you can do that, you will reap the reward 100-fold. Dee Hock is the founder of Visa and he said, ‘If you look to lead, invest at least 40% of your time managing yourself’. The best way to manage yourself is to manage your mindset which covers confidence, self-worth, beliefs, courage, mindfulness etc.
I did a webinar called ‘Rapid Change Program-Mindset Transformation for Success’ recently where I shared this story and many other insights that may be life-changing; if you want to access the replay, then click here: