Another day concluded in Virginia Beach.

Another day that proves to me that the profession I chose is the right one.

Another day that reinforces that H.R. people love to buy books, especially those with the author’s name written in indelible ink on the inside cover.

Another night to see H.R. folks drink some wine, and “shake their groove thing” as the party band plays “Brick House” (and yes, the plethora of dances I attended when I was 13 still serve me well).

Some days everything just “clicks”.

In my previous blog I wrote about the three-hour opening conference workshop that I conducted Sunday morning for about 130 human resource professionals. I might not have mentioned that the event organizer neglected to inform me that the conference wasn’t at the Hilton Oceanfront hotel we were staying at, but at the Convention Center about 10 minutes away.  Imagine my surprise at 8.15 a.m. when I went down to the front desk to ask about registration and they “pointed towards the Convention Center”.  Whee!

That’s what Xanax is for.

Anyways…

Yesterday’s breakout session was attended by 246 people (22 rows of 11 people, plus a couple of stragglers).  Yes, I’m a researcher.  I count. I tally, I analyze.  I’m quite a fun date.

Even better than the 90 percent increase in the number of attendees from the previous session (OK, 89.2%, cut me some slack), many of those that listened to me talk about the importance of supervisors as Engagement Agents  were “returnees”, coming to hear me a second time after the fun and frivolity we had on Sunday.

And this time some of them brought their friends.

75 minutes of Drizin Talk Time, 46 slides, finished on time, no catastrophes with the lavaliere (a wireless mike for you non-speakers), no slides with mysteriously missing text, nobody texting on their blackberry during the WHOLE presentation.

Everything clicked.  Even the new opening story I used in the speech went off without a hitch.

As I was walking down to my book signing, one of the returnees asked me about a problem their company was having with an under-performing supervisor.  After repeated training and re-training, this associate was just not “getting it” (uh oh).  They were a “lifer”, someone that had been with the company for more than seven years (they opened their doors for business in 2000).  Although the employee performed satisfactorily during most of their tenure, the last 16 months were a struggle… on both sides.

“So, we’ve talked to the employee, provided additional training and development opportunities, discussed options of other jobs and positions in the company, even sent the employee to an EAP (employee assistance program) to see if there were some outside issues that were affecting her performance.  They were even talking about hiring a coach.

“What do you do with your superstar employees, your A players, the people you count on most?” I love asking leading questions; remember I was captain of my varsity debate team in high school.

“I’m not sure we have a process on dealing with our best employees”.

(Sometimes it’s like shootin’ fish in a barrel)…

“So, you spend big resources trying to figure out why somebody who has been with you for seven years is no longer performing in her job.  You’ve spent time and money on additional training.  You’ve had meetings within HR and with other company leaders on options available for this under-performing employee.  For the last sixteen months you have been dissatisfied with her performance and she has been dissatisfied with your company as an employer.  Yet you don’t even give a thought about the employees you count on most.”

(I continued, I was on a roll).

“I appreciate the fact that you are loyal to this long term employee, that you want to do whatever you can to make the situation better.  But sometimes you just have to let go.  And in an era where everyone is fighting for smaller and smaller pieces of a smaller and smaller pie, you have to be smart with where you spend your money and attention.”

“Can the under-performer, and call me about setting up a process for your superstars.” (I might not have said “can”).

And although my book-store friend Vince gets mad at me when I do this, I gave her one of my own copies of my second book, Employee Engagement Fundamentals, a Guide for Managers and Supervisors. 

She needs it more than I do.  As does her company, her “brick house”.