by Joseph Wardy

Created on: June 17, 2008   Last Updated: May 09, 2011

The title "Bringing out the best in a quiet employee" appears simple in meaning but to me, it is not. The term quiet can mean a variety of things in the workplace and is not as clearcut as a person who is quiet on a personal level.

Here's what I mean: a quiet person personally and at home exhibits a form of personality that is part of their temperament. Managers in the workplace are not trained and equipped by and large to change a person who is truly quiet.

So, an employee who is not by temperment quiet but is quiet poses the greatest challenge to a manager. This person is consciously or unconsciously a hostile employee displaying the opposite behavior from an associate who is aggressive, arrogant and a know it all.

The hostility is expressed in a hostile way through passive behavior. When teaching management classes, I refer to this behavior as people who are behaving close to the vest. They are people who wish to experience on the job retirement. They are adverse to risk, cautious, reticent and by the book.

I feel these employees are more difficult for managers to handle than the aggressive employees. Many of the managers agree with with my assessment for one major reason: at least with aggressive employees the cards are on the table. They just need to be reshuffled. With people showing passive aggressive behavior, there are no cards to work with.

Here are some guidelines I suggested to managers in my seminars in dealing with the so called quiet employee:

1) With the aggressive employee, it is imperative to be forceful in a skillful way. This technique with an employee whose chief need is security and status quo is dreadful. Here, it is critically important to be low key in demeanor and very soft spoken.

2) The major challenge with this employee is to get information in order to solve a problem. This is accomplished with open and not closed end questions. Please remember that closed end questions are answered with a yes or no response that elicits no information. An open end question starting with how, why, what, tell me cannot be answered with a yes or no answer and its process invites dialogue.

3) The probing of questions is not enough with this kind of behavior. You may not get an answer right away here so there is a tendency to offer your perspective enabling the employee to get off the hook. In the " on the air" culture we live in, we must pause and wait out a response patiently as challenging as this skill may be.

4) Please remember that this employees behavior is focused on self protection and not the organization. Skillfully share how solving the problem can help provide them with the security and safety they crave.

There are a few points here to share: I am not suggesting these skills are foolproof and will always work. They may work at times but I do feel that a forceful, dictatorial and authoritarian approach will not work with an employees who is already intimidated. Please consider that as a manager you can speak softly and carry a huge stick.

Also, please consider as managers you are diagnosing behavior at a given moment in time. And your skills is the ability to change when the employees behavior changes. There are times when employees are aggressive and then fall into a passive mode when then see your skillful approach. The theme here is suggesting there are many ways to skin a cat. The use of just type of approach will render at best only partial success!

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