MM173 - Tact How and When to Use it

How do you keep positive when working with a group to hit a deadline, and how do you, as a team, keep each other motivated and try to work cohesively?

Also how do you “put someone in their place” without hurting their feelings or causing discourse? It’s all about Tact.

[INTRO]

♫ Trenches by Pop Evil ♫

*Alex*

Welcome to Morning Mindset. A daily dose of practical wit and wisdom with a professional educator & trainer, Amazon best selling author, United States Marine, Television, and Radio host, Paul G. Markel. Each episode will focus on positive and productive ways to strengthen your mindset and help you improve your relationships, career goals, and overall well-being. Please welcome your host; Paul G. Markel.

*Professor Paul*

Hello, welcome back to Morning Mindset podcast. I am your host Paul Markel, I hope that you enjoyed the Morning Mindset book study. That's right, for the last 30 episodes of Morning Mindset. We've done a chapter-by-chapter book study if you missed out on that because this is the first one you're listening to you can go back. As a matter of fact, I checked and depending on the player that you use some of the podcast players will only store 50 episodes and some will store way more than that.

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So you may be able to go back quite a long time and really listen to the episode. Thank you to everybody who played along who listened along to the book study. I truly appreciate it, and I would appreciate it. If you guys would give us a review if you bought the book If you enjoyed the book go to amazon.com if that's where you bought it and leave a review. If you didn't then you can go to the store, our store where you bought it, go to MorningMindsetPodcast.com. Alright enough about that, let's talk about today's episode. Let's talk about the topic for today, and this was actually one that was suggested to us by one of you folks out there in the world who listen.

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It was about how do I work with, how do I deal with a business or work situation, where maybe you have, the specific situation was a group or a team that's working on a project. One or two or someone in the group or someone's in the group, are not quite getting it or they're not pulling their weight, or their suggestions are not helpful or what-have-you.

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How do you correct them, how do you get everybody back on the same sheet of music without getting everybody else all, butthurt, and that ladies and gentlemen are the Marine Corps leadership trait of Tact. T-a-c-t, Tact. Now when I was in the Marine Corps, many many moons ago, I'm sure it was a Staff Sergeant, maybe a Gunnery Sergeant that explain to us, young Marines, that Tact was the ability to tell someone to “Go to Hell and have them looking forward to the trip.”

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Okay, so Tact, how do we do that? Well, one way to make sure, it's difficult because and I think a lot of us have this problem. I know that I will admit, that I have this issue. I have this problem because I know, what I want, I know when I want it. I know how I want things to be done and often, you know, we believe like “Hey, I understand what needs to be done, and I know what needs to be done, and why is it that other people don't understand that as well? Why can't they get it through their thick skulls? Why don't they understand? I'm tired of wasting my time” and so forth. Take a deep breath.

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One way to help you to employ Tact in a situation like this would be to, let's say you have a person in a team or a group, and that person just seems to not be getting it. They're not part of the solution, they're currently part of the problem and you want to change that around. You want to have them too, you know, become part of the problem of the solution.

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Not the problem, and you don't want to embarrass them in front of the group because if you embarrass them from the group, they're going to dig in their heels and they're going to be like “Fornicate you, I don't need this crap”, you know and so on and so forth, they are going to get butthurt. They're not going to be a productive employee, and if you need them to be part of the team, then they need to be productive.

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Not just dragging the team down. #1: Take a deep breath and ask that person a question. Like a serious, genuine question. Ask them to explain to the group their thoughts on the subject, or their solution or their explanation, or what you can do is you can go around the group and let's say you are you have a task or mission.

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What you do is in order to gain clarification, you say “Well, I want to make sure that everybody here understands the exact purpose, their true reason why we are working on this project, what the mission is, what we're trying to accomplish”, and have them explain in their own words. Ask them to explain in their own words, what the mission or the task of the team or the group is. Now maybe they may explain it exactly as you expected it to be explained and I say, “Okay yep, that's it exactly.”

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That's exactly what we're looking at, or they may say, they may give you an answer that you weren't expecting them you give. You say “Hmm, apparently the communication broke down somehow. But you have to work really hard not to be condescending. You have to be serious and you have to be genuine about it, and that's one that's very hard for me because I speak sarcasm quite fluently. As a matter of fact, my wife would tell you that sarcasm is my second language. So it's difficult for me.

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This is something that I have to work on. But when we when it comes to working with groups, and I know many of you out there, you're like “Man, you don't know. I was on this team, this team at work and we got this one guy or this one woman on our team and they are clueless. They shouldn't even be there but we have to include them.”

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Well, you want to include them and have them do something productive or do you just want them to be an anchor that drags the rest of the team down and how do you do that? Because if you, say if you embarrass them in front of the group. If you scold them in front of the group, an old leadership trait or is we praise in public and we correct in private.

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I learned that when I was a Corporal, when I became a Corporal in the Marine Corps, and I had actually I wasn't even corporately out of the Lance Corporal. I was given a team and I don't know it was a Sergeant or Staff so it wasn't an NCO leader. Reminded myself and others that we praise in public, and we correct in private. Unless and of course in the Marine Corps, there's a caveat to that unless everyone in the group needs to learn that lesson unless you can use that person's mistake as a lesson so that everyone else weren't it?

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But when it comes to performance, individual performance, like for instance when we would do performance evaluations think about it when you do a performance evaluation for a team member or an employee or what have you. Do you do it in front of the rest of the group or you do you do it in private? You say “Oh, we always do performance reviews and private. Why is that because you're probably going to be making or taking corrective action, right?”

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Praise people in public and correct them in private and when it comes to Tact when it comes to telling someone to go to hell and having them looking forward to the trip. That is the goal of Tact, that is the goal of Tact, and sometimes it may just be a situation where you need to put it on that person. Ask them a question, ask them to explain. Ask them to give you in their own words the mission statement, and if you do that, they may actually realize on their own that they are mistaken that they don't understand what's supposed to be done.

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Or very least it'll just be quiet from that point forward and if they're just quiet from that point forward. Well, chalk it up as a win. How's that sound? I hope that helps. I hope that's something that you were looking for. I don't know if it was or not, but we try here we do. I'm looking forward to a brand new week or well, we're already in the middle of the week, but a new section, a new segment of Morning Mindset. I hope you guys are enjoying it. Thank you very much for listening. Thank you very much for sharing this with other people who may enjoy it. I am your host Paul Markel, I'll talk to you again, real soon.

[OUTRO]

♫ Trenches by Pop Evil ♫

*Alex*

Thank you for spending time with us today. To get show notes, submit a topic request, for more from your host Paul G. Markel, visit MorningMindsetPodcast.com. That’s MorningMindsetPodcast.com. Please leave a review of this podcast on your favorite podcast player, we appreciate your time & effort, and we look forward to reading your honest feedback.