Avoid an Us Versus Them Mentality

Lee, I have a listener question this week that I think is going to be relevant in a lot of ways.

I saw this even when I was a park ranger.

I'll tell the question and then I'll explain a little bit.

So this person said, we are getting an us versus them mentality at our two locations.

And you know, Lee, I saw this in, actually, when I was a financial analyst at the bank, we used to have this with the bank branches versus headquarters because it just kind of developed.

Like, why is headquarters always on our back? We even saw this in parks.

headquarters versus people out in the field or one park versus another park.

But this is a business that has two locations and it has just started to shape up where they don't see themselves as one organization.

They're starting to see them as where this location, you're that location, but we're not the same.

So where do you even begin to deal with something like that?

If you want to be represented as one organization, that's either the owner's way of doing things.

And if he wants it that way, he's got to pull them together.

And, you know, the same old story.

I think all the solutions to everything we talked about is the leader being clear.

sitting down with his people, telling them with clarity how he wants everybody to work together, the attitude they need to have, and reliability and helping each other and working with each other.

And he doesn't want to get these conversations here about that people are not being working for the company, for

the customer of the company.

It's not about internal feuds.

You can have those as long as it doesn't affect customer service, turnover, all the kinds of things that happen when people are not happy at work.

And I told somebody this morning, I had the same talk with, you know, and then you got to enforce it.

If you let it go, it's going to go.

And you got to decide what you want and then implement that and be clear of why it's important.

Of course, it's important for everybody to be working as a team, not be mad at each other and missing deadlines and not paying attention and not returning phone calls and him versus her.

Now, that's the leader.

That's the manager.