My two employees hate each other!

Dear Aunty,

Happy New Year, although I am not sure you ever take holidays!

I am managing two staff who absolutely detest each other. They are fairly senior in the company, both passionate, loyal and good at what they do and they get on with everyone else. But for some reason they rub each other up the wrong way.

When one speaks, the other mutters under her voice. They are disparaging about each other and they have an absolute blind spot about their own behaviour.

The last straw was a celebratory lunch where both assumed the other was coming so they both made excuses not to come, although one now is, when she found out the other wasn’t.

Any ideas? I had been hoping it would get better and I don’t want to make it worse by buying in.

LH,

Victoria

Dear LH,

Buying in? Why should everyone put up with that? You could try banging their heads together which was a tactic my mother regularly employed with my sister and I. It gave us sore heads and shut us up for at least five minutes.

Look, you stamp this out like a tiny fire in a parched state forest. Don’t do it in front of them both. Call them in one by one and tell them you have a collaborative workplace and they are a problem.

Tell them to examine their own reaction to the other person and work out whether they are jealous of them or whatever; face it, manage it and work out how they can deal with it. Tell them they are not to talk about the other person, make snide comments, talk under their breath because ultimately it reflects on them and not the other person. And tell them to try and get to know the other person because everyone else gets on with them so why can’t they?

Let them know the other person is getting a similar chat and then finish off with a few comments about how mature they are, how fabulous they are and how professional they are.

You won’t have any trouble after that.

Be smart,
Your Aunty B

To read more Aunty B advice, click here.

Email your questions, problems and issues to auntyb@smartcompany.com.au right now!