“You stand for what you tolerate.” The words stung. Miriam’s heart skipped a beat. She thought her team was sympathetic with her plight as a manager. Now, she was not so sure.

She didn’t respond. She didn’t ask any questions. She simply stood up and left the room. Miriam was headed for a conversation she should have had months before.

I headed to the coffee room to wait. This would take either ten minutes or an hour.

This was a ten minute conversation.

When Miriam returned, you could see a sense of relief and calm in her face. The tension was gone. She was the first to speak.

“I asked her if she knew that everyone thought that she was a bully. I said that, as her manager, I had contributed to the problem because I never had the courage to talk to her about it.”

“And how did she respond?” I asked.

“She didn’t believe it, I mean, she accepted that it might be true, but she had no clue that is what people thought.”

“How did you leave it?”

“I told her to think about what I said and that we would talk at the end of the day, that, together, we would figure out what had to change.”

“Change?”

“Yes, I said that, as her manager, I could not tolerate bully behavior. That it had to stop.”

Miriam knew her next steps. The difficult part was over. -TF

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Our next Leadership Program in Fort Lauderdale begins February 26, 2007. Visit www.workingleadership.com.