THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING “FIRM BUT FAIR”
When you’re at high school it is not uncommon for people to form into cliques, causing those who aren’t part of that friendship group to feel on ‘the outer’, and not part of the ‘inner circle’.
One of the aspects that comes with maturing into an adult is an increase of acceptance of those who are different from us. At school there was no real necessity to hang out with people who were considerably different from you, but in the workplace, we generally don’t get to choose our workmates. Of course, as a team member there will be people that you naturally gravitate towards and get on well with because of personality types and common interests, and there will be those that you are less inclined to relate to because of the aforementioned reasons.
You might be able to effectively function as a team member with people gravitating towards some more than others. But, as a team leader, you need to be seen to be impartial, and certainly not favour some people above others. This is why team members have so much respect for people leaders that are “firm but fair”, because I am much more tolerant of a team leader being firm with me and even disciplining me so long as I know that that leader treats everyone else the same way. If not, then I may struggle to comply with my team leader's admonitions, justifying my resistance because of their unfair treatment, and writing off their attempts to address my performance as being picked on, or even worse, bullying.
I have worked with emerging (and not so green) leaders who have struggled to show consistent leadership to all team members because of both conscious and unconscious bias or even prejudice. I have seen team leaders favour those of their own cultural and racial origin, and I’ve seen others favour those who were similar to them in terms of gender and age.
If, as a people leader, you know that you are someone who naturally gravitates towards a particular culture or demographic, then you need to make a conscious effort to consistently treat everyone on your team similarly when the same circumstance arises.
It doesn’t mean that you will treat everyone the same all the time because there are times when you will need to have courageous conversations with team members to address significantly inappropriate behaviour. The important thing is that when you do have to have a challenging conversation, or take someone down a disciplinary track, that your manner of doing so would be the same for any member of your team that had to be talked to on the same issue.
