Every organization has got its own share of good and bad. There are your superstar employees – the Jedis of your agency. Then there are your naysayers, critics, and apathetics – they comprise the Dark Side. It can be easy to just tag them as the organization’s Dark Side, but it is more important to understand where they are coming from, the experiences and circumstances that turned young Padawans into Darth Vaders.

Dr. Kimberly Miller, of Kimberly Miller Consulting, is a renowned psychologist, public safety consultant, trainer, and sought-after speaker. She provides services all around the US teaching public and private organizations on a myriad of professional and public safety topics like communication, conflict resolution, leadership, ethics and more.

Dr. Miller shares her expertise on this course to deep-dive on what draws employees to the Dark Side, tools that supervisors can use when dealing with challenging employees, and how to pull your Dark Side employees back into the light. Some of the specifics Dr. Miller discussed in the webinar include:

• A look into the individual factors that play a major role in the creation of a Dark Side employee that zeroes in on character and soft skills.
• The organizational factors that create a Dark Side employee which highlights an agency’s identity and culture.
• Setting the stage to weed out unfit and highly likely to be Dark Side individuals from their assessment and evaluation, hiring, training to employment.
• Ways to stay on top of employees’ mental health concerns through early intervention, peer support, and providing referrals.
• Bringing back Dark Side employees into the light by working on the organizational culture, compassion, empathy, and expectations.
• Helping turn your Dark Side employees back to the light through accountability, understanding the reason for their negative behavior, fostering strong relationships, and providing constant feedback.
• Specific techniques to initiate change through measurable goals, quick wins, coaching and mentoring, team support and reinforcing a character bank.
• What supervisors can do in the instance that an employee resists the change like cultural pressure, documentation, and letting go of the employee to flourish somewhere else if needed.
• The organizational state that creates the Dark Side employees due to multiple identities, lack of discipline and accountability.
• How to build an organizational culture and identity that fosters positivity by getting employees’ buy-in.
• The 3 questions to ask that serves as basis for all future strategies and training to make the change in organizational culture and identity.
• Maximizing the hiring process to get started on succession planning where all your hires are considered for their potential leadership and teaching skills.
• Marketing your job opportunities that appeal to the candidates that resonate with your agency’s culture.
• The importance of honing on soft skills in the workplace to prevent candidates from turning to the Dark Side and the barriers to soft skills learning.
• The training accountability process that ensures all employees will be able to apply and maximize all the lessons they learn from their trainings.
• Conducting employee evaluations and upward evaluations for supervisors that are character-focused and strength-based.
• The significance of setting expectations in evaluations where both employees and supervisors practice openness to feedback without the fear of retaliation.
• A promotional process that focuses on character and documented history and guidelines to remember when devising your promotion tests.
• Some of the points the audience raised on the Q&A include:
  • The best technique and approach to take for larger organizations
  • The best/recommended documentation systems and methods
  • Character-based questions and tips to incorporate into the hiring process if a psych evaluation cannot be done
  • Setting the organizations’ vibe so bad behavior isn’t tolerated and are corrected