Article Link: http://exchangepress.com/article/reading-staff-dissatisfaction-cues/5006611/
Walk with me into a center-the air is heavy with tension, more children are crying than normal, an angry parent is waiting to see the director, and three staff resignations are sitting on the desk! The bewildered director asks: "How did this happen? Just last week we were humming along merrily-fully staffed, fully enrolled, and looking forward to a good month. What happened?" After talking with the resigning staff members and the angry parent, the director finds out that the center has been a boiling cauldron ready to overflow for weeks. Staff are unhappy; parents are perceiving the staff's dissatisfaction and identifying their own concerns; children who are normally just healthy, challenging children are pushing every limit-even the custodian isn't doing what needs to be done.How did it go this far? What happened to unsettle the whole center system? Could this blowout and the fallout that will certainly result from it have been prevented? What cues did the director have of the impending disaster? It is my premise that there were plenty of cues. But for some reason, these cues were not received in time to do something about them. ...