What To Do If People Don't Follow Your Instructions Repeatedly

This is very common: You've given clear written or verbal instructions to your team and they have repeatedly done things in their own way and not follow your instructions.
Should you give up or fire them up?

Based on training and coaching over 81,131 people in 13 countries, we found at www.AsiaTrainers.com that there are 5 reasons why people don't do what you said:

They don't understand the importance of following your instruction. They think that doing things their own way is okay because you as the boss, manager or leader may not know or bother about it. Your Action: Educate them that it is not okay to not follow instructions and you will bother about it all the way.
There is no negative consequence for not following your instruction. Because it is more comfortable for them to do things their own way, they will naturally not follow your instruction. This is human nature!
They don't buy-in to the benefits of following your instruction. In short, they don't feel it inside, and they won't do it. Even if they do it, they won't do it whole heartedly
They think their way is better than yours. You have to tell them to document all evidence to prove that this is true.
They simply do things with body but not mind, heart and spirit. This is the most common reason: You have to engage them first or they will simply not follow your instructions no matter what happen. The question is: can you fire them for not following your instructions?

By Andy Ng of Asia Trainers

Comments

What an Executive Coach and Business Coach Does

The Secret Under the Mattress: Why would a 79-year Man Bet So Big on 4D?

It was 2007 when we discovered his secret. While moving my father’s mattress, we found them: heaps and heaps of Singapore Pools 4D tickets. They were stacked in layers, a paper trail of lost hopes. What shocked us most wasn’t just the volume, but the stakes. He wasn’t betting a few dollars for fun. He was punting hundreds of dollars per draw—nearly ten times a month. At the time, my siblings and I were furious. Our father was a 79-year-old retiree. We wondered, with a mix of anger and confusion, why a man at his stage of life would need to win such "big money." What was he going to do with the money? We saw it as a reckless habit, a sign of poor judgment in his final years. Some of us would say, "If I were to give him money to buy 4D, why don't I use the money and buy 4D myself? At least I have better discipline". It has taken me two decades, and the experience of raising my own three grown-up children, to finally see the truth that was hidden under that matt...

Head Bleeding when the Chair Falls

The Weight of Silence: What Were We Really Arguing About? My earliest memories are punctuated by the sound of shouting. In 1970, when I was barely 6 years old, I stood as a small witness to the fierce quarrels between my father and my late eldest brother Kah Yang (he passed away in 1971 at the age of 17). As I grew up, these contradictions became the soundtrack of our lives, usually centered around our family's shoe shop and clothing stalls in Chinatown. In the court of family opinion, the verdict was almost always the same: my father was "wrong." He was judged as a man who didn't fulfill his role, who wasn't "burdening" enough for the family’s success. But as I look back from the vantage point of 2026, I have to ask: Was that actually true? Let me finally put to rest what my father did right: the truths that were buried under decades of criticism: Unseen Labor: He worked grueling, long hours. I remember him hauling boxes of goods and equipment to set u...

Business and Money Tips

Search This Blog