One of the most common complaints I get from managers and leaders is about ‘problem’ or under-performing employees; it wastes their time and takes mental energy.
Typically the line managers’ strategy tends to be either to ignore the problem and hope that it goes away, make the employee feel uncomfortable in the hope that they’ll leave, hint at the issues, or lose it completely one day. All very normal!
We tend to do this because either we don’t want to cause offence, we’re concerned about employment rights or we’re just unsure of what to say and how to handle it, so I thought I’d share some tips:
PREPARATION:
Prepare what you’re going to say, rather than chancing that it will come out right. Identify:
- Why you want to give feedback. What is your positive intention? This helps to ensure your motives are sound and avoids point scoring or having a go.
- The issue, e.g. I don’t like the way they handle their team; I think it has a demotivating effect.
- Examples. What are examples of this? What did you see? What did you hear? This will help you to avoid making inflammatory or judgemental remarks about their character, e.g. ‘you are aggressive with staff’ versus, ‘I overheard you talking to your team yesterday about their targets. Your voice was raised.’
- Open questions you could ask which would explore and resolve the issue, (adopt a coach-like approach; people are much more amenable to their own medicine):
- What was going on?
- What caused you to raise your voice?
- How are things generally? How are you?
- How can we resolve this?
- What support do you need?
- What you would like to happen in the future. What do you want? Be clear about how you want them to behave instead. What would good look and sound like? Are there any ways of measuring this? For example, ‘I am keen to get your employee engagement scores up to 80%.’
- Remind yourself of your rights: you are entitled to manage. It is far kinder to be straight forward and honest with someone, as opposed to adopting any of the aforementioned strategies.
DELIVERING THE MESSAGE:
- Get their full attention. ‘Can you spare me 5 minutes Michael?’ Go somewhere private.
- Introduce the topic. ‘I’d like to talk about your team meeting yesterday.’ Be concise. People can sense when there is bad news heading their way; you are not softening the blow by going around the houses.
- Run through your example(s). ‘I noticed that you raised your voice.’
- Explain why you are discussing the issue, (your positive intent). ‘My concern is the impact it may have on the team. I am also aware that the engagement scores for your department are at 60%’
- Explore and resolve the issue asking open questions. ‘How are you? What caused that? How can we resolve this?’
- Agree the action: ‘So, we will meet on Monday to discuss your targets. You are going to arrange to work with a Coach on reducing your stress and being assertive, with a view to increasing your department engagement scores to 80%, by September.’
I have drawn on a number of theories for this article, all of which we provide training and coaching on Assertiveness, Manager as Coach. We also tailor make events too.
