Poor Performance Conversations

Transcript

Delphine Merlot: So how to start a meeting on work performance is important. The first things that you might ask would be about that person knowing exactly why we are sitting down and sense checking if you know the reason there is is clear enough.

John Kerr: So when sitting down with the individual and starting to open the conversation and presenting the facts and figures, I think the important thing to do is to use lots of open questions, get the individual talking. So some of the phrases you might want to use would be around, when you can refer back to previous performance where the colleague has perhaps been performing at a certain level. And you can refer back to your results of perhaps like back quite noticeably over the last four to six weeks. Do you have any thoughts as to why that might be the case? Nice and open. Get 'em talking.

Another way to do it might be to look at if you have managed to get feedback from people that they're working with is to again, use that. So you've talked to people that individual's been working quite closely with and some of the feedback that you've received from them is X, Y, and Z. And what do you feel about that?

Ashlie Turner: Make sure that there's no disturbances in the room that you're gonna be using. And also ensure that you've allocated an appropriate amount of time for the conversation because in most cases it'll go on for longer than you would've expected to, and you don't want to have to leave that room in a hurry to get to another meeting.

Delphine Merlot: The kind of question a manager could ask to understand why poor performance has occured are questions such as, "Could you explain why you haven't done this this way at that time?" If this person is usually doing something in a particular way. So probing, if there was a reason.

The other kind of question that I will ask is, "Did you realize the impact that that particular action had on others?" So again, trying to sense if it has been done on purpose or again, if that person didn't think of the consequences of an action.

Ashlie Turner: The most useful piece of advice I've had about dealing with poor performance effectively is to put yourself in the individual's shoes. Think about how you would feel if your manager was having that conversation with you and ensure that you maintain respect for the individual and also ensure that you don't make the conversation into a scene where you're being reprimanded in front of the headmaster, because that's not gonna be helpful to anybody.

John Kerr: You sat down with an individual to have a performance conversation, circumstances materialized that you weren't expecting. And it may be appropriate for you to take a break at that point and for you to think, okay, now that puts a slightly different perspective on things and perhaps we both need to just take that away and give that some thought. I think depending on the circumstances there you may need to also consider whether that individual needs a little bit of extra support other than what you can provide as a line manager. But most organizations and most companies have sort of helplines and support tools that are available to colleagues if they are going through quite a difficult period from a personal perspective.

Delphine Merlot: The manager has to get the side of the story from the employee as it is about having an adult-to-adult conversation in this room. So it's definitely important that there is a part dedicated to what the employee has to say about his poor performance. And during those conversations, sometimes you do realize that there is very good reason why a person could have been performing poorly. Sometimes there isn't any.

Ashlie Turner: Ensure that you've communicated your expectations in a clear and concise way to the individual and you feel confident that they have got a very good understanding of what those expectations are and they feel comfortable in delivering them.

John Kerr: Well after you've had the initial performance conversation if you continue to see a deterioration or no improvement really in the colleagues' performance I think follow through is very important. So then the first conversation's always, I would advise everybody to do that on an informal basis, just get the conversation going and try and understand what's at the root of the performance issues. If it doesn't improve, then you do need to formalize it and you do need to start recording actions. What gets measured gets done. So having a good record of what you've agreed with that individual as the required performance improvement standards and coming back to that and making sure that they're either making the required improvement, or they understand the consequences of not making the required improvement.