Performance Management

So, you’ve decided to call an employee in to talk about his performance. Maybe you’ve noticed the employee seems disinterested about taking on new tasks. Or that his work is regularly late when it used to be prompt.

Regardless, you know you have to have “the talk.”

How you approach the performance chat will affect the response you’ll get – and the turnaround you’re hoping for.

But even though your main goal is to improve the employee’s performance, your chat might backfire if you have an underlying motive going in.

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Even successful managers have their share of complainers.

You know the ones: They never see the upside of anything, they’re persistently negative and never seem to know when to stifle it. Hand them a million dollars, they’d complain you didn’t give them anything to carry it in.

But not all complainers deserve a brush off. In a lot of cases, you can cultivate your complainers and put them to good use.

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Good employees fear rejection from their managers more than anything. When it comes to that raise, or the extra day, or the idea they have, they want to hear “yes.”

Not surprisingly, most of us hate even more to be the “rejector.”

One of the uncomfortable situations managers find themselves in is denying a promotion to an employee who’s applied for a higher position. Since the employee has shown an interest in improving his or her status, which also shows an interest in the company, it’s doubly hard to deny the request – even though there are good reasons for doing so.

You know the employee isn’t going to take it well. So, it takes some deft handling to deliver it.

Try these steps when turning down a current employee for a promotion.

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Giving and receiving feedback is an interaction we all tend to dodge in one way or another.

It’s not our fault, really – we’re hardwired to feel threatened when receiving feedback, and knowing that makes it hard to give.

Our brain is constantly scanning our surroundings to determine whether we’re safe. When it senses danger, our fight-or-flight response kicks in, and our mind goes into defense mode. From a neurological perspective, the words “Let me give you some feedback” hit the same pain circuits as if we were physically hit.

Obviously, this doesn’t help create a positive space for discussion.

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There’s a lot of luck in getting along great with all those who work for you.

It’s hard to mold competing personalities into a cohesive team. And when it works, of course, it’s a sign you are a managerial genius!

Until a team member wants to take everyone (including you) on one of his or her Ego Trips.

It helps to have a road map, even for ego trips. Here’s a primer on some that you’ll want to avoid:

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Even good managers face times when we have something difficult to say and don’t quite know quite how to say it.

Think of the last time you had a message for your team and, rather than just say it, you found yourself going over and over the exact words you wanted to use.

The reason something might be hard to say has more to do with us overthinking the meaning behind it, rather than knowing what words to use.

Here are a few of the best ways to say the hardest things:

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Face it: Dealing with conflict at work is part of every resourceful manager’s job.

And if you don’t resolve the conflicts quickly, they’ll take a toll on everyone – wasting time, hurting productivity, sapping morale and costing money.

How bad can it get? Managers spend 25%-40% of their time dealing with conflicts. That’s nearly 2 days a week.

This infographic gives you a detailed breakdown of how conflict at work impacts businesses.

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Anyone who’s ever gotten one of those emails alerts for a “company-wide meeting today at 4 – mandatory” knows the feeling of dread in the pit of the stomach.

You know there’s news, and it’s probably bad news.

And you can tell from the scared-rabbit looks on your employees’ faces that you’re going to have to cope with the panicked fall-out.

Situations like this are inevitable. But we can go into them prepared by adopting some strategies to get our teams through the bad news.

Here are 8 ways to lessen the pain (and the drama that often follows):

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When you manage people, sooner or later you find yourself in a situation where you need to have a conversation you’d rather not have.

In fact, more than one-third of managers admit to shrinking away from giving bad feedback when they anticipate a negative reaction.

We’ve all been there. A project blows up and people are pointing fingers. There’s a conflict between two employees that’s getting destructively personal. One of your employees dropped the ball so badly even your boss noticed.

It’s definitely not the most enjoyable aspect of leadership, but difficult conversations are part of the job. So we can’t avoid them.

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Part of the problem with employee performance reviews is that they are frequently repetitive, bland, and time-consuming.

They’re seen as obligations, not employee development tools.

Yet we know that thoughtful reviews make a big difference when they focus on how an employee can improve in the coming year.

Sure, every review has to have the nuts and bolts – listing the employee’s duties and responsibilities and rating how well they did them.

But while the employee’s ability to do the job is essential, there are other valuable traits that generally don’t make it into reviews. And they’re just as important if the goal is to help your employee blossom.

So what have we been leaving out?

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