When we see shoddy work or bad behavior we must decide: is this a pattern or just a momentary slip? Under deadline pressure, people make mistakes. Every business is
being forced to do more with less—fewer people, less time to do the work. So we might sometimes forgive something that doesn’t quite meet our standards. But delaying could be a mistake, especially with bad behavior. A manager’s failure to confront someone can lead to a poisonous atmosphere with ever worsening behavior and performance. I know this from experience and learned the hard way. I served as CEO at a business with 30 employees. You don’t want to let things get out of hand.
Why do we sometimes let things get by? In my case, it was partly a lack of experience—not knowing what to say to the person or how to say it. Another element was fear. I didn’t want to create a confrontation with a person who might have a big ego and a short fuse. Many managers save up their complaints for the dreaded annual review. That’s too long to wait and both the manager and the employee tend to remember the most recent events.
BUILD FOR THE LONG TERM
A lot of these problems can be avoided through in-house mentoring. An executive coach suggested to me that that I reserve time every week with each of my five department heads. These sessions were designed to help the department heads achieve professional or personal goals that they themselves chose. It would be one goal at a time. My role was to be the mentor, to ask questions, to listen, and listen some more.
KEEP IT CONFIDENTIAL
These weekly one-hour sessions were confidential, which is extremely important. Sometimes Person A would ask me, as the boss, to tell Person B to stop or start doing something. They wanted me to solve the problem for them. That’s not a good approach, for at least two reasons. The employee doesn’t learn anything, doesn’t grow by figuring out their own way to handle a problem. The other reason is that the employee can’t necessarily solve problems the way you do. If your solution fails, they can say it wasn’t their fault.
As a mentor in these situations, I tried to guide people to finding their own solutions. I like to say you should approach it like a doctor with a patient. How long have you been feeling this pain (having this problem)? Describe to me what it looks like, what it feels like. When did it start? How long has it been going on? What have you tried? How long did you try it? Why do you think it didn’t work? What else do you think you could try? If you can’t do X, why don’t you try Y and let’s see what happens. These confidential sessions would end with a commitment by the employee to do a particular thing by the next session and report how it went.
FINAL THOUGHT
Here are three useful phrases that I suggested my managers use during employee feedback sessions. Just say them and be silent. Wait for the employee to respond:
• “This work does not meet our standards.” (If the employee asks what the standards are, you need to be able to explain them. For example, every product should pass a final inspection checklist before being shipped.)
• “This behavior is not acceptable in our organization.” (You might need to explain why it’s not acceptable to bad- mouth fellow employees behind their back. I have had to make such explanations.)
• “Your daily goal is for everyone here to say that you are a pleasure to work with.” (The burden is on the employee to take others into account — to ask and to listen.)
I am sure many of you reading this have even better ways of handling performance issues. I would love to hear about them.
HAVE MORE QUESTIONS?
Reach out to SCORE for free, expert mentoring and resources to guide you through your small business journey. Visit score.org to learn more.
