- If we tackle poor performance straight away, it can be just a conversation as, you know, "Have you got five minutes for me?" And just, you know, even if it's a gut feel at the moment, it's important to tackle it straight away.

- The ideal scenario to address poor performance is to nip it in the bud as soon as possible. So the first opportunity when you see that there's an issue there, and the reason for that is that you can do it in a much more informal way, and it has less of an impact, a negative impact, on the individual. And it could be that you could do it at the end of a a weekly catch up meeting and you're not doing it in an accusational way. You could just say, "Well I've noticed that x, y, and z is wrong, is... is everything okay?" And just bring it to their attention. And that might be enough for that point in time.

- Well, in terms of preparation, before sitting down with somebody to have a performance conversation, I think it's important to get your, get your evidence together, get the facts and figures together that are giving you cause for concern so that you can use that to frame the conversation with the individual.

- Gathering evidence is the most important part of having a conversation about poor performance. The more precise you are with the evidence and the easier it will be for the person to understand exactly where performance needs to be improved.

- It's also quite useful to get feedback from other people that that colleague works with. Whether that's peers that are in the same team as them or maybe more senior colleagues that they're interacting with, if that's where some of the feedback that you're getting is coming from. But get that rounded picture to almost open the conversation with the individual.

- Often staff can think, "Well, it's because my manager just doesn't like me," and they think it's a personality conflict of some kind. To overcome that, it's often really helpful to ensure that you have feedback from other individuals, other managers or others that, whether it's managers or clients or the people that they've worked with.

- Well, in terms of tools and resources, I think what's useful and quite helpful at times is to understand some of the personality traits types. So if you're gonna have quite an awkward conversation with an individual, it's useful to try and have that conversation in a way which suits their style rather than your style. Particularly, if there's some pretty awkward messages that you need to get across. So, you know, Myers-Briggs, any of these type of personality trait indexes are useful if you've got that information to hand.

- Another tip is to be prepared for emotional reactions that you may have. And by that you could have somebody that's very angry or very defensive. You could have somebody that becomes very upset.a Or, the other emotion that you frequently see, is somebody that's actually just relieved that the issue's actually being addressed because it was a major concern and worry for them. And they're just glad that it's out in the open and it's gonna be dealt with.

- The main things that you need to address during the meeting are the evidence, the impact of that poor performance on the team, on others, and on customers. And what is going to, to change to improve that performance.

- Get into character. It's quite an awkward scenario to be in. So almost be a method actor around it and get yourself into the right frame of mind before getting into that conversation with the individual.

- Don't make the issue bigger than it needs to be. Keep things in perspective and try and do it as informally as possible, especially for the first discussion. And it may be that you can nip it in the bud with one casual and formal discussion and the issues addressed.

- Focus on one thing. You can only land one plane at a time on the runway. So make sure that you don't swamp the individual with too many performance issues they need to address. Pick the one area and agree the one area with that individual that's gonna make the biggest improvement for them and for you as a manager. And make sure that they follow through in their actions on that. © 2022 Mind Tools by Emerald Works Ltd.