How to get Talented People Back on Track When Their Performance Dips
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You have a difficult conversation coming up which you are not looking forward to. You need to discuss poor performance with a highly talented member of your team. Preparing in advance will be critical to success.
Make sure when setting up the meeting that you’ve pre-warned your colleague about what you need to discuss so they won’t feel ambushed. In a busy week you may have little time to prepare for this important conversation. What can you do in 15-30 minutes?
- Acknowledge your own feelings. This will help you mentally prepare. Whatever the background to the situation, take time to relax; breathe deeply and walk around the block for 5 minutes to clear your mind. It’s important for both of you that when you enter the meeting your body language is neutral, and you have your feelings under control.
- Check your facts. What changes in their performance have you seen? What can you quantify? Perhaps they are frequently late for meetings, or ill-prepared, or are losing their temper with other team members over trifling matters. Have recent changes at work impacted their role? What data do you have and is it reliable? If you’re not sure don’t make assumptions. It will be better to treat the meeting as an opportunity to explore what’s going wrong.
- What do they do well? If they are talented, they are likely to be upset by poor performance. Focus first on the positive contribution they make. Remind them of prior achievements and the value they add to the team when they are on form. “It’s not like you to…” can be a good lead into a problem-solving conversation.
- How will you illustrate why their performance is a problem? For example, “I know the Accounts team should have given us the data earlier but losing your temper with your colleague has damaged the working relationship between our teams at a time when we need to be working closer together.” If you can’t explain why their performance is a problem, then getting them to change will be very difficult.
- How might your colleague be feeling? Do you know them well enough to take an educated guess, or have no idea what may be going on for them? Most of us feel pretty defensive when receiving negative feedback. Few people go to work each day intending to do a poor job. Keep your emotions in check and this will help them do the same.
- What must you achieve? Be clear on your goals for the meeting. If exploratory, then gaining information and perspective is key. If behaviours are unacceptable then ensure you are clear on what is required, what has to change and when.
- How will you structure the meeting? You need to lay out the issue clearly, give them the chance to discuss the issue from their perspective, check you really understand the situation fully, and include them in solving the problem.
- Set out the situation. What is not working and why.
- Listen and ask questions! Ask them for their perspective.
- Establish causes. Are there recent changes that are impacting them? Do they feel they have the knowledge and tools to do the job well? Are they clear on what it is they have to do and why it matters?
- Establish actions. What do they think they can do to improve the situation and when will they commit to doing this by?
- Keep your questions and your mind open. Remember to use ‘who, what, where, why, and how’ questions. Listen carefully and watch their body language. Ask questions to deepen your understanding, to broaden their perspective of the situation, and to check your facts. Summarise to ensure you’ve heard and understood them and ask them to do the same for you.
It’s important to keep your talented people on track, tackling dips in performance as they occur. The 15-30 minutes before the meeting can drastically impact on how you handle a difficult conversation with your talented team members – giving them an honourable way to regain their high performance.