You are on page 1of 2

How to deal with a poor performer in your team?

by Bhavin Gandhi

Have you ever encountered a situation where you had to have difficult conversation with your employees? Or have you ever put any employee on a Performance Improvement plan? It is very unfortunate that some of the Managers try to avoid those situations. Instead of having appropriate conversation with their employees, they try to avoid those situations. Well, I am not a master of these conversations by any means, but I have few tips through which you can handle this situation well.

Verbal discussion: Let say, you have a poor performer in your team. And despite of your numerous efforts to improve his performance, he didnt improve. In this situation, I would advise you to have a personal discussion with him, if you havent done that already. This one-on-one discussion will give you an opportunity to explain your concern about his performance, while it will give him an opportunity to explain his side of the story. The purpose of this meeting should be to let him know about your concerns, so that he can correct those behaviors.

Document your concerns: After you had your verbal discussion, you should always make sure to document those communications via e-mails or memos. This will help you not only in any legal proceedings that might arise in the future but it will also help you to reiterate your point. Your e-mail should contain summary of your discussion reinforcing your message and the place where this discussion took place. Its a good idea to let the employee know that they will be receiving a follow up email after the meeting. Explain that it is to ensure each party is on the same page regarding discussion points. This can circumvent the perception that you are using the email for tracking purposes only.

Follow-up discussion: You should never have a discussion with someone, and then not follow up with that. I would advise you to schedule a follow-up meeting regarding your verbal discussion as soon as you send the follow-up e-mail. Of course this meeting might not happen within 1-2 months, but its always a good practice to keep a checkpoint on these kind of discussions to make sure that you dont forget it. And yeah! Make sure to have a specific agenda for this meeting. For example: specific projects that he might be working on, his performance

Author: Bhavin.Gandhi@live.com | Contact information: http://gandhibhavin.wordpress.com

improvement within last month, action plan to success, time frame for improvement, etc. Dont forget to include all the consequences clearly and visibly in this meeting request. This will ensure that your employee is aware of all the consequences before you decide to take any action.

I hope these tips will help to become a better manager and effectively deal with your poor performers. Let me know, if you have any other ideas through which you can effectively deal with your poor performing employee. Thanks. Bhavin Gandhi

Bhavin Gandhi | February 13, 2012 at 2:28 PM | Tags: 21st century, Challenges, Change Management,E-mail Communications, Employees, Leaders of Tomorrow, Leadership, Management, Manager,Manager Training, Manager's Guide, Manager's Note, Performance Improvement, Performance Management, Performance Review, Poor performer | Categories: 21st Century, Leadership,Management | URL: http://wp.me/p103Cm-6z

Author: Bhavin.Gandhi@live.com | Contact information: http://gandhibhavin.wordpress.com

You might also like