The Metiss Group's Blog

After much deliberation, you’ve finally made up your mind: you are going to sever the employment of one of your direct reports.  Of course, if you’ve been giving healthy feedback along the way, the employee should not be surprised.

Before reaching this decision, most leaders have had course correction conversations with the troubled direct report.  When you have these tough conversations, make sure there is no doubt in your direct report’s mind, they will lose their job if their performance does not improve.

Make the course corrections direct and clear.  “I’m not happy with your performance,” or “You are on thin ice” leaves too much to interpretation.  Instead try “Tim, I believe you are capable of completing your work on time and we want you to succeed; but keeping your job largely depends on your ability to deliver your reports accurately and on time.  Let’s review your progress in one week.  In the meantime, don’t hesitate to let me know what obstacles I can remove that will help you out.”

Make your feedback clear and you’ll empower your direct reports for success.

This entry was posted on September 27, 2010 at 11:03 am and is filed under Leadership, Performance Acceleration. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site.