Giving Negative Feedback: Practical Approaches for Managing Underperforming Employees

In this episode, Simon Goode explores the challenges of managing underperforming employees by analyzing three workplace case studies involving declining output, quality issues, and inconsistent performance. He discusses practical frameworks such as the What-Ask-Check model and the GROW coaching model to give and structure negative feedback effectively. The episode emphasizes the need for specificity, empathy, and clear goal-setting when addressing performance concerns in teams.

TIMESTAMPS: 

00:00 Addressing performance and incentives

03:34 Handling Performance Issues

07:11 Improving communication in reports

11:53 Addressing Vague Explanations

13:38 Handling workplace conflict and goals

18:46 Managing relationship goals and priorities

21:54 Discussing performance expectations

26:53 Dealing with workplace empathy challenges

28:12 Discussing performance expectations

31:58 Discussing coaching frameworks

34:44 Managing multiple systems in coaching

38:29 Managing team member challenges

Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:29

Hello, welcome back to the Conflict Skills Podcast. I'm your host, professional mediator, Simon Good. I set up this podcast to provide free resources and tools for dealing with conflict. So if that sounds like the kind of thing that's useful to you, please consider pressing subscribe. Well, in the episode today, I'm talking about a particularly challenging topic for a lot of people, managing an underperforming employee. I've got three different conflict case studies that I'm going to be looking at and analyzing and describing some of the frameworks and approaches that I use as a professional mediator when I'm called in to resolve conflict in a hands-on capacity. The same approaches, the same frameworks are often incredibly useful for people in team leader and managers' positions as well as small business owners. So if you're dealing with a situation yourself of an underperforming team member, or maybe you've been on the receiving end of getting some negative feedback in the past, my hope is that this episode would be useful for you. So the first situation that we're looking at is a case study involving a gradually declining output and some missed deadlines. And it's the kind of situation where we might not know exactly what's going on. The second situation that I'm going to be looking at is a issue of quality creeping in in terms of the output that the person's delivering. And then finally, we've got a case study where there's inconsistency in terms of performance, despite an early strong beginning when the staff member first came on board. Now, the reason I think that this underperforming employees is a particularly challenging issue for a lot of business owners or managers is because it's not clear what's the best way to deal with it. Should we deal with this sort of head-on and be very clear in terms of articulating expectations, clarifying like KPIs and those kind of things? Arguably that's true. Maybe this is more a symptom of the underlying structure. So we could think about the way that we have meetings, the way that the communication happens, the way that decisions get made that might resolve some of the performance issues. Maybe there are also some situations as well where the wrong kind of behaviors are being incentivized. I often suggest to managers when I'm working with them that whichever behavior is rewarded is likely to be repeated. So when we look at underperforming employees, a lot of the time, part of the challenge is that they've been getting away with what they've been doing, like it's working for them. And whatever gets rewarded gets repeated. So if they've been able to cut corners or do something at a subpar level and get away with it, well, there's probably not going to be much impetus for them to change, is there? So as much as we like we might benefit from thinking about the conversation itself, what phrases should I use? How should I bring this up? How can I set up the conversation in a helpful way? But there are also the underlying factors in terms of what you do in terms of the issue itself. Like, do you give them a formal warning? Do you cut the hours that you're giving them? Do you talk to them about a potential ultimatum? Is it getting to that point? So that's a different kind of decision than which are the best words to use. So I'm going to do my best to talk about both of those levels as we go through the different case studies here. Now, if you're watching a video, you can follow along on the screen. I've got the scenarios up and I'm going to be doing a bit of annotation, but I'll do my best to catch you up if you're just listening on the audio. I'll do my best to make sure it still makes sense and is useful for you as well. Okay, so let's get into the first case study here: the declining output and missed deadlines. In a content marketing team, manager Jordan noticed that writer Alex had been missing deadlines and producing thinner work for several weeks. So the manager Jordan, the writer Alex, thinner work over several weeks. Previously reliable and proactive, Alex now required multiple reminders and still submitted incomplete drafts that needed heavy editing. Other team members had to cover the gaps, staying later to finish client deliverables. Frustration grew as people felt they were carrying more than their fair share. When Jordan raised the issue in a private conversation, Alex offered vague explanations about workload and personal distractions, but showed little improvement in the following days. The team's overall delivery became less predictable, and quiet resentment began to surface inside conversations. It's more like a gradual shift and the the previously positive pattern has stopped for whatever reason. And I think this one is very similar to a lot of the situations that I'm dealing with as an external consultant. The people who are making the decisions don't actually have all the information. Part of the challenge is that you've got a dilemma on your hands. This might be something that's not necessarily connected to work at all. Maybe Alex is going through a divorce or is at a breakup with his girlfriend, or maybe there are financial challenges or mental health or physical challenges that he might be dealing with. It might be other people that he's a carer for, it might be his children, like who knows. So we don't want to make assumptions and oversimplify the root causes here. And I guess what I'm saying there is we don't want to assume that his behavior is just because of something that we've done, just because of the structure here, it might be not, it might be something else. So let's think about what could be going on. We've got the previous reliable and proactive. Now, both of those are labels in terms of the way that I think about it anyway. There's subjective perspectives that Jordan has probably got. Alex used to be a good performer. The challenge is that if we decide to bring it up with Alex, and we say something like, You used to be reliable and mate, you used to be proactive, what's happened? Well, these negative labels that we're using to broad brush the other person are just generalizations. They're no more clear about what they're doing that's contributing to this, let alone what we want them to do moving forward. And there's probably not a whole lot of buy-in and investment in actually changing, is there? Like if you've just had a go at me, then blow you, like bugger you, I'm not going to listen to you. So instead of the labels like reliable and proactive or you're not proactive enough, what often works better is to talk about the specific behaviors. When these reports are due, this is what I'm looking for you from for you in terms of updates. When we're dealing with this kind of issue, this is what I would like you to do differently. If you notice that there's an issue at the beginning of a project, that's the kind of thing that I would like you to raise in the weekly one-on-one with me, rather than letting it sit there for a couple of weeks, and then by the time we discuss it, there's a number of other complicating factors that are involved. So instead of saying you're not reliable or you're not proactive, give me this kind of information at this stage in the process. Change this, let me know this earlier. If we can be more specific about what we want the person to do, then there's a much higher chance that they're actually going to do it. For me, I like to use the positive confrontations framework for doing this. There's three steps there. It's what, ask, check. We describe what the person's doing and why it's an issue. Uh, you didn't let me know about this issue for the two weeks. And so by then, this is the problem that that created. So that's the what. Then we do the ask. Could you do this differently? Next time round, if you run into the same situation, could you shoot me a quick email and set up a time where we can talk it through? And then the last step is check. We want to check to make sure that the person understands what we've asked them to do. And we also want to make sure that there's not an excuse or a reason why they're not going to listen to us sitting in the back of their head. The last thing that I want is someone says yes, no worries, Simon, I'll get that done. And they're thinking in the back of their mind, well, Dave doesn't ask me to do it or something. I'm like, no worries. Let me follow up with the CEO Dave for now. Could you just do what I've asked you to do? And I'll let you know if anything changes moving forward. Other team members have to cover the gap, staying back later. Okay, so that's interesting, isn't it? I wonder how that's affecting all of the dynamics that's going on. We've got frustration and what what information is Jordan looking at here? Like when he says that the other team members are frustrated, it's possible that they are, but it's probably more complicated than that. They're going to have their own set of issues that they're going through due to life outside of work as well as everything else. But we've got the carrying more than their fair share. This might be the kind of thing that we can quantify. Like if we're asking someone to do something different, it would be helpful for them to know when they've done it. A little bit like we set SMART goals. I don't know if you've ever heard that acronym SMART goal. Specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. So instead of just saying I want to lose weight, it would be better to be specific. I want to lose like 10 kilograms or something. Or instead of saying I want to get healthier, I might say I want to lose weight. So the specific is that it's the weight. The measurable is I'm gonna go and weigh myself in the mornings or I'm gonna weigh myself once a week and keep track of it of it or something similar. Achievable, well, I probably don't want to lose 10 kilograms in a couple of days. That's not that's not gonna be very achievable, is it? So maybe two two months to lose 10 kilograms or something would make sense. Relevant to me, that's why is the goal important to me? If I lose this weight, I'll feel better at this big event that's coming up at the end of the year. Or if I lose weight, my fitness will be better. So when I'm playing with my son, I can not get as puffed as quickly as I were was previously or something similar. There's different ways that this acronym is structured. Sometimes the R is realistic. For me, it's the same thing as achievable, so I don't know if that's such a helpful step. Whereas is this goal relevant? Like maybe the getting healthy thing doesn't make much difference to me at all, and ultimately it's fitness that is the core of what I'm aiming for. So the SMAR and then the T is time bound. I'll measure it in two months, or I'll try and get it done within this kind of a time frame. So when we're being assertive and asking somebody else to change something, a similar set of steps can be quite helpful. Specifically, what do you want them to do? Measurable, how will they know when they've done it? How will you know when they've done it? Achievable. Don't ask them to go and add 10 things onto an already incredibly busy to-do list. It's just not going to happen. Relevant? Are you sure that this is important? Is it actually in their job description? And is it important for you and the organization? And then time bound, maybe say, could you get it done in the next five minutes, in the next 10 minutes, before close the business today, instead of just saying ASAP and you've got quite different ideas about what the S, what the A and the S and the A and the P stand for in terms of the actual expectations here. So that what ask check framework I think would be helpful. And instead of that, you want people to carry more than their fair share, get specific about the actual behaviors that you're wanting the person to change. I wonder, is there anything else that jumps out at you looking at that one? What do you make of these vague explanations that were offered? When Jordan raised it, in a private conversation, Alex offered vague explanations about workload. I don't know, I just got snowed under. I don't know, it's just all the change is going on at the moment, it's difficult to keep track of everything. The challenge with those kind of vague excuses, I think I would say, is that it doesn't give us anything to work with in terms of the discussion or resolving the conflict moving forward. I don't mean we should say, like, what the hell do you mean by vague? Like if he says, um, I don't know, I just lost track of everything. We might listen a little bit deeper, like we could reflect that back. You lost track? With a bit of an upward inflection, it sounds like there's a question mark there. And it's this lovely organic way of getting Alex to continue. We could also ask open-ended questions or slow or closed-ended questions, like what happened next? How were you feeling at the time? What was your take on that back then? Or the closed-ended questions of is this the same thing that you raised with me back in April? Have you had a chance to discuss this with any of the other developers, something similar? Maybe just allowing silences and pauses. I like that particularly as a response when people are being a bit vague. You kind of just allow them to continue. And if they're like, what, you're like, I'm sorry, I'm still not exactly sure what you're referring to there. I thought you were going to expand. And then that's a nice way of getting them to in this organic kind of way, I think. And what do you think about the team's overall delivery becoming less predictable? Would this be the kind of issue that you would want to nip in the bud and so you would deal with it like ASAP? Or maybe this is the kind of thing that we can let sit and we don't want to rush in and burn our bridges and create a mountain out of a molehill. It really depends on your goals, doesn't it? I'll just flick down a little bit because I was just preparing earlier a few slides for a different course that I've been looking at, and I like this structured reflective process of clarifying your goals. Like what's actually important? The thing is that with conflict, the more upset that we get, the less clearly that we tend to think we literally, in terms of the neurobiology, don't have access to that logical, rational pre-frontal cortex, at least to the same capacity. So the more worked up that we get, we make quick decisions, we look at situations in a black and white kind of way. We're not aware of the context, like other people watching us have an argument with someone in front of the rest of the team, and we're not necessarily thinking about the consequences of our behavior. So we'd tell our boss to F off or say take some other career-limiting move. And that's because we're not thinking very clearly in the heat of the moment. It's not a binary thing, it's probably something that gradually ebbs and flows over the course of a day naturally. It's just the way that we're designed. We don't sort of operate in full 100% bore all the time. We're programmed and designed to escalate during situations where it's needed, and that often is when we're facing threats, perceived threats, or perceived pressure. So I would want to just step back here, like hop in the helicopter and take a bird's eye view and just think, well, what's really going on? I don't want to rush in and make a mess of everything, right? So you might like to think first about goals for yourself. What's important for you right now? Maybe you've got a couple of other new team members, and so they're needing a lot of support from you. So if you're in the supervisor's role, this might not be the best time to bring it up with Jordan. You might be just about to go and leave yourself, and so you don't want to start a big performance management process and then have to hand it over to somebody next week when you're off. This might be the kind of situation where you're under the pump and short-staffed, and so you're all just scrambling, and that's all you can do to keep your head above water. Maybe buying the team some food to get them through and just focusing on the stuff that's on the to-do list right now is just realistically something that needs to be done. Or maybe this is a bit of a lull and this would be a good time to deal with an issue that's been sitting there for a couple of years and you haven't really had any glimmer of daylight in which to do it. So you'd want to think carefully about your goals, what's important to you right now. And this is the kind of thing that will change over time. Even outside of work goals. How much stress are you wanting to take on board at the moment? If you've got a family member that you're caring for, maybe you just want to be able to walk out the door at 5 p.m. no matter what? You know, it's inherently that is a dilemma that we need to choose how much to invest in each of these different conflicts because they tax us, they do take something out of us, don't they? And then we would want to think about the goals for the relationship with that team member, with that staff member. In other words, like, what would the manager Jordan think that a professional working relationship looks like with Alex? What are they aiming for here? And it might be the kind of a situation where Jordan needs to admit that they're not going to be friends. Like part of their natural inclination is wanting to keep people happy around them. And despite the fact that that is important, it might not always be possible. So what would the minimum relationship look like between Alex and Jordan? I often get them to tell me that when I'm called in as a mediator as well. And it's a really nice way of just doing a bit of reality check around expectations. Like you don't need to be friends, you don't need to be mates. We can figure this out. And then the third category that I've got there on the screen is the goals for others. Maybe there are other team members that are involved in this conflict and you don't want them to be negatively impacted or something similar. So I really like going through those questions in a very structured kind of way. First we think about the goals for ourselves. What's going on right now? What do you want? What's most important at the moment? How urgent is this issue? If you decided to take the high road, be the bigger person, be the wiser person, what would that look like? How does this situation fit into your broader goals, like your three month or one year goals, where you're at in terms of your career, life outside of work? And how will you make what will you make of this conflict when you look back at it in two weeks' time, two months' time, two years time? A lot of the time what seems incredibly important and urgent at the moment, you know, in retrospect, probably wasn't such a big deal. Doesn't mean that it's not important and we're not going to pay attention to it, but we don't want to get our knickers in a twist about something where it's not gonna be beneficial, right? Then we think about the goals for the relationship. What kind of a relationship would you like with them? What's important to them? What do you want for them? Is there a kind of support that you want to offer them? Do you not want to be overly harsh or something? How urgent is this in terms of the relationship? And how much of that goal is your responsibility? Another one of those really helpful questions if you're a bit of a people pleaser. It's not my job to keep everybody happy, I can't. And then those goals for others, who else is involved? What do you want for them? What does the organization or the subsection of the organization need, like our department? What would be the worst case scenario here? What's the best case scenario? And is this the best time to deal with this issue? I just find going through some of those goal questions, and I like to write it down, of course, is a really helpful way of organizing my thinking. Anyway, I wonder how would you deal with this one if you were in Jordan's shoes? Would you be very direct with Alex? Would you take more of a long-term approach? Would you use something like the what ask check positive confrontations framework? Maybe that works for you. Or it's possible maybe that something entirely different does. Let's have a look at the next scenario and see if there's some similarities here, but potentially a few differences too. We've got the case study involving low engagement and quality issues. Here's the situation. At a customer support center, team leader Priya observed that agent Sam had become slow to respond to tickets and frequently needed supervisors to step in on basic queries. His core quality scores had dropped steadily, and some customers were expected to speak to someone else mid-conversation. Colleagues began avoiding pairing with him on complex cases, which increased their own workload. Priya scheduled a meeting to discuss the pattern. Sam appeared detached, offered few concrete reasons, and seemed unreceptive to suggestions. The queue of unresolved tickets continued to build, and the rest of the team felt the uneven load more sharply with each passing shift. Oh goodness, you can just imagine the pressure of being in this situation, can't you? Especially when you're like you are the team leader, you're the manager in Priya's situation here, and you care about your team. Like you don't want them to be negatively affected. So this pressure cooker that you're all sitting in and watching some of the people that you care about slowly get cooked, you know, you do see a lot of reactivity then as a result a lot of the time. So what do we make of this one? What jumps out at you from that situation that I just described? We've got team leader Priya and the agent Sam. So what is he doing? What's the issue? Well, he's become slow to respond. I wonder if that's information that they both agree with. Are they both clear on the fact that he's been slow? What's slow? What's the definition of slow? And is it across the board in all situations? Is it a global average that you're looking at? Are there particular situations that are causing issues? We can probably drill down to a bit of detail here to figure out what might be going on. So in terms of the slowness, if I was Sam and Priya was raising it with me, I might say, can you fill me in a bit more on the expectations here? When you say that I'm slow, how long do you expect these things to take? And what's the level of variability that will inherently be there given the fact that we don't know what this phone call is going to involve before we start talking to the person that's calling in? For Priya, I think instead of just saying you're too slow, can you speed up? It would be more helpful to again be specific. This is the amount of calls that we're expecting you to get through in a day or in an hour or something similar. Or unless there's this kind of issue that comes up, this is the maximum time frame, generally speaking, that we're hoping that the calls will take. And then what about this needing supervisors to step in on basic queries? That's the kind of situation where I think we could really choose which type of conflict do we engage with here. So let's say that he's calling in the supervisor about a minor kind of issue. We could deal with that just in terms of the data. We could just talk to them about the facts. When this kind of a situation comes up, this is what I expect you to do. You can just make the call, just follow the process, something similar. So if we're clarifying expectations, that would just be about the data. This is what you need to do differently. So we could just leave it there. That might be in our minds what we consider to be resolved. But of course, there might be a number of other barriers or roadblocks that are getting in the way of that. So another option, instead of just talking about the data, we could talk about the interests. If things don't speed up, this is what's going to happen. You won't be in line for the leading hand job, for the team leader job. We might not we might need to consider formal warnings with you, a performance management process. You won't get the bonus at the end of the month unless you can demonstrate an increase in your performance or something similar. So the carrots and the sticks, is it going to be something bad for you if you don't change, like a punishment? Or is there some kind of a reward or something that we can offer them in return if they can do the thing that we want them to do? So we could do this explicitly as if you do this, this is what's going to happen. We could do it as a quid pro quo kind of thing, like if you can do this, this is what I'll do for you. If you can demonstrate that you can get through some of these things quicker, then I can give you your own section to be in charge of or something, which means that you don't need to deal with some of the more frustrating calls that are coming in or something similar. I don't know. This is what's in it for you. In order for me to do that for you, this is what I need you to do for me. We could talk about it in terms of values. Like they might think that they're doing the right thing by calling in the supervisor. It's possible that something else might be going on. Like their confidence took a bit of a knock, and so they're worried about getting in trouble for making the wrong decision. So we could talk to them about their value there. Like, I take it that you're really trying to make sure that you're correct before giving the client the answer. Or I know that for you, you're wanting to make sure that we follow the correct process and that we don't make any mistakes and there's no crossed wires. At the same time, the challenge is that if we're working with that level of thoroughness, we're not necessarily able to get back to all of the people that have left messages for us to call them. So this is what I'd like you to do differently. In your old job, thoroughness might have been something that was incredibly important though. Here, we've got to really focus on efficiency or we've got to focus on streamlining processes or whatever. So we could talk about the value. You're probably doing your best because you're being careful. Right now, I need you to focus on something else. And it's not like you're wrong to think that. It's fair enough. I can understand where you're coming from. If I was in your position, I might very well feel the same way. So given all of that, this is what I'm asking you to do. So we could clarify the data. We could talk about the interests or adjust the interest mechanisms. We could deal with it at a value level. The fourth way that we could deal with this one is structurally. Like maybe we could print out a guide to some of the frequently asked questions that customers might have. And that having that guide in front of them would prevent some of these looping in the supervisor kind of issues that we're dealing with. Or maybe it's relationship, touching base with them and saying, How are you traveling? Like, you don't seem like yourself. I just want to see if everything's okay. How are you feeling in terms of the dynamics within the team at the moment? Is there anything going on that's causing you concerns or you know it's creating issues or dramas, that kind of stuff? It's sort of saying to them, well, maybe there's something that we can work on here to tweak things. But as well as the actual solutions and the option generation, just having the relationship in terms of the conversation can be incredibly helpful. You know, they might say, I'm in this painful, like I've had wrist pain or something from my arthritis, or my mum's in hospital at the moment and I've got a lot on my mind or something. And so it's potential that potentially just a bit of empathy and connection would actually shift things forward much more than very clearly being assertive or something else. I don't know, I have to admit that I tend to value listening very highly, and I wonder if you would think that this is the kind of situation where you would want to sit down and listen to the employee and figure out what might be going on, or maybe enough is enough, and you've all got work on your plate, and if they're getting paid to do their job, then there's nothing wrong with just asking them to do it. It's tricky, isn't it? So colleagues began avoiding pairing with him on complex cases, which increased their own workload. This again would be the situation that we could consider using structure. I think as well, we would need to consider what we do about the Sam appearing detached, offering few concrete reasons. Like if that was the case, I suppose that would be where Priya would need to decide how assertive to be. Is this the kind of situation where enough is enough? Like there's enough at stake here that this is your last chance. Well, I think there we would probably want to use an escalating level of assertiveness. This is what I'm asking you to do. We've talked about it now a number of times, looking back through the notes in our one-on-one meetings, and it was last month that I initially raised it. You said that you were going to try this, and as far as I'm aware, that hasn't happened yet. So I wanted to discuss it again, to find out where this is all sitting, because I want to be transparent with you. If this doesn't change, then I'll need to consider options such as performance management processes or formal warnings. And I know that's not the kind of thing that you or I want to worry about. So I just want to be clear about what's expected and maybe give you a chance to discuss, is this realistic or not? Are there other issues that maybe you're dealing with that I'm not aware of? I'd like this to be a bit of a dialogue. So I'm kind of saying I can't budge on this. This is something that's quite important, but I do want this to be a collaborative venture where possible. So if they say things like, oh, I haven't been sleeping well, or I'm just feeling a bit overwhelmed recently, I guess there we also need to decide how assertively do we respond. There might be some situations where I can say, look, I can appreciate all of that. It sounds like you've got a lot on your plate at the moment. The challenge for us is that there's only so much flexibility that we can offer before other staff become involved or before we're at risk of creating an unfair precedent or something. So this is the bottom line from our perspective. And it's similar to the value difference. It's not like you're wrong and we're right. It's more like fair enough. You've got all this stuff going on in your private life. Of course, we would like to be supportive and offer you flexibility. There's a limit, but there's a limit to that as well. This is how we're going to manage it, or let's organise the times, talk it through, or this is the decision that I've made, depending on how assertively I suppose that you decide to deal with this one. Well, let's have a look at the third case study situation. Here we've got a sales team and we've got inconsistent performance after what was initially a strong start. In a sales team, new manager Helen saw that representative Omar, who had performed well in his first six months, was now regularly falling short of targets and skipping follow-up calls. He still arrived on time and attended meetings, yet contributed little and seemed disengaged during pipeline reviews. Other representatives noticed they were closing more deals while Omar's numbers stalled. Some began questioning why expectations appeared different for him. Helen tried to address the drop-in performance through coaching conversations, but the gap between Omar and the rest of the team continued to widen. Quiet comments about fairness circulated, and overall team motivation started to dip. Hmm, so this is probably another level in terms of urgency, isn't it? We can see a bit of a pattern that's developed where Omar's performance had dropped, and Helen, from the sounds of it, is watching quite anxiously, trying to figure out what might be needed. Now it doesn't actually give us a lot of information about what Helen has done until now. It just says Helen tried to address the drop-in performance through coaching conversations. I hear that very frequently. I've tried coaching, and I'm always a little bit curious about what these people do when they're coaching their employees. I can remember one of the jobs that I left a while ago. My manager changed. I was given a different line manager, and then this new manager was supposedly going to implement some coaching process to give me support. So I'm, you know, a bit of an arrogant kind of like stubborn person. So I said, well, look, before I agree to this coaching, what model are you going to use? Which framework? They said, Oh, you know, we like to be supportive, so it's really up to you to talk about your priorities. And I'm thinking, but like, what's what are you going to do with me? In what way will this benefit me? Is it a sounding board? Like, is that the benefit that you give me? Is it idea generation and you offer like mentoring or something? You can give me guidance? Is it about stress management and giving me a chance to vent outside of my normal day-to-day work team? Like, what is this? What's the focus and what's the structure? So I tried to be respectful, but I'm sure they probably felt like I was just being a bit of a jerk. But they didn't know. They didn't have an idea of a process in mind, let alone what that would actually look like in terms of the terminology and stuff. For me, I'm familiar with many of them, but the framework that I use is the GROW model of coaching. I just find it so much more helpful than a lot of the others. I know that I've talked about this in previous episodes of the podcast, but if you're not familiar with it, that GROW coaching model, it's an acronym. So the G stands for goal, the R is reality, the O is options, and then finally we've got way forward or what will you do as the last category there. So the reason that I say category is because each of these are groups of questions that you could ask. You could ask questions about the goal, you could ask questions about where things are up to at the moment or what's happened in the past. You could ask questions about the options, what could they do, and you could ask questions about the way forward, what's the first step. And I really like this particular framework for coaching when it comes to relationship issues. For me, I'd probably be inclined to bring this up with Omar and maybe saying to him something like, Well, what would the goal look like? Like, where are you getting stuck? Is it getting more outbound phone calls, more cold calling? Would that make a difference for you? Maybe it's following up a little bit more diligently when you get leads that are coming in. Maybe it's confidence talking about pricing and dollars and cents. That's the kind of thing that you can feel there's a quaver in your voice. And so that might not be something that you're doing very confidently. If we can get clear about what the goal is, then there's going to be much more buy-in, much more engagement with whatever the plan is that we come up with. Now, I'm not the one that says the goal. I would get Omar to talk to me about what would make the most difference if you could do it in terms of the outcome that we're looking for, the sales targets or whatever. Then we talk about reality. Well, look, it sounds like there's been a couple of these conversations that have just slipped through the cracks through the along the way. Like you've got quite a good work ethic, and you do your best to follow up. But it sounds like given the fact that you've got a few different systems that you're working with, you know, it's not always easy to keep track of it all. So can you walk me through how you've been managing this up until this point? When you say that there's been a couple of things that have fallen through the cracks, what were they and how did you find out about them back then? So the goal of the goal of the reality questions is to help the other person to develop awareness. Either awareness about what they're doing that's contributing to the problem, awareness about options that they've got, awareness about what's at stake or the actual impact of it potentially. There's a number of different areas that we could drill into and choose to explore. But that's really about them developing insight. Whereas when we ask them about the goal, like what are you actually working for here? That's much more about a sense of responsibility. So a lot of the time we would go through those first coaching questions, the goal and then the reality. Then we would talk through options. Well, let's just do a bit of brainstorming here. What could you try before we evaluate them and figure out whether or not it makes sense? Let's just put a few options on the table. What do you think might work? So I'm eliciting from them many different ways that they could go about dealing with this. They could do this or this or this or this. The reason that this option generation becomes so helpful is that we're not just solving today's problem. What they're doing is improving their self-efficacy because they can learn, as they can learn to develop options using this similar kind of framework, that then becomes something that they can apply to the next situation that they're going into. So they could talk to me about the goal, what would make the most difference to them, where are they getting stuck? Talk to me about reality, about previous processes or stuff that they've tried, where it's up to at the moment. Then we would go through some different brainstorming about options. And then the final question, the W in the Grow From Grow Framework, is the way forward. Like what will you do? Where to from here? Given all of that, where are you going to start especially with these Omar kind of characters? I don't want to coach them. And then I think that I've given them support, some support, but they don't do anything differently. Like in my mind, I've achieved almost nothing there. So the gap between the team continuing to widen, I guess that would be the final thing that I might mention here. Helen probably needs to decide what's the limit. Like if you're a supportive kind of manager, you probably do want to give your stuff some flexibility. Especially if Omar does have a good excuse, so to speak, like he is actually dealing with significant issues outside of work. Well maybe Helen decides that for the next month she's just going to keep an eye on it. In the meantime, though, she might set up more frequent meetings with Omar or ask him to CC her into emails that he's sending clients or something similar. So at least in the short term, the approach might be just to monitor it. But she'll need to decide when enough is enough. And to be frank, it's possible that she's already at that point. As I said, a lot of the time, these caring, supportive managers, they're in a dilemma. So she has made it clear to Omar, has she, if she actually reflects and thinks that she has been reasonable? She's given him time to improve. She's given him support. There's been options that he could have taken up that he chose not to. Well, this might be the kind of situation where upon reflection, Helen needs to maybe just call a spade a spade and either give a final formal warning, this is what needs to change by this date, or this is what's going to happen. You'll be dismissed, something similar. So a formal performance management process, or maybe taking some other step, like if he's a subcontractor not utilizing him as much, or bringing in somebody else to join the team that has a similar kind of skill set so that you don't have all of your eggs in one basket if Omar just decides to quit one day because he's annoyed about something that's happened. I guess that's where we would monitor, but also proactively manage the fallout of the issues in the short term, or working towards a resolution in a longer term sense. But I don't know, that's all just my thoughts. The same as always. What do you think? Have you been in a similar situation to Helen there? And you've been trying to give people the benefit of the doubt, you've been trying to give them a chance, but it just didn't work out the way that you thought. Maybe you've dealt with a similar situation as Priya, and you've got Sam who's constantly looping in supervisors to issues that he should just be dealing with himself. Or maybe it's challenges around positive confrontations and that what ask check might be a framework that you could potentially use. I don't know, I'd love to hear from you. If you've got an idea or a suggestion, please consider making a comment down below. If you would like more resources for dealing with conflict, including workplace conflict, then press subscribe or hit follow if you're on Apple Podcasts. And otherwise, thank you very much for listening. I very much do appreciate it. If you've got an idea for a future episode, please feel free to send it through. You can email me at podcast at simongood.com. Either a theme like a topic that I can generate some case studies like today, or maybe a particular situation. If you'd like to send that through, I'd be happy to discuss and do a bit of reflection on that as well. Anyway, all the best dealing with conflict over the next week or so, especially if you're dealing with an underperforming employee yourself. Thank you very much for listening. Hopefully, see you again in a future episode of the podcast. Bye for now.