Confronting the Problem

By HR-Worldview Regular Columnist: George Krafcisin

* * *

At one time in my career, I inherited supervision of a group of consultants. I was happy to manage the crew, who were for the most part seasoned veterans who knew their jobs better than I did. Except for “Jane.” She had been in the same job for over twenty years, and I could see from the reports of her consultations with clients that she was still doing the job the way it had been done when she started. My budget for red ink went up as I rewrote her reports before our clients could see them. On the other hand, she was a dependable worker, very pleasant, and clients liked her. Heck, I liked her. But she clearly couldn’t handle the changes in the profession, and she was a drag on our success.

Her prior supervisor - my boss - had always given her a pass on appraisals, so the safe thing would be to ignore the issue. Her performance review date was coming up soon, so I had to fly out to her office on the East Coast and do something. So was I going to be the hard-hearted axe-man and just fire her? What would that do for my reputation with the rest of the staff? I could just spend some extra time rewriting her reports. Was that fair to the rest of the staff, and to me? Maybe I could offer her extra training and hope that she could turn around twenty years of underperformance. I knew that wasn’t going to work. So what to do?

I didn’t really have a plan, other than to lay out what I thought was wrong with her work, and see what happened. With my usual good sense of timing, I flew out two days before Thanksgiving for the confrontation. I got out the report drafts from the last few months, went through all of my notes highlighting the problems. Jane didn’t say a word. When I was done, I asked, “OK, so where do we go from here? Do I just keep giving you grief until you retire?”

In retrospect, I can see what I had done right - and wrong. On the good side, I had decided to do something, rather than ignore the situation. It wasn’t fair to Jane, to me, or to the company to tolerate performance that just wasn’t acceptable. I had also set up a good, objective set of criteria that defined “good performance”, and had documentation of the shortcomings, so there were no arguments about that.

On the bad side, I had caved on deciding what I really wanted to happen. I hoped for a good outcome, but I hadn’t really decided what I would do if nothing changed. Also, I had implied that I would like Jane to retire and that would have gotten me in hot water if she decided to make an issue of it. And I hadn’t separated myself from my emotional need to be nice to a nice person. So I had crossed my fingers and hoped for the best. And I had no idea what Jane thought - I’d given her no feedback on what her review might contain, just copies of rewritten reports.

Jane’s response? She said, “I’ve been thinking about this situation for some time. I’m tired of doing this same old job. I’ve met someone special, and we’re thinking of getting married. I would like to work a few more months, and then retire. Would that fit in with your plans?”

Which leads me to a checklist for dealing with those conversations you wish you didn’t have to have:

1. Decide in advance what you want to happen with the “problem”. What outcome do you want to see? Shoot for a “win-win” if you can.
   
2. Do your homework and define the facts - not your feelings. What is the problem? Can you document it so there’s no argument about it?
   
3. What are your feelings? You need to know what they are to understand how they are influencing your actions.
   
4. What is the other person’s view? Do you know? How can you find out? How might that change the situation?
   
5. Lay out the problem in objective terms and avoid criticizing personal traits. Say, “Your reports don’t meet standards,” rather than “You can’t write good reports.”
   
6. Get a clear agreement from the other person as to what will happen by when. And follow up on it.
   

As for Jane? Happily married and retired. She asked if I wanted to join her and her fiance for dinner next time I was in town.

About Our Columnist:

George Krafcisin is the President, coach and trainer of Mosaic Management, Inc. He writes regular installments on the topics of leadership and management here on HR-Worldview.

His last article "Play Now, Pay Later" can be found here.