Shawnee Love   •  
April 1, 2014

Managing people requires difficult conversations.  Even the best performers occasionally need reeling in or a push in the right direction from time to time but it is the other 90% of the team that most of your difficult conversations will occur with.

Difficult conversations occur about:

• Attitudes
• Appearance
• Grooming
• Habits
• Language (verbal and body language)
• Quality of Work
• Pace of Work
• Personal Tics
• Skills such as communication, organization, negotiation, etc.

Under those broad categories are a myriad of ways employees can fall short of standards at work, and as a manager, it is your job to ensure people meet standards.

I find it helpful to plan out the conversation before I have it, by answering these questions:

1. What is the problem behaviour?
2. Why is it a problem?  E.g., what is the consequence of the problem existing?
3. What is the right way or the standard to be met or what outcomes are required?

Once I have the answers to these, I will build my script and arrange a time to meet.  Come back next week for tips on acing the meeting itself.