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3 Tips for Handling Difficult Conversations with Employees

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Many people leaders struggle handling difficult conversations with their employees.

If you haven’t been in this situation, then it’s only a matter of time. Here are three tips you can use next time you discover an employee problem that needs addressing.

1| Addressing Skill-Based Problems

Is the problem skill based, like someone consistently submitting an expense report late or with errors?

If the issue is skill based, then you can approach the person and say, “I know you are so skilled at your job, and I don’t doubt that skill. However, I do see that you consistently struggle with turning in your expense report accurately and at the agreed upon time. Can you tell me a little about what is happening with your current process?”

By doing this, you decrease the chances of them reacting defensively.

2| Addressing Personal Problems

Is the problem personal, like an employee who consistently shoots down other team members’ ideas in meetings?

When the issue is personal in nature, you can approach the person by letting them know that one of your top priorities is having them be successful and that you need to share information that is sensitive.

By sharing that you want them to be successful, the person is more likely to take the information with a more constructive mindset.

3| Practice Makes Perfect

My third tip is to practice this conversation, so you appear comfortable having it. The more relaxed you are, the better the conversation will go.

Of course the worst thing to do is nothing. Issues like these will not go away when we ignore them.

Keep in mind that meetings can turn into difficult conversations as well. If a meeting goes off track and is no longer productive, you should stop the activity and bring the group back to purpose.

On the other hand, if the conversation turned unproductive to the point where the group needs a break, then there’s no shame in rescheduling the meeting.

My favorite book, and I read it at least every 18 months is, Crucial Conversations: Tools for talking when stakes are high by Patterson, Grenny and McMillian.

What do you do for difficult conversations? Comment below or get in touch.

4 Important Steps to Add to Your Onboarding Process 

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Even the most promising new hire needs an adequate amount of support during the onboarding process when they first start working for your company.

I frequently talk about finding the BEST person for each role, but that’s only half the battle. Once you’ve found the right candidate, it’s time to give them a big dose of your company culture through an effective onboarding process.

Ensure Your New Hire Starts Off On the Right Foot

Onboarding and training are two different processes that require a different approach.

For onboarding, you need to put yourself in a new hire’s shoes. They’re making a big change, so onboard them to your company by rolling out the red carpet–literally!

An article by Social Talent informs us “when employees go through a structured onboarding process, they are 58% more likely to remain with the company after three years.”

Important Steps for Effective Onboarding

1. Engage with the person a week ahead of their start date. A short email or text message letting them know that you are excited to have them on the team can put them at ease. For extra points, have the hiring manager or senior executive do a “Welcome to the Team” Video.

2. Provide a 5-day schedule 2-3 days in advance. This tells a new employee that you are thinking of them, and your organization is buttoned up. The schedule should be educational, and people based. Bonus Tip: PLEASE do not stick a new person on 8 hours of video learning.

3. If you are in an office environment, have a welcome committee that lets the new person know that the whole team is excited they are joining the team.

4. Have EVERYTHING ready for the new team member on their first day. This includes their computer, account log-ins, business cards, coffee cup, badge, workspace, etc. I mean, you HUNTED for this person. You should show them that you want them and you are serious about making them successful.

How’s Your Onboarding Process?

Many organizations overestimate the effectiveness of their onboarding process. In a survey carried out by OfficeTeam, 54% of employees said that they’ve experienced a mishap in their new job.

Putting the effort into a structured onboarding process will pay off. Ask any new hire that has joined your team.

Do you have any important steps you’ve added to your onboarding process?

Comment below or contact me. I’d love to hear it!

How effective is your communication with your direct reports?

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Even when we have 1:1 meetings, staff meetings, and real-time pinging through Slack and other instant messenger tools, I’ve never met an employee who said, “my leader over communicates to me.”

People generally believe that there’s more information to know. In fact, the statistics are pretty scary:

  • 60% of companies don’t have a long-term strategy for their internal communications (Workforce).
  • 74% of employees feel they are missing out on company information and news (Trade Press Services).
  • 72% of employees don’t have a full understanding of the company’s strategy (IBM).
  • 86% of employees and executives cite lack of collaboration or ineffective communication for workplace failures (Salesforce).
  • 33% of employees said a lack of open, honest communication has the most negative impact on employee morale (Recruiter).

A direct reports’ need for information and communication increases during time of change and turmoil whether internally or externally driven.

Like any personal relationship, our work relationships thrive or die on our ability to communicate clearly, establish trust, and create a welcoming environment for questions.

To dig further into a manager’s role and the importance of their connection to employees, I found the book by Jim Clifton and Jim Harter, It’s the Manager: Gallup finds the quality of managers and team leaders is the single biggest factor in your organization’s long-term success, to have substantial research and insights. 

Effective communication with our direct reports is a top priority if we want highly engaged team members. I would enjoy knowing what you find to be helpful in communicating with your direct reports. Get in touch!

Do you have a hiring bias for industry knowledge?

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If so, then is your hiring bias founded on facts or can you teach industry knowledge in a short amount of time?

The Challenge

I challenge my clients to look at this, because when you limit yourself to candidates with “X” amount of experience in your industry, you really shrink the available pool of candidates.

I understand that there are truly places where you must know the industry because of regulations, compliance, certifications, or laws, but there are many cases where you might be able to find great candidates and train them. A great resource to understand this bias and many more can be found in Howard Ross’ book Everyday Bias.

The Advantages

Think of the advantages of being able to train a person “fresh” and being able to put your organization’s spin on the industry, so the person starts with a clean slate and without baggage from prior organizations.

We know from Peter Drucker that “Culture eats strategy for breakfast” so really, what you want to do is hire for talent, skills, and interest. If the industry knowledge can be taught, then you should focus on culture fit though talent. One of my favorite books is Bet on Talent: How to Create a Remarkable Culture That Wins the Hearts of Customers by Dee Ann Turner.

My Insights

In the past, I was asked to lead a sales team that was in the green industry. The company had historically hired people who had experience in horticulture, agriculture, or viniculture for sales roles. They were convinced that the person must have green industry experience, but the turn-over for the sales role was 40-50% annually.

Why? Well, people who like plants and grapes generally are not people lovers, they are plant lovers. So instead, we determined what skills and talent were for these roles. Once we made a change, we had top sales performers who came from teaching, hospitality, retail, property management and more. This shift was caused by hiring for talent and training for industry.

I believe that we need to seriously take a look at the advantage of attracting talent with transferable skills from outside our industries and rid ourselves from any hiring bias we may have. We can increase our candidate pool and the chance of finding the BEST talent for the role.

Have you had any success with going outside of your industry? Share your story in the comments below or get in touch with me for further support.

Culture DOES eat strategy for Breakfast

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Peter Drucker is attributed to saying “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” Meaning, that no matter how good your strategy is, how much time you spend talking about your strategy, or in many cases, how many consultants you pay to make awesome PowerPoint presentations on strategy, your strategy is going to be useless without the right people demonstrating the cultural values and living these values.

If the company strategy is to deliver the best products and the best services to the customers but does not have the right people in the leadership roles, leaders with the actual skills and abilities to drive these values, there will be a disconnect. If a company spends the time and effort to create mission statements and large colorful posters with aspirational qualities on it – the executive team must live those qualities and be consistent in demonstrating those values.

I’m a big fan of the book Follow This Path: How the World’s Greatest Organizations Drive Growth by Unleashing Human Potential (Coffman & Gonzalez-Molina, 2002). I recommend reading the entire book, but in a two sentence summary of the findings are: “They (the companies surveyed) know that their most valuable resource is human-their employees and customers. And the best companies understand two important facts: people are emotional first and rational second, and because of that, employees and customers must be emotionally engaged in order for the organization to reach its full potential.” My take-away from the research within this book was that if I focused on just customer satisfaction I was solving less than half of my challenges. If I focused on my employees, getting the right people in each role, engaging them through specific metrics and goals, mapping out their career path, understanding what motivates, and providing a robust set of tools to make their work as efficient as possible, that THEY took care of 99.9% of customer satisfaction. Net-Net: if you take care of your employees, the employees take care of the customers.

It takes the right leadership team and the right team members, working together, to make this authentic company culture a reality.

Enough about you, let’s talk about ME

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It happens all the time. You have an opening on your team and you are in the interviewing process. You went through your standard behavior-based interview questions, poked and probed at several key competencies, and had some good laughs about favorite sports teams or in my case, favorite chocolate desserts. When you exited the interview, you thought “I like Bob/Jill/Joe/Kate…” You told your recruiting team who the not-great candidates were, “they just get it” or, “my gut says no.” Now you have a list of candidates that will advance in the process. Take another look. Are the candidates who are advancing, well, um, a lot like you?

We are all drawn to people who are like us. These people make us feel good, really good. Hiring managers are often leaders; the driven, passionate, make-it-happen-now kind of people, experts-in-a-lot-of-stuff people. We would love to have a whole company filled with people just like us. The reality is, project deadlines are missed, equipment is not maintained, finances are a mess, marketing sucks, and sales are down. All because the people we hired are just like us. They have the same skills and capabilities, they also have the same blind spots and hang-ups. No diversity in skills, thinking, learning and planning means that the business and customers won’t get what is needed.

Of course we need to find team members who we are compatible with, because we will be spending a lot of time with our co-workers. More importantly, we need to hire the person who has the skill set for the job we need done. A sales manager role requires a different skill set than an operations manager. A marketing director role requires a different skill set than a finance director. A receptionist role requires a different skill set than an IT help desk person.

Do you have a hiring process that is pragmatic and systematic in determining what is needed versus the who is apply? Have you given enough thought and validation to the skills for a particular role?

There is value in teams understanding that people who have opposite skill sets are needed to support each functional role – even if those people drive you bonkers, daily.

With a little planning, an open mind, and some science in the hiring process, it’s amazing how effective a team can be.

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