Many employers struggle with providing performance feedback to correct workplace issues, like tardiness and absenteeism.
As leaders, we need to get people on a positive course by helping them face and then manage weaknesses. How this is done is through the feedback process: honestly, respectfully, openly, thoughtfully and with a sense of purpose.For example as a team leader or manager, you can begin to work on the tardiness and absenteeism situation by writing out your answers to the following two questions:
1. How can you say that you are concerned about this weakness in a respectful and helpful way? (Be specific. "You aren't contributing to the team's effort" is a difficult statement for someone to hear. Reformat the weakness. "I am concerned when you don't get to the office on time" refocuses the concern as a problem.)
2. How can you offer this person encouragement to change the way he or she has done things in the past?
By having a performance feedback conversation with the tardy employee (where you coach while doing more listening than talking), you can insist that he arrive on time, focus on his work and ask what he will do to make this happen. The impact on the tardy employee will make him responsible for his actions and sets clear expectations. The consequence is he has the opportunity to design a solution to the issue.
This situation is an opportunity for you, as the team leader, to build your leadership skills and style.
Personal transformation happens when the right questions get asked--not by providing answers. When you focus on the solution, you are trying to sell the person something. When you allow people to answer their own questions, they discover what they were not aware of---and what is needed to move forward.
Effective coaching can happen on the dance floor of conversation. Leadership is an interactive conversation that pulls people toward becoming comfortable with the language of personal responsibility and commitment.