Do you have a bright employee you know is packed full of potential, but who is not producing the work product or quality you absolutely know they are capable of? You may feel like you are pulling teeth getting them to start producing at maximum levels.
Here's how to make an impact. Typically, if your reasonable attempts to correct performance have not worked, that’s a signal to consider a referral to someone who can interview the employee confidentially and conduct an psycho-social and occupational productivity assessment to find out what is causing your worker not to measure up to their potential. How do you convince such an individual to actually do this!?!
It is much easier than you think, but you must know where your bottom line of low productivity expectation is located, otherwise you will not find the leverage necessary to motivate change.
You must first identify what level of performance you expect and then stick to your guns. The failure to measure up will be the level you have determined is minimally acceptable is the justification for your referral to a professional who can perform the proper assessment.
The assessment professional will not tell you about what takes place in this meeting, but will and must assure you that your employee came to the appointment and cooperated with recommendations given. This person can be an employee assistance professional operating within EAP principles, but it can also be a privately contracted counselor third party you temporarily hire to perform this function.
First, before confronting your employee (I will share with you how momentarily) you should consider whether you have used appropriate management tools up to this point--everything but disciplinary action. For example, proper accountability is frequently overlooked by managers although they think it exists. For example, have you set up a procedure in which your employee is obligated to report decisions to you and justify those decisions and actions as they occur? Do you have a mutual understanding about the consequences of failure to meet certain defined outcomes? This is also called “transparency” in supervision. Negative feedback (and positive) should not follow only after the fact, but should be offered before decisions are made and undesirable outcomes are produced. Accountability and transparency in supervision relationships change the mind-set of employees and for many are all that’s required to produce the results managers expect but never thought they’d see.
