I have a short fuse for idiocy. I know this about myself, so I have to work on me, to calm down and not just verbally unload both shotgun barrels into the idiot. Like everything, there is best practice about giving errant staff feedback. I find a useful ploy is to “time separate” my irritation with them from when I deliver the feedback. When I get hot and irritated, I can be too powerful, direct, strong and cutting.
Just putting the conversation off for a day, can make a big difference to how I can approach the topic of their failure. It is rare that the conversation has to be had on the very spot, so buying a bit of time for yourself as the feedback giver, is worth it. We can calm down and become more skilled in our angle of approach. When the blood is boiling, we will go straight for the jugular and wreak havoc.
How we approach the conversation is a key. When our temper is up, we will get straight down to business and immediately go into the problem. This can inspire a counter punch from the staff member as a defensive reaction and then we are into the depths of a heated argument. Always remember, prior to raising this specific topic, the staff have been working away on something and they have this in their mind when we approach them for our conversation. We need to use a cushion to create a breaker, a cushion, between what they have been thinking about and what we are about to discuss.
A cushion is a simple statement, which neither aggravates nor neutralises their current condition. We can ask about their hobby or family or interests. Something outside of work is a good breaker. Following that we should look to praise them. The praise has to be real and statements cannot be too vague. A meaningful comment would be something like this: “I thought your suggestion in the team meeting last week, about changing the way we break down the sale’s lead flow was a very good idea, so thank you for making that point”. The person we are talking to knows they made that statement and so it was real and now you are praising them for making it. Hopefully they are not making errors in all parts of their work, so that we can find something they have done well to recognise.
Now we get to the point at issue. Say for example, they failed to make an entry into the accounting system, which led to the initial P&L report being wrong and certain decisions were then taken on the basis of those incorrect numbers. We could say, “Why did you screw up the entry process? Don’t you know how important it is to have accuracy around our forecasting and decision-making process. This error has had major consequences and cannot be tolerated”. Now, this may be what we may be thinking, but it isn’t a great way to impart the feedback and to effectively correct the error going forward.
We would be better to try another approach, such as “I see that key numbers were missed in the accounting process and this has led to important decisions being taken on the basis of the wrong numbers. We don’t normally have these data entry issues, so I am wondering what happened on this occasion?”. We turn the invective into a neutral question and allow them the chance to explain what went wrong. It may in fact prove to not be their fault. Or it may be that their workload was so overloaded at that time, that this caused the error. Or it may be that they are an idiot.
The next question should be around, “How can we make sure that we don’t have a repeat of this problem”. This gives them ownership of the solution and therefore they are more likely to make sure the error is not repeated. If this was a regularly repeated mistake, then we would be talking about their future in the company at this point, but let’s assume this is a one off error. We want them to keep going and to do a better job, so we have to resurrect their confidence. They know they made a mistake and they feel bad about it. This can lead them to try and retreat from task. We don’t want that and so we need to leave them feeling like they can overcome this blip and be able to function as a professional.
We can say, “This situation has come up and we have identified why it happened and we have come up with a plan to make sure it doesn't happen again. I am happy about that. What I expect is that we will keep doing our best to make sure we don't allow these types of mistakes to happen. I am sure we have the ability to get the data entry correct each and every time. If there is ever a need for better balancing of the workload, then please tell me and I will work on helping with that issue”. You will note that we are saying “we” not “you” throughout and we do this on purpose to keep the whole conversation collegiate and not accusatory. We have remained calm in manner and speech. We have also offered help to manage the workload, if that becomes a problem, so the individual doesn’t feel abandoned. How we handle mistakes is being closely observed by the whole team and so we have to get this right when it occurs.
