One of the worst situations a leader can be in is having to choose between losing an employee if they aren’t promoted or promoting an underprepared employee into a role they’ll likely fail in. Here, I go over why I NEVER recommend promoting people before they’re ready. I give you the steps and solid verbiage for how you can convey to the employee that they won’t be offered the job and I also tell you what you can do to keep them before they’re ready to be promoted. Now that’s a win win!

When I ask leaders if they have considered conducting “stay interviews” to help them understand how they can retain their top performers, many times I hear that they already do this. But what the leader describes to me is far from a stay interview. Let me help you with three keys to a successful stay interview. I’ll give you the best questions to ask during your first interview…there are only 3…and share some common pitfalls that leads can find themselves in and how to avoid them. Hope this helps!

I often hear from leaders that they’re worried about getting sued when it comes to addressing concerns with employees. Oftentimes, these worries aren’t things that will really come true. However, here, I talk about situations leaders unknowingly get themselves into that could put them at more risk than anything they came to me about in the first place. In this episode, I help you so you aren’t writing someone’s legal claim for them.

What is the threshold for making a performance conversation more formal? How many times do I need to address a performance issue before moving the discussion to the next disciplinary level? Well I hate to say this but the answer is…it depends. In this episode, I talk you through the rationale I use when making recommendations to leaders in terms of performance documentation and when to address at the next level.

In this episode, I’m going to help shift your thinking from a progressive performance document system to a system that meets the development needs of the employee. We’ll review the documentation levels and what we might use each level for. I’ll give you a high-level intro to a system that focuses on the process and not the person. And we’ll wrap up with how to double check your document level to make sure it’s appropriate. Let’s get great at the basics!

When you write a performance document, your first goal should be to write it so it’s a tool for the employee to leverage to improve. Anything outside of that should be for legal or your own record keeping purposes…but really, even legal or record keeping purposes serve for almost none of the document. This episode is all about what you should leave off the document and why to ensure your focus stays on the goal…helping the employee do their best at work.

Let’s find out if your document drafting skills are as strong as you think they are. Here, I share the mindset I recommend leaders use when drafting the document and the steps that have served me well in creating something meaningful to give to an employee. I give you a few tips to help keep you out of hot water legally and otherwise. And of course I’m going to give you some recommendations on how to learn from the pros and double check your final product.

It’s been one year since I launched my podcast and today, I’m talking about one of my favorite topics…how to work with people who are argumentative and confrontational. I know, I know…I hear this all the time. Why are these your favorite people to work with? Well, I love working with unpleasant people because I know how to develop rapport with them and turn our relationship into something truly collaborative. In this podcast, I’m going to tell you how I do it so you can do it too! Get ready, because you’re going to flip the script so hard, your colleagues are going to think you’re magic!

Using witnesses to help you feel more comfortable during a performance conversation may cost you elsewhere. In this episode, I talk about why I’m not a big fan of constantly using a witness when you have performance conversations, how to protect your credibility against liars and when I do recommend witnesses or extra participants.

If you are an empath and struggle when an employee is having performance concerns, you need to listen to this episode. We’re going to shape your mindset when it comes to emotions, performance and partnering with employees. Then we’ll address problem solving as a team and how this shapes your relationship with the employee. And finally, we’ll discuss training, touch points and your follow up on end results.