Unlocking Leadership Through Authentic Communication

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.

This month, I’m sharing feedback from leaders who shared what makes them the most anxious about giving performance feedback, what happens to them physically, what happens to them mentally and how they work past their body’s responses to the anxiety they’re feeling. In this episode, we cover feeling like you aren’t being taken seriously, not letting emotions come into play, making lists (the do’s and don’ts) and of course the mindset about getting the conversation done and over with. Lots of helpful information to help boost your confidence if you see opportunities for yourself in this area. Hope they help!

I’m going to debunk the biggest lie you were ever told as a leader. Then I’m going to help you shift your mindset by doing some practical things to actually help you feel more comfortable having high stakes conversations with your colleagues. By leveraging these recommendations and reflecting on your mindset, reactions and feelings, you will become more comfortable having conversations with just about anyone, on any topic with little to no preparation.

It’s easy to draft the perfect performance document, slide it across the table to the employee and check the box that you’ve taken care of addressing the issue. Unfortunately, no one remembers what’s on the performance document. They do, however, remember how they felt. Here, I break down the three main reasons performance documents should be used, how to address conduct in a way that isn’t demoralizing, but informative and supportive and why you should always make the conversation a priority over the documentation.

Poor behavior can be one of the hardest things to address. Many times, it’s not blatant and as a leader, you might not see it. Here we discuss how to address behavior to ensure everyone is creating the culture you envision for your team and how to address behavior that you don’t witness but is reported to you.

No one likes to be told they aren’t meeting performance expectations. But what if you took your titles and set them to the side and focused on what is actually going on. I guarantee you it’s not whether someone is meeting expectations. That’s the result. Instead of focusing on the outcome, look at what happened to get to that outcome and work out from there. You don’t need fancy titles and if you catch performance issues early enough, you won’t even need formal documents. And guess what? You’ll likely strengthen your work relationship in the process.