Questions to ask yourself to determine if counseling is
appropriate include:- Have the employee’s duties been clearly communicated
with reasonable frequency? - Is the employee’s behavior willfully or ignorantly
inadequate toward these duties? - Is the behavior ongoing?
If you answer “yes” to these questions (and assuming your
criteria for “standard” performance are achievable by most
people), the employee in question is probably operating at a
substandard level.
Notice that “ignorance” (improper or inadequate awareness of
job duties) may temporarily excuse substandard behavior ...
especially if the opportunity to learn has not been properly offered
or presented. But lack of knowledge should only raise the training
level, never lower the standard of performance.
Many managers avoid counseling for a variety of reasons.
Henry Kissinger used a mandate as his means of avoidance:
“There can be no crisis next week, my schedule is full.” The fact
is, managers dodge counseling because it does take time, and they
already have full schedules. Additional reasons that you may have
for not wholeheartedly jumping into this approach include
the following: - Fear of failure, not being sure what to do or say.
- Thinking that, given time, the employee will snap out
of whatever is causing substandard performance. - Rationalizing that performance isn’t that bad.
- People get defensive, I get defensive, and nothing
good happens. - I didn’t set the initial goals with this employee.
- I will terrorize the employee — he will think something is
seriously wrong. - Giving people time will enable them to figure it out on
their own.
Add to the list “it’s not my job” and that’s why we have HR.
You can see why so many small performance issues can explode
Coaching, Mentoring and Managing5