Can you turn around a problem employee in just 5 questions?

by Phil Gerbyshak on February 17, 2011

Do you have any problem employees, ones that you wish you could either fix or fire?

Wondering how best to work with them to push them one way or the other, so they’ll either get better…or get out?

problems_opportunities

Of COURSE you have problem employees. We ALL have problem employees. They are hard to deal with, and often hard to NOT deal with. But there’s a solution, or at least something that can get you moving in the right direction.

In this month’s Change This newsletter, there’s a great PDF available for free download that will help you. It’s called How to Turn Around Problem Performance in Five Questions or Less, by Jim Bolton, the president of Ridge Training.

The 5 simple (but not easy) questions are:

1) Does the person know what’s expected?
2) Has the person performed to standard in the past?
3) Have you already addressed the performance problem more than once?
4) Does the person have the capability of performing to standard?
5) Is the person coachable?

And there’s also some bonus questions that you need to ask yourself as a manager. I’m not going to share those here, as you need to read them in the context of the entire article.

What are YOUR best tips for dealing with problem employees?

Photo credit to Donna Grayson

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