How do I tell someone on my team their work isn’t good enough?

A plan for a hard conversation with someone you manage: the opening, the examples and the next step.


When to use
When you manage someone, something has to be said, and you’ve already postponed it once.
Time
10 min

The prompt

I manage someone and need to talk to them about . Two specific things that happened: . What I want to be different a month from now: . I’ve left out their name and anything private about them. Ask me up to three questions, one at a time, about whether I’ve raised this before and what may have changed for them lately. Then plan a 20-minute conversation: a two-sentence opening that states the problem with no compliment sandwich, each example as what happened and what it caused, two questions that let them give their side, and a next step with a date. End with what I might have wrong about them, the part I may have played, and the sentence I’ll be tempted to say and shouldn’t.

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