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947: How to Handle Difficult Conversations with Underperforming Employees – Alan Twigg

You and your team deserve a positive, rewarding work environment. A key piece of that is to optimize the people you currently have. In this episode, Kirk Behrendt brings back Alan Twigg, president of Bent Ericksen & Associates, to share how to address underperformance, ways to fix it, and what to do when nothing seems to work. To learn how to navigate these difficult conversations, listen to Episode 947 of The Best Practices Show!

 

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Main Takeaways:

  • Learn the five steps of the productive feedback model.
  • Outline your expectations and your reason for the conversation.
  • Give a warning of potential consequences if their behaviors don't change.
  • Invite employees to submit comments. It’s a way to document conversations.
  • Set boundaries around communication so that conversations don't get derailed.
  • Consider having a witness signature when employees are not being cooperative.
  • If you see something, say something. Don't let underperformance go on for years.

Quotes:

“Obviously, we're in a tight labor market. So, we need to make sure that we have the best people on our team. As the leader, we've got to do a really good job of keeping our team humming along. Part of that is making sure that we are optimizing the current team. What that means is, especially if we have someone who is not performing at a high level, we've got to address that.” (1:31—1:57) -Alan

“I'm anti-conflict. I know a lot of dentists are anti-conflict. It's always tempting to just sweep it under the rug and hope it'll get better, or, ‘Maybe it's not that big of a deal. Maybe I don't need to say something,’ and all that. The challenge with this is we've got to address it because the thing that we always have to keep in mind is there's that one employee who's not quite performing very well, but then we've got all of our other employees who are performing really well. If we let this person slide with mediocre performance, it tells the other employees that they don't matter — their hard work doesn't matter.” (1:59—2:36) -Alan

“The scenario here is that you've got someone who's not performing quite at the level they should be at, and you need to address it, but we're not at the level of termination yet. So, it's still early on. We're big fans of this idea that says if you see something, say something. You don't have to wait a year for the annual performance review. You don't have to make it some big, long, drawn-out thing. We’re big fans of, if you see someone do something good, say something. If you see them do something bad, say something. If you can get ahead of these things, especially early on with new employees, it's not nearly as scary, or as conflict-ridden, or as emotional, or whatever you might think it is. Where dentists really get into trouble is when someone is not performing something and they let it go for a year, or two years, or even three years, and then they say, ‘Okay. Yeah, I need to address this.’ ‘Well, how long has it been going on?’ ‘Well, it's been going on for two years.’ And it's like, ‘Oh my gosh, why didn't you say something two years ago?’ So, at a bare minimum, try as best you can to address this stuff early and often.” (3:36—4:46) -Alan

“If we're looking at termination, it's really important that we have our ducks in a row and we have that documentation laid out so that if someone were to claim that we fired them for discrimination, or we fired them for some other protected class, we have this nice, clear set of documentation and timeline that says they were told they had to show up on time, and they read the policy manual, and they signed off on it. They were told in the job description, and they signed off on that. We did a verbal counseling on this date, and a verbal counseling on this date. We did written on this date. That whole thing is absolutely critical to protecting the practice.” (14:42—15:23) -Alan

“There's always a chance we can turn the ship around. There's always a chance that maybe this employee, if we get the point across that, ‘Hey, you’ve got to fix this. If you don't, you're going out the door,’ sometimes, that will have someone go, ‘Oh, okay. I get it. I'm on board. I'm going to change. I'm going to do whatever I need to do to fix this.’” (15:29—15:54) -Alan

“In terms of the anatomy of a heavy counseling memo or a heavy written warning, there are similar aspects to the productive feedback model but some little differences. Number one is, you obviously have to outline the reason for why we're having this conversation and that objective thing of, ‘Okay, you're showing up late,’ or, ‘Your patient reviews are negative,’ or whatever it might be. There needs to be a very clear set of expectations for improvement, meaning, ‘I need you to show up on time. I need you to stop having negative patient reviews,’ whatever it is. We need to set that absolute, clear improvement expectation. The next step is the one that most people miss, and this is so, so important. That is, you have to warn of potential consequences. It's not enough at this stage to just say, ‘You've been showing up late. You need to not show up late,’ or, ‘You've been having negative patient reviews. You need to stop having negative patient reviews.’ You have to put in a line that basically says, ‘If you do not improve, further disciplinary action, up to and including termination, may occur.’ That line is critical because without that — anyone who's got teenagers knows that you’ve got to spell it out real clear. They'll find the loophole. The loophole in this would say, ‘Yeah, you told me that I was showing up late. And yeah, you told me that I wasn't supposed to show up late. But you didn't tell me that if I kept showing up late, I was going to be fired tomorrow,’ or, ‘You didn't tell me that I had to fix this by next week or by next month.’ There has to be that warning of future consequences. That part is really, really critical.” (16:03—18:00) -Alan

“In these heavy counseling sessions, they can go so many different ways. The employee might immediately go, ‘Yeah, you're right. I'm sorry. I'm going to work on this.’ They may, in these sessions, say, ‘Well, it's not my fault. It's Joann's fault because Joann trained me, and Joann did a bad job of training me. It's not my fault.’ So, that's blaming someone else. They may say, ‘Why are you always picking on me? You never talk to anybody else but me.’ So, they're playing the victim. They may bring up unrelated issues. They may say, ‘Well, yeah. I've been showing up late. But what about so-and-so who keeps eating lunch at her desk? You don't ever say anything to her about that.’ So, that's distracting, bringing up something that's totally unrelated. They may stand up and walk out, and say, ‘I don't want to have this conversation. This is stupid. I'm out of here.’ All of those things on the part of the employee, those are all ways of them trying to control the conversation. And this is one of those things of basic crowd control, if you will, of learning, as the employer, how to bring that conversation around and not letting the person derail it. So, for example, with bringing up some unrelated issue, you can say, ‘I appreciate that. I've made a note of that. I'm happy to talk to you about that. For the purposes of this conversation, we're here to talk about your attendance.’ Or you may entertain it a little bit and say, ‘Well, okay. Let's talk about that for a minute or two. But just so you know, we're going to come back to your attendance because that is the main focus of this conversation.’ Same thing with blaming others and all that.” (19:28—21:23) -Alan

“One other little tip, this is a classic one, is to say your piece, and then stop. That's another tactic some people will do, is basically stonewalling where they'll just sit there in silence and not say anything and not do anything. The game that you play with this is you say your piece, so you say your thing of, ‘Okay, you've been showing up late. We've talked about this. This needs to get fixed. If this doesn't get fixed, I may need to let you go.’ Then you stop, and there's a pause. If the employee doesn't say something and either goes down a distraction path or goes down an accountability path, the temptation on a lot of managers and owners is to fill that awkward silence. That's where you can then either dilute your message or derail your message because you may fill in and go, ‘But you have all kinds of other good qualities, and you're a great employee otherwise. I just know you're going to land on your feet. I believe in you.’ And now, it's like, are we counseling the person? Are we cheerleading them? What are we doing here? That can also happen too if the person starts crying in the meeting. Then, you're going, ‘Oh, gosh. No. Now, they're crying. Now, we're sitting here awkwardly while they cry.’ That's when you want to fill it in and say, ‘I'm so sorry about this. You're a really great employee. I'm sorry you've been having these problems.’ And now, it dilutes the message. So, that's the game. Say your piece and stop.” (23:14—24:53) -Alan

“Silence is another form of control. That is where you can bring it around, and a little bit of that crowd management thing. If someone is sitting there, silent, then you can say, ‘Okay. Well, if you think of anything you want to say later, that's great. Here's this form. I'd like you to sign it, and then we'll move on from here.’ Now, the signature thing, people always ask, ‘Okay. Well, what if the employee refuses to sign? What if they stand up and say, I'm not signing that, and they walk out? What do you do then?’ One thing to consider with these heavy conversations is having a witness present. In a lot of small practices, that's not always feasible. But if you have a manager, or a team lead, or a spouse, or somebody that is not right at this person's peer level, someone where it is a little bit different, a little bit above, that can be huge because then what it looks like on paper is you're saying, ‘We had this conversation. The employee never signed it.’ So, the employee is trying to say, ‘Well, I don't know. They never told me about this. I don't remember that conversation.’ But then, there's the witness signature that says, ‘No, this conversation did happen, and this is what was discussed.’” (25:37—26:51) -Alan

“There's another trick with this, and that's the invitation to have the person submit comments. This is especially true if they say, ‘Well, I think this is BS because so-and-so is always . . . It's not my fault.’ You say, ‘Okay. Well, that's fine. Go ahead and send me an email, or put your comments in writing and print it out and sign it, or send me an email that has all of this outlined in it and send that to me by the end of the day tomorrow,’ or something like that. Here's what that does, especially if the person is going point by point and refuting the things that you have said. Again, we're doing all of this to protect ourselves from some future claim. So, now the employee, let's say we do fire them, and they're claiming something, and they're saying, ‘Well, I don't remember this conversation ever happening.’ But now, we have this form that we filled out that says we talked to them on this date about this, this, and this. We have a witness signature, and then we have this email from the employee 24 hours later where they're refuting point by point that tells an outside observer that this conversation did happen. So, the employee can't claim, ‘Well, they never told me any of this.’ Well, here's this thing that basically says you were told this, and you actually got a copy of this form, and that's what you used to do your rebuttal. So, there are little tricks like that in the HR world that you learn and use.” (26:52—28:31) -Alan

“One little thing I'll bring up, and this is in line with what we talked about, it's this idea of everyone thinking about boundaries around basic communication. This isn't necessarily related just to counseling sessions but, for example, interrupting you. So, you start to talk, and they interrupt you, and then you let them finish. You start to say something, and they interrupt you again. That's a boundary. You can learn this idea of saying, ‘Okay, look. If this conversation is going to continue, you need to let me speak. You've interrupted me four times in the past four minutes.’ Another thing might be someone who is raising their voice and yelling. Again, that's another one where you can say, ‘Look, I understand that you're upset, and I need you to lower your voice. We're in the office. We don't want patients to be listening.’ Some of those boundaries around communication, that's totally fine. Think about that and feel free to employ some stuff.” (28:49—29:52) -Alan

“The work environment really should be a good, positive, rewarding experience for everybody, especially for the owner-dentist where this is your livelihood. This is your business. This is your dream. This is your calling. It should be, overall, for the most part, a good, positive, rewarding experience.” (31:30—31:50) -Alan

Snippets:

0:00 Introduction.

1:18 Why this is an important topic.

3:07 The productive feedback model.

9:01 Why step four of the model is the most important.

11:14 How to ask for commitment.

13:00 Two objectives of heavy corrective action.

16:02 The anatomy of heavy corrective action.

19:25 Tips: How to keep the conversation on the rails.

22:09 Tip: Utilize the pause.

25:59 Tip: Consider a witness signature.

26:51 Tip: Invite written comments.

28:37 Set boundaries around communication.

29:55 More about Bent Ericksen and how to get in touch.

Alan Twigg Bio:

Alan Twigg is the president of Bent Ericksen & Associates. For over 10 years, he has guided thousands of clients and consultants through the ever-changing world of HR and employment compliance. He is a speaker, consultant, and author who is passionate about bringing education and peace of mind to such a confusing topic.

As a strong proponent of symbiotic employer-employee relations, Alan is passionate about teamwork and positive work cultures, with an emphasis on long-term personnel retention and employment compliance, where his solutions-oriented outlook excels. 
ACT Dental Team

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