Manager feedback
Feedback on slipping performance
A reliable team member has missed deadlines for several weeks. You need to address it without damaging the relationship.
- Difficulty
- Hard
- Duration
- 15-20 minutes
The situation
You manage a team of six. One of them, a capable specialist who has been with the team for three years, missed three deadlines in the last month. Two pieces of work came back with errors a colleague had to fix. Others on the team have started to notice. You have not raised it yet beyond a short comment in passing. You scheduled a one-to-one for today. You have the dates and examples, but you do not know what is going on for them.
Your goal
Name the problem clearly with specific examples, understand their side and agree together on what will change and when you will check in.
Who you talk to
Experienced team member
Skilled and usually dependable. Likely to be defensive at first and to point at workload or unclear priorities.
The counterpart also has private goals and information that are never shown upfront. You discover them only through the conversation, the same way you would in real life.
Skills you practice
- Describing behavior and its impact with examples
- Asking for their view before offering solutions
- Staying calm when the other person is defensive
- Separating the person from the problem
- Agreeing on concrete actions and a follow-up
What the feedback looks at
- Whether the issue was stated clearly and early
- Use of specific examples instead of general judgments
- Quality of listening and follow-up questions
- How defensiveness was handled
- Whether the conversation ended with agreed actions and a date