You're Not Managing a Performance Problem. You're Managing Two of Them at Once.
Inc.'s Minda Zetlin reads a repeating performance problem as a conversation problem: the manager asks for speed and accuracy at the same time, and never asks why the pattern keeps coming back.
Prompted by “My Employee Improves, Then Backslides. I’m Sick of Repeating the Same Conversation”, Inc. (Minda Zetlin).
Minda Zetlin fields a familiar complaint. An employee does good work, backslides, gets corrected, improves, then backslides again, and the manager is worn out from having the same conversation on repeat. Her take isn't about the employee. It's about the conversation.
The manager, she points out, is asking for two opposite things at once: go faster to meet deadlines, and go slower to get things right. And nobody has asked why the pattern keeps happening. One conversation was never going to fix either.
Is that really a people problem?
It's less an HR problem than a habit of mind. When something keeps recurring after you've “addressed” it, the instinct is to say it louder or more often. Zetlin's point cuts the other way: a problem that keeps repeating usually means it was read wrong the first time, not that it wasn't said enough times.
Test it out: think of one issue on your team that keeps coming back no matter how often you've raised it. This week, instead of raising it again, ask the person why they think it keeps happening, and let them finish before you respond. You may find you've been solving the wrong problem.
Talking through a pattern like this with someone outside the business is a good use of 1:1 Coaching.
Originally posted on LinkedIn ↗