Case Study: You are a department manager in a mid-sized company that provides technology support services. You have ten employees who are required to maintain a high level of technical expertise and deliver excellent customer service. One of your employees, who has been with the company for two years, is performing at a substandard level and you have received numerous complaints from customers and coworkers. In addition, this employee has displayed confrontational behavior which has created a hostile environment. You must now meet with this employee and deliver an ultimatum regarding the need for immediate improvement or dismissal.

As a manager, I am responsible for making certain that my employees have the knowledge and skills they need to do their jobs. The first thing I would do in this situation would be to acquire more information. For example, the gender and age of the employee both have an impact on how I would need to approach the employee. As a woman, I am already at a disadvantage when dealing with a man. Assuming that the goal is to retain the employee, I need to achieve a delicate balance between authority and niceness. If the employee is a woman, I can show more authority without being threatening. Due to stereotyping, women are expected to be warmer and less direct than men. Ridgeway's research shows that men “are much more inclined to resist women's influence than men's. Moreover, men also particularly resist the influence of competent women” (Seiter, 2004, pg. 139). The age also matters, because people are more likely to resist the authority of a manager who is more than a few years younger.

I would also need to know if this employee's performance has been consistently substandard, or if this is a recent occurrence. If recent, this could indicate some outside problem, which the employee might be able to deal with, if given the right support and assistance. If the employee has never performed satisfactorily, then it is also time to review my departments' evaluation process. Consistent poor performance and multiple complaints should have been dealt with long before two years passed. Either situation would affect how I handle the current problem.

When delivering significant bad news, an indirect approach is usually best. The indirect approach “softens your audience's resistance, arouses their interest, and increases their tendency to see you as fair-minded” (Roebuck, 2006, pg. 88). If I were to walk in, slap a folder down on the desk, and tell the employee that his performance is unacceptable, I would be setting myself up as an enemy from the beginning. My opening words would likely evoke hostility at worst, and indifference at best. Anything that I had to say after that would be irrelevant, because he would now believe that I was “out to get him.” I would use a collaborative strategy, which is both proactive and flexible.

After gathering all the necessary information, I would ask the employee to come into my office or some other private place, to avoid embarrassing him in front of others. I would tell him that I valued his contribution to our department, but that I had some concerns. I would sit down with him and ask him how he felt about his job and his work performance. Then I would listen to what he had to say, and see if there was an obvious problem that needed to be solved, other than a bad attitude. It's entirely possible that this employee is in the wrong department or the wrong job. If that turned out to be the case, I would encourage him to find something that better fit his needs, and offer my support.

I would give the employee a written copy of the company's expectations for its employees, and go over them with him. I would then show him where and how his job performance fell short of our expectations, using a written evaluation. I would focus first on his technical abilities, and then on his customer service skills. To keep the evaluation positive, I would emphasize the areas where he can improve, as opposed to focusing on his failures. I would set some goals with him, with definite steps to take, and arrange to meet again in a few weeks to discuss his progress. I would also try to find out if he had the necessary skills and knowledge, or if we needed to educate him further in these areas. If necessary, I would assign him to take additional training to give him the skills he lacked.

Then I would address the confrontational behavior. I would ask him what happened and listen to his point of view. I would try to keep an open mind, because it's also possible that he was reacting to an already hostile situation. This employee clearly doesn't feel like part of the team, so I would look for ways to rectify that problem. I would also make sure he understands how his behavior affects the other members of the department, and that his recent behavior will no longer be tolerated.

The last part of using an indirect approach to delivering bad news to end on a positive note. Anyone who was confronted with three different serious problems would be understandably upset. If the employee managed to keep his job for two years, however, he must be doing something right. I would end the interview by pointing out his strengths, which is why we wanted to keep him on our team. I would encourage him to work on his goals, and let him know that I believed in his ability to accomplish them. Then I would make sure I followed up with him as promised, and continued to work with him to bring him up to the required standard.

References

Roebuck, D., (2006). Improving Business Communications. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall.

Seiter, J. & Gass, R., (2004). Perspectives on persuasion, social influence, and compliance gaining. Boston: Allyn & Bacon.