Jason Pfeiffer (4:22)

This is Help Wanted, the show that tackles all the big work questions you cannot ask anyone else. I'm Jason Pfeiffer, Editor in Chief of

Nicole Lapin (4:30)

Entrepreneur Magazine, and I'm New York Times bestselling author and money expert Nicole Lapin.

Jason Pfeiffer (4:34)

The helpline is open. You know what's really hard to do? Tell someone they're not doing a good job. That's really, really hard. It's a lot easier to just congratulate someone to be on someone's side. But if you are ever in a leadership position, something you will have to do is give someone a bad review. Tell someone that they need to shape up. And even if you're not in a leadership position at work, this is something you will have to do at some point. You will have a colleague, you will have a friend. You will have to sit down with somebody and basically say you are not living up to your potential. You could be doing more and you have to start. How do you do that? It is not easy, but it is a question that many people will face, including a listener of this show who left us this question.

Listener / First Time Manager (5:35)

I'm a first time manager and I'm about to lead my first round of performance reviews. I have a direct report he's doing a pretty sucky job. I've been getting complaints from his peers about his laziness and how they've had to pick up his slack and if he continues like this, I'll probably have to let him go. I've never had to have a conversation like this before and I Honestly, I hate confrontation. How can I structure this conversation? How honest should I be? And how can I overcome my anxiety around having this conversation? Thanks so much.

Jason Pfeiffer (6:07)

Okay, first of all, first time manager, thank you for reaching out about this. There are a couple important things that you just said that I'm going to flag and then we're going to get back to later that I think are worth being very aware of in this situation. The first is that you said you've been getting complaints from peers about this person's laziness. All right? So let's not just focus on that person yet and their laziness, but rather let's focus on you've been getting complaints. So the challenge here is that this is not just about the person who is not carrying their weight. This is about the whole team. They are coming to you. They are expecting you to do something, and if you don't, then that is going to hurt the entire team and also the team's expectations of you. They're already complaining, which means that they already expect something to change. You have to be the person to step up and do this. This is not just about one person anymore. It's not just about the person you're giving a bad review to. This is about a lot of people. And I have been in this situation. I promise I will tell you about it a little bit more in a minute. And then also I want to flag that you said you hate confrontation and you said you have anxiety over this conversation. All right? So those are really important to recognize because you cannot embody that when you go into this conversation. It does not mean that you need to be confrontational and it doesn't mean that you need to be like a stone faced, stone person instead of having any anxiety about it. But you have to be aware of what those things may hold you back from doing. Because what you're going to need to do is have a very frank conversation with this person who is not doing a good job. And you're going to need to be really, really honest and open with them. Because what is about to happen here is not really a confrontation and it is not a dressing down. What it is, what it should be, is two people sitting down and trying to figure out how they can achieve mutual goals. And that's how you need to go into this. So, all right, let's back up and talk about this. First of all, I want to tell you that I have been on both sides of this experience and it has really informed the way in which I approach it. So first of All. As I have mentioned previously on this podcast, I have been fired. And in my case, I didn't get a bad performance review before I got fired. It actually came absolutely out of nowhere. But one day my boss sent me an email saying, hey, do you have a minute to talk? And I said, sure. And I walked into my boss's office and I sat down and I took a seat. And then my boss said first words out of his mouth, so we're going to let you go. And I was. I was dumbfounded. I didn't. I didn't expect it. But he kept talking and he gave reasons. He explained that this isn't personal, that working with me has been great. But what he said was that it's a small team, which is true. And in the last X amount of time, I can't remember, he said that I have not been contributing in the way that others have and that my. In that case, I was an editor. So my. No, my stories haven't been working out as well. I haven't been producing as many pitches. I just hadn't been doing as much. And frankly, and this is. This is so often the case in these situations. I knew that. I knew it. I didn't think about it every day, but I knew it. And I would not be surprised if the person who you are going to sit down and talk to knows that there's a problem, too. And so that was the first thing I thought of. And then the second thing I thought of, aside from I knew that there was a problem, was this. I thought, he's very good at this. He's. He's really good. This guy who's firing me right now is very good at firing me. And the reason he's good at firing me is because I don't feel defensive. He doesn't feel angry. He feels calm. He feels direct. This feels like a pretty, you know, to use this kind of cliche phrase, like a pretty safe space. And he's just telling it to me like it is. Like we didn't have a weird, awkward conversation before he told me that he was going to let me go. It was the first words out of his mouth. And I thought, I need to do a version of that whenever I'm in a situation where I need to give someone some hard news, whether that's letting them go or just telling them that they need to fix problems. And I have been in that situation. I've been in that situation. I've been in roughly exactly the situation that has been described here, where I was getting complaints from other team members and I needed to step up and do something. And frankly, at first I dismissed the complaints and the reason I did that was because I thought, ah, I'm sure this will resolve. Everyone can resolve. They don't need to come. Like, I don't need to be the parent who steps into the middle of this. But then I kept hearing the complaints and it was about a particular person who, you know, wasn't terrible at their job, but was kind of persnickety and was creating complicated problems where there just didn't need to be. And it was definitely impacting the morale of people. I really wanted to make sure would stick around. Like, you know, there are people on a team who are incredibly valued and then there are people on a team who do a good job, but let's be honest, could probably be replaced. And I'm looking at this situation and I'm thinking the people who are incredibly valuable here are getting very annoyed. And if I don't take this seriously, I am going to create a much larger problem for myself. So I better. So I called the person and I would recommend that if you can have these kinds of conversations in person, person, you really, really should, because body language is important and tone is important and you want to be able to have maximum human communication in these kinds of situations. I called because it was a remote worker and so there was just. There was just no way to do it. But I called and the first words out of my mouth were about how we need to have a very direct conversation about how to fix some of the problems that are happening. And the person then wanted to know, well, like what? And here is where you're going to need the next part of this. The next thing you're going to need is specifics, have specifics, specific situations, so that it's not abstract, so that it doesn't feel like you don't really know what the problem is or how to define it or so that they can wriggle out of it. No, this thing happened and I've talked to everybody involved and it seems like there was a problem. And the problem seems to be that you didn't do X. Now, look, if you're firing someone, you don't really need to know the reasoning behind why they did what they did. But if you're giving a performance review, if you're trying to get them to just become a more productive member of the team, then the next thing you really want to do is understand what's going on with them because, all right, fine, maybe they suck. Maybe they suck, or maybe they've just been sucking lately, but they have a perspective. Something is going on in their heads. I would bet that this person who's showing up at work and is lazy and is annoying their peers is not showing up at work saying, I'm going to piss everybody off. I mean, maybe they are and if that's the case, then get rid of them really fast. But possibly some other things are happening in their life. Possibly they are just right now not able to bring everything that they could and need to to work. And if that's the case, you're going to need to figure out like, so what's happening and is there a way then to fix that problem? Because maybe this person just needs to take a little time off, or maybe they need lower tier responsibilities, or maybe different expectations need to be set. You should not be catering to people at the expense of other people. But certainly if there are real circumstances that need to be navigated, then you should be aware of them and you should understand what people need so that ultimately what you can do is create harmony among your team, which is the real thing that you need to be doing in the first place. Right? This isn't even about individuals. This is about making sure that everyone works well together. Which means you gotta understand every single part. What does everybody need from you and from each other? And you happen to be, because you're the manager, the only person who is actually empowered to try to change those dynamics. Other people can only change so much. You can change more. So you got to take that responsibility seriously. Stick around. Help Wanted. We'll be right back. Welcome back to Help Wanted. Let's get to it. And look, now that you hear me saying all this, let's go back to these things that you said. I hate confrontation. Does this sound like confrontation? It doesn't sound like confrontation to me, frankly. What it sounds like is having a useful and open conversation, wanting to be useful. Hey, something seems to not be working here. I want to walk through some specific examples of what's not working so I can help you understand what other people are experiencing. And then I want to know what's going on with you and what you were thinking so that we can get to a place where you're producing more, whatever the case is. All right, so that is not a confrontation. That is not yelling, that is not screaming, that is not getting somebody's back against the wall. That is having a just human conversation. And also, you know, the thing is that I think people fear with confrontation is that Confrontation can get really personal. Right? If you. If you confront somebody, you are often trying to get under their skin. You're trying to upset them. You're going to go for the jugular. But this is not that. This is something else. This is not personal. And I was reading this piece that a researcher with a PhD in psychology and physiology of human endurance named Jeremy Sutton wrote, wrote about how to give negative feedback in a performance review. And he wrote this thing I just thought was really useful. I'm going to read it to you, which is don't confuse the person with their actions. Being personal will lead the recipient to shut down. They'll be less likely to act on or learn from the points shared. So now, once again, let's think about confrontation. Is this a confrontation? No. What we're actually doing is quite the opposite of that. We are sitting down with another human being and then we are separating them from the actions. So what's going on here? Right? This person, let's just assume, let's give them the benefit of the doubt. They want to do a good job. They care about their work. They care about their colleagues. They show up every day. If they're lazy, maybe they're not actually lazy. Maybe they are something else. Maybe they are stressed. Maybe they are overworked. Maybe they're not in the right role for their skill sets.

Sponsor Representative (18:52)

Maybe.

Jason Pfeiffer (18:53)

Maybe they just don't know how to do the work. Or maybe they have a passion for something else. And you're gonna have to decide whether or not to indulge that or not, or indulge is even the wrong word, but rather maybe to shift resources around so that you can put them towards their strengths. Anyway, I'll say it again. Don't confuse the person with their actions. Also, when you go into a situation like this, and here's another way in which this is not confrontation. Confrontation is often about just highlighting the negatives. You didn't do this. But that's not what's happening here. We also want to give positive feedback. Something. Something surely is positive. Something is good to be said. When that boss of mine, that old boss of mine was firing me, he was also complimentary. I mean, it felt weird in a way to be complimented at that moment, but I understood it. He wasn't couching it. He wasn't trying to back away. He wasn't trying to confuse me. I wasn't sitting there and thinking, wait a second, but you're saying, I'm so great, why are you letting me go? No, he was telling me things. He was Recognizing he was acknowledging that I have strengths, and that feels good. And also it just helped me feel less defensive because it's not him saying, you know what? Everything that you do sucks. Because if he says that, the first thing that's going to go through my head is, wait a second, everything I do doesn't suck. I mean, maybe some of those other things suck, but I'm going to defend myself on the things that. That I'm really good at. So, no, he's granting me those things. He's just saying that those things, valuable as they are, aren't fulfilling all the needs of the team right now. And so I got that and I appreciated it. So let's give some positive feedback, too. And let's also be mindful of how you're speaking and how you're approaching them and how you're listening to them, because they're going to have things to say and you should be prompting for those things that they have to say. But all the same, what's so important here is that when you are sitting down and trying to present even hard thoughts and words as a collaboration, people want to get there with you. They don't want to be feeling like a weak link. They don't want to feel like you don't like them or don't trust them. They want to try to get there with you. They want to try to understand what you need, and they want you to understand what they're doing. And creating these kinds of conversations can be incredibly valuable. You might just find that this person will turn it around. And again, to go back to the original question, how can I overcome my anxiety around having this conversation? I think that the answer to that is that everything that I have described here so far is probably a different conversation than the one that you're imagining having to have. So that's how you can overcome the anxiety about having this conversation. The answer is that you will not have a terrible, traumatic conversation. You will have a productive and useful conversation. And look, I know there's going to be a moment because I've had this moment. I've had it many times. The moment is, and I bet my old boss, he probably had this moment two, just before reaching out to fire me. The moment is this. You will probably be at your computer and you will have written an email, and it will be a pretty innocuous email, but it will say some version of, hey, do you have a moment to talk? And you might be thinking to yourself, you know, this sounds like it could be about anything, but if somebody Gets a do you have a moment to talk? Email. They instantly think that it's bad. And so should I say something more? Should. I don't know. Right. You're going to start to overthink every single word that you have written. But eventually you're going to have to decide what that note is. For what it's worth, I think. Do you have a moment to talk? Is fine. If you want to add a little bit more, you could say, do you have a moment to talk? You know, I, I want to discuss some issues that have come up. Either way, you're going to hover over the send button and you're going to feel anxious and you're going to be rehearsing everything in your head that is going to happen next. And that's fine. That is a fine moment to be anxious about this because you are about to initiate a process that is not pleasant. It's not the thing that everyone wakes up in the morning doing. Nobody is like, oh boy, today I get to give bad feedback. But these are the necessary things and you're a first time manager, which means that you haven't done them that much yet, which means it's time to get going on it. And so I want to give you permission to have that moment of anxiety, have it like live in it, and then force yourself to press send. And when you press send, everything changes. It's okay to recognize that you are still anxious about this situation. That's fine. If you're anxious, I can't tell you not to be anxious. Trying not to be anxious will only make you more anxious. It's fine, you're anxious, but you will now have set something in motion. And the thing that you have set in motion is that you now have a responsibility to take the next steps that you're going to take in a way in which you are going to serve a lot of people. You are going to have to have a thoughtful but not personal, a practical, not abstract conversation with the person who you are giving bad feedback to. You are going to be showing your team who has been complaining that this is a team that you are running that is committed to making sure that everyone does good work and is in an environment where they are all respected and recognized for good work. And that means that you are going to have to go into this thing and just do it. And I will tell you what will happen. What will happen is that you will do it and on the other end of it you will discover a whole bunch of stuff. You will discover that it was easier than you thought. You will discover that the person you're talking to was maybe more thoughtful than you expected, that they're going to tell you some things that maybe surprised you and you're going to feel like, I know how to do this better next time. And that that is worth a lot. Lot. You hadn't thought about this until right this moment, but in giving this performance review to another person, in a way what you are doing is you are setting yourself up to then give a performance review to yourself. You're going to do this. You're going to see how it goes. You're going to do your absolute best, which is all you can do. You're a first time manager. You haven't done this before. This is scary stuff. It's literally the thing that every manager hates. And then at the end, you're going to look at it and you're going to pick it apart and you're going to say, all right, let's not make this personal either. I'm going to separate the person from the actions. I'm going to separate me from the way that I did it. How could I do it better? What do I need to do next time that will make this even more impactful, efficient, useful for everyone involved? And again, you're not having a conversation. And again, you're not confronting yourself over this because this is not about a confrontation. This is just about being better. And that is what you should hope for yourself. And that is what you should hope for, for everybody on your team to be better. And you, you right now as you hover your finger over that send button where you're gonna send the email that's gonna set everything in motion. You have the ability to make people and yourself better. So hit send. Help Wanted is a production of Money News Network. Help Wanted is hosted by me, jp

Nicole Lapin (28:03)

Jason Pfeiffer and me, Nicole Lapin. Our executive producer is Morgan Lavoy. Do you want some help? Email our helpline@helpwantedoneynewsnetwork.com for the chance to have some of your questions answered on the show. And follow us on Instagramoneynews and TikTokoneyNewsNetwork for exclusive content and to see our beautiful faces. Maybe a little dance.

Jason Pfeiffer (28:24)

Oh, I didn't sign up for that.

Nicole Lapin (28:25)

All right, well, talk to you soon.

Jason Pfeiffer (28:31)

Sam.