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Show Confidence
Conducting the Conversation
Each person's life is lived as a series of conversations.
—Deborah Tannen
Initiating and guiding a performance-related conversation can be intimidating. Feeling apprehensive and nervous is normal. Making sure to keep the conversation on track, maintain focus, and move forward productively can leave even the most experienced manager feeling a little incompetent. Because the outcome of the conversation is uncertain and because you never really know how the employee will respond, it's common to feel a little uneasy when entering into a performance conversation.
You can ease the uncertainty and lower your stress by having a plan for the conversation, being clear about your intended goal, and using the four mind-sets of a painless performance conversation. Doing so allows you to shift the responsibility for the outcome of the conversation to the employee. Ultimately, a painless performance conversation is one where you are:
Separating actions from attitudes Focusing on performance evidence Using curiosity to expand possibilities Creating ...
