Preface
Have you ever faced an employee issue that you would rather avoid? If so, this book is for you. Painless Performance Conversations deals with the hard stuff that comes with being a manager, which is why it has been a long time in the making. It sprang from consulting and coaching work that I've done over the years with hundreds of managers who struggle with the day-to-day conversations they need to have with their employees. In workshops and webinars based on my first book, Painless Performance Evaluations: A Practical Approach to Managing Day-to-Day Employee Performance, I saw that managers always seemed to understand the need to lead an annual performance evaluation conversation. They even recognize the importance of documenting performance examples throughout the year. The angst appears, however, when the manager has to talk with the employee about not meeting performance expectations. The face-to-face, heart-to-heart discussion can turn the most seasoned, robust manager into a wimp.
Painless Performance Conversations is written to give you the boost you need to tackle the conversations you'd rather avoid. There's no shame here. Regardless of your position within the organization and the number of years you've been managing, delivering the news that an employee is not stacking up can be tough. But it doesn't have to be.
Conversations are living and breathing events with a multitude of moving parts. Psychology, emotion, experience, perspective, and perceptions: they ...
