“I told him he needed to pay more attention to the quality of his work.” Henry was describing a conversation from the day before. “He actually started yelling back at me, right there in front of everyone. We weren’t toe to toe, but we were close.”

At some time, with some people, it doesn’t take much to make that person feel like they have their back against the wall. Here is the bad news. When someone feels that way, they have only three choices, none of which are positive. Fight, flight or paralysis.

As a manager, you still have to provide corrective feedback, but you have to find a different way. Here is one. Talk about your own mistakes first. At some time, in your work experience, you made a similar mistake or created a similar quality problem. Talking about your own mistake first, allows you to explore the details of how and why. This approach should open the other person to talk more about what may be causing their own underperformance. This underlying cause is the issue that has to be resolved for the work quality to improve.

Talk about your own mistakes first. -TF