It's All About People - 17th April 2025

READ TIME - 4 minute read

At the weekend our son turned 21 - and as everyone always says, the time has flown. We celebrated with a meal and then drinks at Sky Gardens in London - what a great view.

This week I am continuing with my theme of looking at the skills needed to be a good line manager, and in particular having “difficult” conversations. Whether that conversation is about performance, behaviour or something more personal, all too often they are avoided.

Avoiding the conversation means:

➡️ Poor performance goes unchecked.
➡️ Disruptive behaviour becomes the norm.
⬇️ Morale drops across the team and you may even lose good team members who have had enough

It’s not that managers don’t care – it’s that they often don’t feel confident in how to have the conversation. But here’s the thing - Avoiding it doesn’t make it go away.
In fact, it usually makes it messier. 😬

So let’s make those tough conversations a little less scary.

Here’s a simple approach you can share with your managers:

✔️ Prepare with purpose

• What’s the issue?

• Why does it matter?

• What’s the desired outcome?

• Consider the potential consequences of not taking action, this may be enough to get over any nerves and have the conversation!

• How do you think the person may react? Do you think they are aware of the issue / realise it is an issue? Are they likely to get upset, angry or something else?

Having clarity before you go in makes the conversation focused and fair, and gives the manager confidence that this conversation absolutely needs to happen.

✔️ Keep it kind and clear
Start with facts and observations:
🗨 “I’ve noticed you’ve missed a few deadlines recently...”
🗨 “I’ve had feedback that meetings haven’t been running smoothly...”

Avoid blame. Focus on behaviours, not personality. And make it a two-way dialogue.

✔️ Discuss the impact and solutions

Ask the person what impact they think the issue is / could be having on the team, customers, the business. This may be where you discover as a manager that someone genuinely does not realise and then we are looking at a training need.

Once this is understood, then the next step is to agree what the steps are to correct the issue. This might be training, extra support or if it is behaviour then to be very clear what the expected standard is and any consequences of it being repeated.

✔️ Follow up
Once you have agreed what’s expected going forward, make a note – so there’s a record if things don’t improve. Then make sure you follow up, which is just as important whether you see the improvement or not.

If you see the improvement then acknowledge this and check if any other support is needed.

If you have not seen the improvement needed then consider next steps - which may include referring to the relevant policy - potentially performance management or disciplinary.

I hope you have found this helpful and as always for those of you who are HR Hub members there are loads of resources on these topics to help you.

Best,
Emma

P.S. If you're not yet a HR Hub member, then why not try it for FREE for a month. You can find out more about the HR Hub and sign up for the free trial here.

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