It worked then. Team members knew what working notes were. And they helped everyone have productive discussions. But the workplace changed.

A small number of those who were either malcontents or had a legitimate complaint about their supervisor began requesting to see those working notes in mediation, arbitration and administrative hearings. That meant that their representatives had something to attack and to use as the basis for interrogation. Because they too no notes, they had complete deniability for anything they chose.

I thought that supervisors had two choices in that situation. They could do things. They could escalate the recordkeeping, doing things like having the team member write out their own version to file with the supervisors notes, having the team member sign off on the supervisor’s notes, etc.

The other option was to keep things informal (in the sense of undocumented) unless it was necessary to escalate. I thought, and still think, that’s more effective. The benefit that I didn’t anticipate was that a lot of team members reacted negatively to the supervisor taking notes and a system of clear notice before documentation was actually more comfortable for them.

I also confess to a bias for as little paperwork as possible, but having what’s necessary done thoroughly. Doing this with formal notice followed by documentation allows a supervisor to put more time on the hard cases.

I don’t claim perfection on this and I know there are lots of supervisors doing things that work for them but are different from what we’ve discussed. But to borrow the line that Art Petty uses in his blog, “it’s the bottom line for now.”

My experience is that if you talk to someone about behavior informally, that’s usually enough to get the change. If it doesn’t, then you give notice that from now on you’ll be documenting. That almost always works. When it doesn’t you’re facing the kind of situation that takes a lot of attention and documentation.

I suggest to supervisors that most of their conversations with team members be informal. If there is a need to move to more formal discussion, complete with documentation, that, itself needs to be an explicit act.

I think you touched on a very important aspect in this process that from an employee perspective gives leadership credibility and respect and from a leadership perspective has got to be one of the more difficult qualities to maintain. Transparency.

Thanks for another great video,

Alex

I like the videos and the backdrop. I think you’ve covered the key aspects in this difficult subject. Once we raise a performance issue with our staff, it’s important to draw up a schedule where we’ll come back together to review and measure progress. It shows we’re serious about changing behaviors and also sets the expectations.

M