Tales Of Leadership: Wripping Off The Band Aid

I'm sorry about that folks. I definitely screwed up when it came to the live stream. I apologize. My name is Luke Wentlandt. I am your chief motivational officer as well as delivering content both every morning on Mondays for Monday motivation as well as on Thursdays for tales of leadership or tales of entrepreneurial ship. Today we're going to be talking about delivering hard news is hard. Again, delivering hard news is hard. How can you do it? And how can you do it well? So it comes down to a couple things.

Number one, when you're going to deliver feedback and you're going to be delivering feedback to individuals, you got to ask them first, how are they doing? Start by asking, how are they doing? Maybe there's things going on at home. How can you help? How can you support? So when it comes down to feedback that things aren't working well or somebody struggling in their role or responsibility, first have empathy and compassion by understanding. Are they showing up to work as their best selves? So just ask them, how are things going at home?

Is everything okay? Is there anything from a support based perspective or otherwise that you need? Right. So these things sound very, very different in two different ways. There's individuals that I've seen before that do this that are needing to have a conversation. Let's call it a hard conversation with somebody. And I call it ripping off the band aid. Ripping off the band aid is totally okay in leadership, but it can be done with love. Right? So I'm going to give you two different examples. Number one, let's say, for instance, we know somebody's struggling with role and responsibility, so it's really easy to come up to them and set up a meeting or otherwise, whatever particular location that they would like to meet in.

Maybe you have your typical one on ones at a coffee shop or a walk or over Zoom. Regardless, be comfortable, be confident where you're meeting, and then ultimately just ask somebody, you know, I'm really worried that, you know, we're having some issues or, you know, our performance is down. Let's just use sales numbers. Our sales numbers are down or our, you know, responsibilities and cleaning. X number of beds haven't been completed over the last week. Right. Is there, is there something going on?

Is there something more? Is there something that we can help out with? Is there something that we can support you with? Right. So start there. You know, through an empathetic and compassionate approach. The opposite end is bringing somebody into your office or setting up a meeting or otherwise. And guess what? You do go through a disciplinary action. So you know, we're going to go over a verbal warning here today and, you know, next might be potentially, you know, performance improvement plan, and then we might have to be talking about termination.

How motivating is that? Who's going to want to come back to work if that's your. If that's your mode of delivering hard feedback? And has anybody, has anybody been a part of that? Raise your hand or put in the chat? Right. If you've worked for an organization or worked for somebody in the very first time that you're aware or you're brought to your attention that you may have missed the mark is you're having verbal altercation or a verbal warning or a written warning or something of the like. It's just, it's so demotivating.

It's a culture killer. It's all the things. Now, on the flip side of the coin, let's say you're that employer, excuse me? You're that a leader, supervisor, otherwise, for that employee. And now let's say you take this approach. Say, you know, I. I just want to. I want to meet with you and I want to sit down. We have a couple issues that have been raised and brought to our attention. Is everything okay? This just hasn't been your kind of standard of practice, your status quo here at the organization over the last two years.

Is there something that we're missing? Is there something on your mind? Is there something you want to talk about? Boom. Bring it down to a common ground. Figure out if something's okay or not okay with a corresponding employee, and you can easily meet each other where they're at. And before you know it, you never know. The performance has nothing to do with work and has everything to do with something at home, and then you can support that individual. So again, your goal as a leader is to support your individuals that work with you, not for you.

It's another thing, for another day. My team, my people, my, my, my. Get that out of your vernacular. It's an us thing. It's a we thing. We work together. We work together on these particular objectives and goals and responsibilities with other human beings, not robots. So again, with that being said, I cannot encourage you enough to lean in towards your empathetic and compassionate heart when individuals are struggling in their roles and responsibilities. See what it does for you, see what it does for them, and see what it does for your relationship.

Have a remarkable weekend, you guys. I can't wait to come back for those individuals. Sign.