How to Figure Out What’s Really Behind a Performance Problem

0:00Picture this. It's Thursday afternoon, 447. You're refreshing your inbox for the fourth time in 10 minutes because Chris's client report was supposed to land today and you got a client call tomorrow at 10 a.m. Nothing. So you start writing this message in your head and it is not the nicest message you've ever written. It starts with, hey, just checking in and ends with something like, this is the second time this month that I've been left waiting. And somewhere in between, a little voice in your head says what you've been thinking for a few weeks now. Chris just doesn't care that much. A few minutes later, the report shows up and it's good.

0:35It's really good. But you're still annoyed because this is not what you expected and you have been stressing about it all day. And now you probably need to have a feedback conversation. So today, I want to give you a way to stop right in that 447 moment and figure out where the problem lives before you jump to conclusions about the feedback that you need to give but really don't want to. Because when someone falls short, the problem almost always lives in one of three places. The person, the process, or the promise. Hello and welcome to The Modern Manager. I am Amy Kamper Stewart and every week I share strategies and tips to help you bridge the gap between knowing what good management looks like and actually doing it.

1:16Quick thing before we get into it, if you've ever been anxious about a feedback conversation, this episode is for you. So hit follow or subscribe wherever you're listening so the next one shows up without you having to look for it. And if you want the one-page episode guide I create for every episode, join my newsletter at themodernmanager.com. Okay, the three places, person, process, promise. Let's start with the person. This one's about skill. When someone falls short of your expectation, it might be a skill gap. Maybe they don't know how to do that thing yet. Maybe Chris has never pulled a client report together on their own.

1:50Maybe they've never had to juggle three deadlines in the same week and nobody showed them how. So they're figuring it out in real time and it's taking longer than it should. And that's a real problem. But it's a fixable one. Skills can be taught. Second, the process. This means the way the work gets done isn't working. And this one has two flavors. Sometimes it's their process. Chris starts the report the morning it's due. Every time. And let's be honest, we have all been Chris. And sometimes it's the process that you hand them. The numbers that Chris needs for the report don't come in until Wednesday night.

2:23and nobody, including you, stopped to notice that a Wednesday night data drop makes a Thursday morning deadline close to impossible given her other commitments. Chris isn't being slow. She just has about two hours of work time to do a three-hour job. Third, the promise. This is where the expectation was never clear. You said, get this to me on Thursday. And in your head, that meant Thursday morning so you'd have time to review it. In Chris's head, that meant by the end of the day. So you've each been keeping a different promise and you've each been frustrated with the other person. You think Chris is missing deadlines.

2:55Chris thinks they're doing what you asked. Now, here's why this matters so much. Most of us walk into a feedback conversation already sure it's the person and not even the skill part of the person. We often jump straight to the character part. They're careless, they're lazy, they're not a good fit. But look at these again, person, process, promise. Two of them aren't about the person at all. And the process and the promise, these are often partly yours. And that's a little uncomfortable. Now, when you go back to that Thursday at 447, the version of the story where Chris doesn't care is the one where you don't have to look at anything that you did.

3:32It's the easiest story to tell. And it's also often the wrong one. So what do you do with this? Before you have that feedback conversation, you run the three checks and you run them in a specific order. Promise first, then process, then person. And here's why. The promise is the easiest thing to fix and the thing most likely to be on you. The person is the most challenging. So check number one, the promise. Ask yourself, if I wrote down exactly what I asked for, when it was due and what done looks like, would Chris write down the same thing? Not roughly the same, the same. If you said end of week or when you get a chance when you really meant by five feet on Thursday, you see what I mean.

4:16Check number two, the process. Walk the timeline backward. Did they have what they needed when they needed it? Were they waiting on a decision or a deliverable from someone else? Is there a missing check-in point early where you could have course corrected? Do they need a template or a checklist to work from? If there's a kink in the process, no one is likely to deliver on the expectation no matter their skill. Check number three, the person. Have they done this successfully before? If they've never done it, you're probably looking at a skill gap And that's a coaching conversation, not just a feedback conversation.

4:47And if they've done it well a dozen times and now they're struggling, that's a signal too that something's changed and you need to find out what. Now, when you do sit down with Chris, you wanna go in with an open mind. The whole point of going through the checks is to put aside your assumptions and realize that there are many possible reasons that the expectation wasn't met. So instead of starting with, why was this late again? Try something like, I noticed the report was late. What's getting in the way of delivering it on time? The first question puts Chris on trial. The second one gets you information.

5:16By asking what's getting in the way, you might discover that it's a promise issue. Chris thought, get this to me by Thursday meant end of day, while you meant 10 a.m. Or that it's a process issue. Chris can now tell you about that Wednesday night data drop without it sounding like an excuse. Or perhaps it's a person issue where Chris needs to manage her time differently so that she starts the document on Wednesdays instead of waiting until Thursday, giving herself more buffer time in case other things pop up. Here's another example. Instead of, this report was incomplete, so I can't send it to my client.

5:45You might say, I noticed the report was missing some important data. I'm curious why that happened. Let them explain and you might realize that they didn't know what should be included, which is a promise issue, or that they don't have access to the up-to-date information, which is a process issue. And if you realize that they genuinely don't know how to identify what's important and therefore what to include, well, then that's a skill gap that you can work with them to develop. So here's your one thing for this week. Think of one person on your team who's been bugging you a little bit. Maybe they're struggling in some way.

6:14And before you say anything to them, grab a piece of paper and write down the three words, person, process, promise. Next to each one, write one sentence about what might be true if the core issue was the person, their skill level, the process, how the work is getting done, and the promise, the standard expectation that was set. Then let it go and have the conversation with the person to uncover the truth. So let's go back to Thursday at 447. You're refreshing your inbox, the message is already half-written in your head, and so is the story about why this is so late. This time, before you hit send, you ask one question.

6:51Do I really know the full picture? Because most of the time, the fastest way to fix someone else's performance is to know the truth about what's keeping them from delivering. If you want the full process for prepping a feedback conversation, check out my mini course at themodernmanager.com slash feedback. Thanks again for joining me. Until next time.