When Your Team Performs Well, and When They Don’t – The Art of Coaching, Counseling, Disciplining, and Termination

Episode 32: When Your Team Performs Well, and When They Don’t – The Art of Coaching, Counseling, Disciplining, and Termination 

In several of our past episodes, we’ve been talking about when an employee is no longer effective for your group. In most cases, most of our team IS effective and they generally fall on a continuum in terms of what they need from management and leadership:

• Coaching
• Counseling
• Disciplining and finally, if all else fails,
• Termination

In working with team members, most will be at the coaching end of the spectrum, and that’s where most people stay for most of the time. They may need occasional coaching or reminders about how things work, or what’s expected of them, but those can be handled easily and informally. A team member might have many coaching sessions from you or your practice manager over the course of their career.

If a team member has been coached about a specific behavior or performance that is not meeting expectations, and they continue along the same vein, it may become necessary to counsel them. Counseling can also be informal, but I typically recommend that it be more than just a casual conversation. Generally, if someone really needs to step it up, and they haven’t been getting a clue with the coaching, a conversation behind closed doors can help them get back on the right track. I generally recommend that the person having this counseling conversation make informal notes, but that it wouldn’t rise to the level of a “formal write up.” These notes can be kept in a file for the manager’s reference, but generally don’t become a part of the formal human resources record.

If after two or three counseling conversations your team member is still falling short of expectations, it is time to move to more formal discipline. Disciplinary conversations should always be held in private, and one-on-one or potentially two on one if there is another leader within the practice whom it would be appropriate to include. These conversations should always be documented, and your team member should be asked to sign the bottom of the form at the end of the conversation stating that what is written on the form is what was discussed and that they agree to it. The discussion both verbally and in writing should include the fact that there is an expectation that performance or behavior improvement is immediate and sustained. That phrase is important.

This document should also include the fact that if this is a first written warning, there will be a second written warning, and if the behavior or performance does not improve, the team member will be terminated. This may sound Draconian or unnecessarily blunt, but it is important to be clear with your team member that their ongoing employment is at risk.

Once a first written warning has been issued and signed, it is important to follow up and ascertain whether or not the behavior or performance has improved. Remember, you set an expectation that their improvement will be immediate and sustained. I frequently see team members in a clinic who have performance that looks a bit like a sinus rhythm on an EKG. Immediately after their counseling or discipline session, behavior improves and spikes up. Then it comes back down to normal and bounces around a little bit and eventually declines, until another counseling or disciplinary session. Then it bounces back up again. You get the visual!

This kind of pattern is common, but unsettling and not what the practice needs. You deserve to be surrounded by professionals who know their job and are doing it well. As we said in our episode about Employalty, if you are paying at or near the top of the market, you should expect commensurate performance from your team.

If a team member does not improve their performance after a first written warning, it is time for a second written warning, which includes everything in the first and, you owe it to them to be very clear that if their performance does not improve after this conversation, they will lose their job.

I’ve learned over the years that it is important to be very direct in letting people know what the next steps are if they do not improve. We have a tendency to “water down” the message by using euphemisms like, “we will ask for your keys” or, “we will give you a pink slip.” This may leave you feeling better, but it may be unclear to some people exactly how serious the matter is. Please give it to them straight. In this way, you are giving them every opportunity to succeed. It may behoove you to ask if they feel as though they need additional training or if there’s anything about the expectations that they do not understand.

Unlike notes that might have been made in a more casual format in the counseling part of the exercise, any disciplinary conversations should be documented in writing, signed by all parties present, and made a part of the team member’s official human resources file. This way, if an employee is terminated after being given multiple opportunities to improve their performance, you can contest an unemployment claim if they file one and if you choose to do so. Some employees will file for unemployment even if they were terminated for cause, and it is your prerogative as the owner of the business to decide whether or not you will contest that claim. In general, my recommendation is that if an employee has been given multiple opportunities to improve their performance and has chosen not to, the business should not have to bear additional expense on their behalf. In most cases, unemployment insurance is not paid directly by the employer, rather your state reviews your unemployment experience over time, and may increase or decrease the rate that you pay for state unemployment insurance. The massive numbers of employees filing for unemployment during and after the pandemic has certainly muddied these waters, so it is up to you as the owner of the practice.

In a few cases, a team member will refuse to sign their written disciplinary warning. If this is the case, everyone else present should sign the form and a note should be made that the employee refused to sign it. They may also want to. In most cases, if they make edits, please ask them to initial those. You can then keep that as a record of what they agreed to and did not agree to within your conversation. You should also supply them with a copy of the document once it has been signed.

In an ideal world, 90% of your team members never leave the coaching space, and of those who do, 8% never leave the counseling space.

Of those who receive counseling, 1% recover and bounce back to coaching space and function there, and 1% will likely wind up choosing not to do the job, even after expectations are made very clear to them and they will be fired. I’ve said it in a previous episode, and I’ll say it again: if we’re doing coaching, counseling, and disciplining correctly, we don’t fire people, they fire themselves. We just fill out the paperwork.

One of my first bosses in health care always told me, “Our most important job is to bring good people into the organization and our second most important job is to fix our hiring mistakes.”

Sometimes what’s needed is more training, and sometimes it’s coaching and making expectations really clear. Sometimes it’s a move to another role or department if that type of move is available, and sometimes, when we’ve exhausted all other avenues, the right answer is to terminate them from their job.

At some level, they know it’s not working, and if you’ve been in communication with them through the entire continuum, they won’t be surprised. Consider that you are freeing them up to find something that is a better fit for their skills and abilities. And, as we discussed in our episodes about exiting a leader and about severance, it’s always a good idea to be as gracious as possible.

Join me for our next episode, where we’ll talk about Governance vs. Management and using a Decision or Authority Matrix.