Delivering Bad News Tactfully and Effectively

In order to try and rectify a situation that has been brought to my attention, having been created by one of the workers who has worked for me for the past two years, I will take her to the conference room where we will not be disturbed and away from all the other employees for the privacy of this conversation. I know not to bring up faults of a worker in front of the other employees due to the fact that if a problem can be dealt with one on one, that is the best way to handle. Most of the time when having to discipline an employee is because there is a problem on the floor with one or more of the other employees, so I will need to get to the bottom of this and find out what the problems is (Kriesberg, 2003).

By taking her away from the attention of the other employees, I have presented a small haven in which the employee can speak freely to me if she wishes, by doing this I have de-escalated the situation because now this employee knows that something is going to be done to fix whatever the issue is that is causing this conflict.  I must convince her that I really need to know what the problem is that she has developed this attitude that is not only felt by the other employees but has also been noticed by the our customers and that is why I am nipping this in the bud, so we can get it rectified as soon as possible so that we can still produce worthwhile products to the satisfaction of the customers (Kriesberg, 2003).

If I find out that the problem is not within the employee group, and is with one of our customers, I will need to find out which customer and see if there is something that we can do in order to make it better for this customer seeing as obviously something has happened that has made the customer unhappy and has trickled right on across to my employee and in turn is creating a hostile work environment and it need not be that way (Kriesberg, 2003).

References

Kriesberg, L. (2003). "Settlement Stage." Beyond Intractability. Eds. Guy Burgess and Heidi Burgess. Conflict Information Consortium, University of Colorado, Boulder. Retrieved on May 5, 2014 from <http://www.beyondintractability.org/essay/termination-resolution-phase>.