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You may dread confronting employees face to face about performance issues.

But employees are far more likely to accept your critique and commit to improvement if you present those problems in a fair, concrete and "problem-solving" manner. Use these six tips as a framework to guide your discussion:

1. Describe the problem in specific, nonjudgmental terms. Use clear language that focuses on results and behavior. Don't focus on personality, don't overgeneralize and don't assign blame. Be specific and target your criticism to the behavior, not the person.

Notice the difference in these statements:

• Instead of saying, "Your work's been really sloppy lately," say, "Your last three reports have contained an unacceptable number of statistical errors."
• Instead of making accusations, such as, "Don't you bother to proofread anything you write anymore?," ask the employee to explain ("Is there some reason these errors are occurring?") and ask how you can help improve performance ("How can we prevent these errors in your reports?")

Let Paul Falcone, VP of HR at Time Warner Cable and host of our popular webinar — Tough Talks: Scripts & Strategies for Difficult Employee Discussions — walk you through realistic sample dialogues to address even the most awkward discussions with your team.

You’ll not only learn exactly what to say, but how to say it. Learn more about this interactive event!

2. Reinforce performance standards. A productive discussion can become sidetracked if you keep talking about why you require a certain performance standard, rather than why the employee's performance hasn't met that standard.

If the employee challenges the standard's validity, calmly state your reasons for requiring it, and gently steer the conversation back to the reasons why the employee didn't comply. If necessary, refer to employees' job descriptions to confirm their responsibilities.

3. Develop an improvement plan. Agree on a method for improving performance in the short run, and establish further options in case the first method proves ineffective. Offer to help in whatever way you can. Show your commitment by helping employees obtain the necessary resources or training. Explain that you'll be closely observing their progress.

4. Set a specific improvement goal. Develop a time line for improvement that incorporates specific parameters and sets realistic deadlines.

Phrase performance objectives in a positive way. Ask employees to do more of something, rather than less. Instead of "reducing statistical errors," talk about "increasing statistical accuracy." You can continue to measure accuracy in errors, but focus on what employees are doing right rather than what they're doing wrong.

5. Alternate negative and positive comments. If you need to address a long list of performance problems, try to interject a few positive comments along the way. It can be especially instructive for the employee to hear examples of superior performance that require skills and strengths you believe are underutilized in other areas.

Register for Tough Talks: Scripts & Strategies for Difficult Employee Discussions now and you'll receive a complimentary copy of Paul Falcone's book 101 Tough Conversations to Have With Employees. The 304-page book provides you with detailed sample dialogue to use in talking to employees about those “touchy” topics—everything from tardiness to work habits to bad breath. Register now for this interactive webinar...

6. Listen to the employee's response. The worst mistake you can make in such meetings is to do all the talking. By listening closely to the employee's response, you can help identify the reason for the poor performance and can begin to explore a solution.

Self-test: Discussing performance problems

1. I address performance problems openly, without window dressing. Y N
2. I illustrate problems with specific examples. Y N
3. I focus the discussion on results desired from the employee's efforts. Y N
4. I give employees an opportunity to respond to problems addressed. Y N
5. I present and discuss an improvement plan for each problem identified. Y N
6. I help the employee set specific, realistic improvement goals, according to a reasonable timetable. Y N
7. I help provide the employee with resources necessary to improve. Y N
8. I communicate, through words and action, my faith in the employee's ability to improve. Y N
9. I commit to assisting the employee in any way necessary to improve. Y N

During Tough Talks: Scripts & Strategies for Difficult Employee Discussions, you'll learn:

• The “9 Rules of Engagement” for successfully handling employee discussions. You’ll want to print out and reread those rules before any important employee talk.
• Using “perception management” in your favor to frame the discussion.
• How the power of guilt can be used to help employees assume responsibility for problems.
• A legally safe script to use when employees want to talk “off the record” about an employee relations issue.
• “New supervisor syndrome” and how you should address new managers differently than experienced ones.
• The 3 practical steps for discussions that stop attitude problems in their tracks.

Register now for this exciting event!