8 Considerations for a Courageous People-Centred Discipline Session

One of the most challenging duties a supervisor or manager will ever have is to sit down with an employee to take some semblance of corrective action.?Disciplining staff is not easy! However, managing a team and maintaining a productive and positive work environment is essential, and one way to ensure accountability while supporting expectations is to communicate openly and fairly.

However, in my 35 years of training supervisors and managers, I constantly see managers avoiding this process until problems have escalated to the point that demands action. What a shame. It is as if they hoped not addressing the issue would somehow make it go away. But as I outlined in my book, LIGHTS! CAMERA! ACTION!, ignored behaviour and bad practices will always escalate–to the negative.

Failing to address the issues is like permitting them to continue – and the “if this is ok, then this should be ok too!” mentality takes over. Taken a step further, it turns into the, “If John can do that, then I can do that too” syndrome.

Discipline processes are nothing more than coaching sessions with escalating outcomes.

One of the problems I see is that discipline sessions are viewed with a negative mindset: “I have to write John up for being late.” Or, “I hate giving Donna shit. But she is still not following our cash-handling procedure.”

STOP!

As leaders, we have to change that mindset. Discipline processes are nothing more than coaching sessions with escalating outcomes. If we are consistent and can reframe the process as being of service to the employee (and the team), we are better-equipped mentality to deal with a difficult circumstance or situation.

Here are eight considerations when coaching your team members.

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