Alisa Cohn: recommendation

Transcript context

…I love that we started with this one because it feels like the most common one of just your employee is underperforming and you want to make sure they understand and adjust. What if you're not hearing something from a bunch of people? What if it's just your perception of their writing? You need to work on your writing skills or you're coming in late. Is there another way you phrase it where it's not, "I'm hearing it from other people?" Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. So I'll talk about writing. I think it would be something like, okay, "Matilda, part of your job is to be able to create these documents and I appreciate that you do them on time. What I've observed is that they can often be not as structured as I'd like them to be and they also lack a conclusion. So what I'd love you to do is look at these three or four examples of some folks who are doing them really well and see if you can model your writing on theirs. If you need to take additional classes or if you need help in any way, let me know. But ultimately, I want to get your writing to the level where everybody is appreciating what you bring to the table because the level of your writing really reflects the level of your thinking. " Mm-hmm. Wow, I like that. I'd want to follow your advice if I got that. So the way you started that is what I've observed, which also is not like, "Here's what I think" or "Here's what you just need to do." It's more like, "Here's what I've noticed, here's what I've seen, here's what I've observed about what you're doing." And then it reminds me of, what is it, nonviolent communication, that whole framework of just focus on what you see, not what is wrong with them, not what they've done. I guess, is there anything there you want to say of just the importance of focusing on what you've heard from people or what you've observed versus maybe what people often do instead?…

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