It is wonderful to receive praise for a positive attitude. By contrast, sharing negative feedback with an employee who needs improvement in this area could feel like discipline.
The good news is, it doesn’t have be like this. You can change a situation if your employee is difficult by giving constructive criticism. You can use the feedback to see if an employee is improving in their attitude or behavior.
How to recognize a negative attitude in an employee
A bad attitude can manifest in many different ways. The symptoms include one or more.
- Refusing an offer of employment because “it’s not my job”
- You cannot hold others responsible for their mistakes
- Inability to initiate
- Attendance at meetings or activities does not reach 100%
- Disrespectful behavior towards managers or colleagues
Once you have identified these behaviors, it will be easier to provide feedback on how to help an employee develop and retain traits more beneficial to the team.
Avoid attacking personality
If you point out areas where the employee can improve, they may feel defensive or attacked. Avoid making it personal, and focus on the bad behavior.
An employee feedback example:
Instead of: You are always five minutes early for meetings. This is disrespectful of your colleagues.
Try saying: I noticed that you had a hard time attending the Monday meetings. You are unable to attend Monday meetings because of other commitments or conflicts.
Give specific examples
Specific feedback is the best. Focus on specifics, and avoid generalizations.
You could say, “I know you are passionate about the Oxford comma.” I thought that you were harsh with your criticisms of James, because he didn’t use it in his PowerPoint. It is crucial that the employee remembers a particular incident.
If you tell your employee that “Your outbursts during meetings violate our policy,” the employee might be confused. This is especially true if they don’t believe their actions have ever been “outbursts.”
Be direct
It can be challenging to give someone a response, but waffles are not helpful. It dilutes the quality of messages.
Managers will often try to soften criticism, by sandwiching positive statements between two negative ones.
As an example, “You do a great job (praise), but when you consistently deliver your projects after the deadline and without communicating the delay to our company (criticism), our reputation is hurt even though we praise the projects themselves (praise).
The manager wants to make it clear that late deliveries and lack of communication is unacceptable. A manager may ignore criticism in an effort to acknowledge the positives. The employee might easily gloss over feedback regarding their performance at work and never improve.
Finish with a High Note
Managers should motivate and encourage the team to be their best. Even if the feedback is used to identify negative behavior, it’s important to encourage those individuals.
Close employee evaluations by offering suggestions for improvement. Explain that your goal is to see the company grow and succeed. Set goals and monitor progress to ensure your employee is meeting expectations.