How to Start a Performance Conversation

The short answer: get three dated instances and their downstream cost, check whether the conversation belongs with HR instead, book it properly, say a short opener and then be quiet, answer whichever of the four replies you get, close on one observable change with a date, and write the note within the hour.

Managers do not avoid this conversation because they lack courage. They avoid it because they can picture the opener and cannot picture what happens after the other person answers.

This is general management guidance, not legal or HR advice. What a performance or disciplinary process must contain, what notice is owed, and what makes a dismissal lawful are set by law and by your own employer’s policy, and they vary sharply between countries and between US states. Where anything formal, contractual, or protected is involved, talk to your HR team or an employment lawyer first.

This walkthrough takes one first performance conversation from a vague sense that something has slipped to an agreed change with a date — the same method the Manager’s Difficult-Conversations Script Bank is built on. The whole card for this conversation, including all four branch replies, is the free first-performance-concern script (PDF, no signup). The people, the company and its customers below are invented, and so is every date on this page.

The situation

Quote turnaround from one of your engineers has drifted from same-day to three or four days over about six weeks, and two quotes have gone out with the wrong lead times on them. One customer ordered against a wrong number. You have not said anything yet, and you have started to notice that you are checking his quotes yourself rather than raising it.

That last detail is the tell. When you begin working around somebody’s output instead of talking about it, the conversation is already overdue.

Step 1 — Gather three instances with dates before you book anything

Not a sense that things have slipped. Three things that happened, on days you can name, each with what it cost downstream:

Three lines. That is the whole preparation, and it is the difference between a conversation about something that happened and an argument about whether you are being fair.

While you are writing them down, answer three more questions honestly. What have you already said? It is easy to believe you have raised something when what you actually did was hint at it twice in a hallway. What changed on your side? A re-org, a headcount gap, a priority nobody told them about. And what do you want to be true in thirty days, stated so that somebody else could observe it.

Step 2 — Run the routing check — is this yours to hold at all?

This is the step that gets skipped, and it is the one that matters most.

Stop, and take it to HR before you say anything, if any of these is in play — whether the drop-off began at a recognizable point or came on gradually:

• a health condition, treatment, or a disability;
• a pregnancy, a bereavement, or caring responsibilities;
• a complaint the person has recently made about somebody else, or a recent return from leave.

In every one of those the performance conversation may still be yours to hold — but the order you do things in matters, and you should expect the timing to be scrutinized alongside the substance. A day spent checking costs very little. See progressive discipline for where an informal conversation sits relative to the formal steps, and performance improvement plans for what has to be true before one of those starts.

Step 3 — Book it properly, and say what it is about

A booked room or a private call, mid-week, mid-morning, with nothing scheduled behind it. Twenty-four hours’ notice, with a neutral subject and one honest line of context — “I want to go through the last few quote turnarounds with you.” An unexplained invitation from a manager is a night of dread, and dread makes people arrive defended.

Not Friday afternoon. Not the last ten minutes of the day. Not in a glass meeting room the whole floor can watch. And not while walking somewhere — a conversation held on the move tells the person it was not important enough to sit down for, and they will remember that if there is ever a second one.

Step 4 — Say the opener, then stop talking

Here is the shape. Say the observable thing, give the instances, say plainly that you do not know what is behind it, and ask.

Thanks for making the time. I want to raise something while it is still small, because I would rather say it now than let it build.

Over the last six weeks quotes have been taking three or four days where they used to go out the same day, and two have gone out with lead times that were not right. The Hallam quote on April 9 sat four days and went out quoting six weeks against a ten-week fixture — Hallam ordered on it. Sowerby on April 22 was three days with the same problem, and we caught that one internally. The Traynor revision on May 2 took five days, which is why they went elsewhere for the second cell.

I am not here with a verdict about it. I have noticed a pattern and I do not know what is behind it, which is why I am asking rather than telling. What is going on?

Time it. Filled in like that it runs a little over a minute; the bracketed template it came from is nearer forty seconds. Either way, if yours is running past a minute and a half you are explaining rather than raising, and the person opposite stopped listening somewhere in the middle.

Then count to ten before you say anything else. It will feel much longer than it is. It is one of the highest-value habits in the whole subject and it costs nothing — and a common piece of self-inflicted damage in these conversations is a manager who fills that silence by softening everything they just said until there is nothing left of it.

Step 5 — Handle the reply you actually get

You will get one of these. Prepare all four, not just the one you expect — the branch you are least expecting is the one that derails a well-prepared manager.

• They agree, and they are embarrassed. Usually because they already knew and have been carrying it alone. The trap is that your relief makes you close too fast: an apology is not a plan, and in four weeks you will be having this conversation again with “but you said you would” added to it. Leave with one specific, observable change and a date.

• They explain, and the explanation is real. “The lead-time sheet moved in March and the old one is still on the drive.” It is the best reason there is to open with a question instead of a judgment — you cannot know which you have until you ask. Fix your half in the room, with a date. Then go back for the other half — because a wrong sheet does not explain a four-day turnaround, and because they spotted a problem six weeks ago and worked around it instead of telling you. Both things can be true.

• They deflect onto a colleague. “[Name] does the same thing and nobody says anything to them.” Do not discuss the colleague, even to agree — the moment you do, you have handed over a grievance and lost the thread. Say you would not discuss their work with anybody else either, offer to look at any unevenness separately, and return to the dated instance.

• They deny it flatly. Do not repeat your version louder. Ask for their account of the specific date, write it down, say you will check it and come back by a named day — and then actually do. A manager who checks and returns is far harder to argue with than one who insists.

Step 6 — Close on one observable change and a date

Say it back, in their words where you can:

So: quotes go out inside one working day, off the current system. If something you depend on is wrong or you cannot get to it, you tell me that week rather than working around it. On my side, the old sheet comes down by Friday and I will confirm the whole team has access. We look at it again on June 3.

Four things have to be true before anybody leaves the room:

• The one observable change.
• How you will both know it changed.
• Anything you committed to, with a date.
• The review date — in the calendar, not in your head.

And say the last part out loud, because it is what stops the conversation being remembered two different ways: this was a first conversation, not a warning, nothing goes anywhere formal today, and you are going to write a short note of what you agreed and send it to them.

Step 7 — Write the note within the hour and send them a copy

Wording that was exact at four o’clock is a paraphrase by the next morning. Write it while it is fresh, and send them a copy the same day.

May 12 — Conversation with [name], meeting room 2, about 25 minutes.

Raised: quote turnaround drifting to three to four days, and two quotes issued with incorrect lead times. Instances: Hallam, April 9; Sowerby, April 22; Traynor revision, May 2.

Their account: [in their words, not paraphrased to sound worse than they said it].

Agreed: [the change]. [My commitment, with its date].

Review: June 3.

Noted as a first informal conversation. No formal step taken.

Two details do most of the work here. Record what you committed to, not only what they did — a note listing one side’s obligations reads exactly like what it is. And tell them their comments go on the record alongside yours rather than instead of them. That one habit removes most later disputes about what was actually said.

What a good outcome looks like

They can say in one sentence what is different from tomorrow, and so can you, and the two sentences match. If either of you would describe the outcome vaguely, the conversation did not finish — it just ended.

If it goes wrong in the room

If they become distressed, stop the content and deal with the person: offer to pause, offer to pick it up tomorrow, and say plainly that stopping does not disadvantage them. Nothing you raise in the next ten minutes is going to be retained anyway. If they become aggressive, say once that you are stopping the meeting and will pick it up with HR present — and then actually stop.

Where to go from here

This is one conversation of fifteen. The whole card for it — the opener, all four branches with the exact next line for each, the close, and the documentation note — is the free first-performance-concern script (PDF, no signup): no email, nothing to log into.

The Manager’s Difficult-Conversations Script Bank has the other fourteen: missed deadlines, the long-tenured employee whose work has slipped, attendance, a hygiene issue, attitude in a room, mediating a conflict, a complaint about a colleague, a declined raise, a passed-over promotion, being promoted over a friend, a performance improvement plan, a termination, a resignation, and a layoff notification. If you are weighing that against paid advice, scripts vs. an HR consultant is the thirty-second test for which conversations are genuinely yours to hold.