To download a printable version of this transcript, click here.
 
 
iQuestions Faculty, Ron Price 
 
 
Question: 
 
How do I discipline a really good worker who has made a mistake, 
even when they acknowledge their mistake? 
 
Answer: 
 
So you have a great employee, but he messed up. What do you do 
about it? 
 
The first thing is, you do have to do something about it. The worst 
thing would be to do nothing. Let’s think about how you can do it so 
the employee ends up feeling better at the end of your discussion 
instead of worse. 
 
Start by telling him that he is a good employee. We don’t do enough 
encouraging of each other, so tell him what you value about him as an 
employee to begin with. 
 
Then tell him that you would like to talk about this situation, and lay 
the facts out as you understand them. You don’t have to be a judge. 
Just work on establishing what the facts of what happened are, and 
ask him if he sees them the same way. He may have some valuable 
information to add to the discussion before you go to the next step. 
 
The next step is going to surprise him. After all the facts are laid out, 
you ask him, “So what did you do well? What did you do right in this 
situation?” Instead of going right away to what went wrong, let’s focus 
on the part of it that went right.  
 
 
 
As you build this together, and build a list of what it is that he did 
right, he is going to feel more and more that you believe in him, even 
if he made a mistake along the way. 
 
You’re going to work together and build this list of what he did right, 
and once you have completed it, then you’re going to ask the next 
question, “What could you have done better?” This is surprising him 
too, because he is still waiting for you to lower the boom. So you ask 
him, “What could you have done better?” and the chances are pretty 
good, if he is a good employee, he is going to tell you what you would 
have said to him, only more effectively.  
 
He is going to say, “I could have done this. I made a mistake here. I 
could have done this better.” And all of this is him correcting himself, 
instead of you having to correct him. 
 
Let’s just say for a moment that he misses it, that he doesn’t 
understand or identify what he did wrong. Now you can gently say, 
“Well, I think you could have done this better. If I had been in your 
shoes, I would have done this differently,” and you can lay out the 
way he could have done it differently. 
 
By following this process, you’re showing him that you don’t blame 
him, that you really value him. You believe in him, but there is a better 
way to do it in the future. 
 
If you do this, he is going to leave that conversation feeling better, 
feeling affirmed, and being wiser for when he faces the same situation 
in the future. 
 
Price – 2- 
To download a printable version of this transcript, click here.