The slacker. The drama queen. The procrastinator. The complainer. The disappearing act.
They all make your forehead scrunch up, your shoulders slump, your head spin, your blood pressure rise. What’s their deal? you think. Why can’t they just do their job?
But what if these problem employees and their frustrating behaviors could be fixed? Would you do whatever it took to do it, to fix it? Even if it was to sit down and share your honest thoughts—your criticism?
Delivering feedback is hard. It’s intimidating and awkward. No matter how much you’d rather just ignore it, though, you can’t. If you want the problems to go away, you have to help the people causing them improve; you have to help them get better at what they do. And they can’t do that without your honest feedback.
So how can you help? By giving them constructive criticism. We asked the Young Entrepreneur Council, “What's the best way to deliver critical feedback?” for some suggestions to make the conversation positive and productive: