While discussing managing poor performance during a client training session a few months ago, the Managing Director acknowledged that she had a lot of trouble keeping her emotions in check when confronting employees and could fly off the handle quite easily. This proved to be especially problematic early in her career as she'd often react to situations impulsively, only to find later that she'd done so unnecessarily because she didn't have all the facts. As a result it killed her ability to communicate effectively with these employees.
As she rose into more senior positions, the MD became more and more aware of the damage she often caused by prematurely confronting and decided to force some discipline on herself by buffering her reaction: every time she felt the need to confront an employee, she first wrote down her thoughts and how she would handle the situation, collected more information, slept on it and made a final decision on what action to take the next day. And when she started doing this, she found that the way she felt the following day – with time to gain perspective by collecting all the facts and gathering her thoughts – was often completely different than how she felt the first day.
The additional time the MD afforded herself before acting allowed her to process two items. First, she could ensure that she was addressing a job-related problem and wasn't making it personal, which can often happen when reacting without keeping emotions in check. Only with job-related problems can you redirect behaviour, a crucial element to confronting poor performance. Second, with more time to collect the facts, she sometimes would realise that there was no need to confront at all or that the problem stemmed from someone else's actions, and that she needed to confront them!
At Fortune we often say, "catch it early or condone it"; in other words, you must confront poor performance immediately or employees will read your lack of action to mean you condone whatever they're doing. But an absolutely critical precursor to doing so is to make sure you confront without anger. You may well feel angry; it's even okay in your discussion with them to say "You did such and such and it made me angry, or frustrated, or concerned." What you can't do is act out your anger. And the case of this MD is a perfect example: the perspective she afforded herself with this extra time ensured she could more maturely address the real problem – that it was truly job-related and not personal – and that she had all the necessary facts.