How to talk to your boss if you’re underperforming? Many employees in most companies suffer from poor performance at work during certain periods of the year that may extend for several months. In fact, it is normal and expected. But have you ever thought about the steps that you should take to mitigate the negative impact of this period on your work?

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We know that when you’re having a bad time at work – like your project ends up not as planned or you lose control of your sales and drop dramatically – the last thing you think about is talking to your boss and telling them about it. But in the opinion of many experts, it may always be better for you to do two important things in order to maintain your position at work and avoid harm: first, you must be honest with yourself and your manager about your poor performance and take the initiative to talk about it before your manager can find out himself, second and most important It is to focus your conversation with him on offering solutions, not excuses.

In this article, we will provide some ideas and methods that may help you with that:

Check out the causes and results

The first step that you need to do is to determine the reason that led to your poor performance, it is often the reason that some projects do not start showing positive results immediately but need more time, then draw a chart of current and potential future results. But if both of them show poor performance, you should go to find your problem and try to make drastic changes in the action plan that might make the future results somewhat positive. And if this also does not work, then this is a sign that you are making an effort but need to further develop your style of work or that you are not in the right job for you.

Be ready

In the next step, you need to think about your manager’s reaction and what the consequences of knowing your underperformance will be. If your boss is awkward, you should be prepared for that and not fall into the trap of guessing that your boss might be in a good mood to tell him. In addition, you have to think of logical reasons to talk about it, such as saying that you took a risk but things did not end as required, or that the market witnessed sudden shifts that led to the emergence of unexpected results, and the reasons may be personal or family that led to reducing your performance in those period of the year.

Recognizing and taking responsibility

When you feel that the time is right to talk to your manager, do so, but you have to work on preparing the news for him, such as saying, for example, that you have some bad news to tell him, as this will reduce the impact of the conversation and make the opposite party ready to hear and understand you as required. Also, do not forget that your talk includes an apology and a feeling of remorse and that you will do your best to correct the situation, and you have to stay away from justifying what happened trying to reduce the size of the problem, leave it as it is and try to show enough reassurances that you are ready to start more positively and avoid previous mistakes.

Ask for advice

Since you are ready to correct what happened, it will be beneficial for you to ask your manager for advice on what to do next because this will show the manager how much you respect and trust his opinion. But be careful not to appear flattered to avoid any backlash from the manager.

Plan for the long term

If you see that your poor performance at work is a major problem and correcting this requires making drastic changes. After you admit and talk to the manager about this problem, you should ask to talk to him at length to discuss possible solutions to this matter in the long run. It may require you to get some training in the company to enhance your skills, or the manager may need to change your position in the company in a manner commensurate with your skills and strengths. . So you have to show him how grateful you are for his support and trust in you, as he tries to move you to a more suitable place in the company.

Below we will talk about an employee and an employee who suffered in previous periods of poor performance in their work and their experience in overcoming this matter in front of their managers and themselves.

The first experience

The first experience is for an employee of a company that provides resume writing services. Since he joined the company and for three consecutive years, his performance has been strong and excellent, but in the recent period, he felt that his performance began to decline as the percentage of his clients who started requests for refunds started increasing, which made him feel anxious and as a result, he started thinking about how to explain the matter to his manager in the company.

so, the employee first started looking for the main source of the problem, which later turned out to be his weak communication with customers and not telling them about the changes he was making in their resumes, which he saw fit them more than the previous ones, which made the customers lose their confidence in him. After that, he began to think about the reaction his manager would show when he told him about the matter and what solutions he should offer him to face this problem. 

Indeed, in his conversation with his manager, he began to show the extent of the problem he had fallen into and his seriousness in finding the appropriate solution in order to avoid any further potential losses. The employee not only justified his poor performance but also tried to convey his point of view on the validity of the decisions he was making regarding designing and writing a resume. He is the expert in this company and has his own standards which will be difficult to constantly change every time a client disagrees with him. But the problem was that he didn’t communicate with clients to explain to them what would be the best fit for their resume.

Indeed, the manager agreed on many of the points made by the employee, especially those related to his new strategy in communicating with clients periodically before making any decisions regarding their resumes, which would restore the positive performance that the employee had in the first three years.

The second experiment

The second experiment is for an employee who works as a public relations and media officer at the same time on social media for a company that provides technological solutions to assess employee morale.

This employee used to sit with her manager periodically to set her goals for the next year, in this way she was monitoring her performance, her responsibility lies in maintaining the reputation of the company’s brand by doing appropriate media coverage. But when the date of this meeting approached, this employee had not achieved her monthly goal of seven good press coverage. So, she began to search for the cause of that problem and used her colleagues to find the solution to improve her weaknesses, and then prepared an appropriate report to present to the manager. When it was time for the meeting, she told her manager that she couldn’t achieve her goal, and apologized profusely for the results that fell short of expectations. But she was not satisfied with that and began to discuss what she would do to improve the results later.

At the end of our article, dear reader, let us recall the basic principles that you should take into account if you notice a decline in your performance in the company and you should talk to your manager about it:

• Try to find out the root cause of the problem and start looking for its merits
• Try to provide ideas and solutions that will help you improve your performance, and it is also useful to ask your manager for some advice
• Be realistic and don’t look at your poor performance as a simple matter, it may make your situation more difficult
• Don’t forget to prepare what you are going to say to your manager and think about how he will react to your words
• Start your conversation with the manager with words that help alleviate the situation, such as starting by saying that there is bad news that you want to tell him.
• The manager may need to change your position in the company to suit your skills and strengths, so you need to show him how grateful you are for his belief in your abilities and his trust in you

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