All good coaching is defined by the relationship between the coach and the coachee. If the relationship is not there then there is no point in starting. There is general agreement on this point and there are books, articles and websites available that will outline the steps required to build good, solid and lasting relationships. They will discuss rapport, trust, effective and reflective listening and will build a roadmap for you to work on developing your skills on relationship building. These are all excellent and valuable insights. I have participated in many of the aforementioned exercises and I have attended classes and seminars, read books and articles and put into practice all that I have learned. But there is one angle that I do find lacking! What can you do when you have royally messed up the relationship in the first place?

Just imagine the situation, You have trusted your employee to commit to and complete a task. You have given them autonomy to do it themselves, they have promised you the sun the moon and the stars that they are about to save the organisation and then they deliver the biggest load of slop that you have every witnessed…In public….In front of the management team…..as a representative of your team…as a representative of you! At this point you are probably experiencing two trains of thought, 1. What went wrong here? I thought that we had this under control? How come I didn’t see this coming? How did I let this happen, Oh My Gawd what have I done? 2. I’ll kill him as soon as I book my tickets out of the country because I’ll have no job in the morning after that!

As a coach you would be advised to assess the situation and work with your employee to determine how they landed so far off the mark and then course correct them. As a manager you are probably thing that this is the end of the road for both you and your employee and you are furious and as a person you are probably think about how stupid you were to trust this person with this task. Either way at this point you will be feeling bad. This is when you must be most at your guard. At this point the relationship is broken and the trust is gone but it is only one sided. At this point in time (unless the management team has killed your employee) the managements disbelief will be placed squarely at you not your employee.

A natural reaction in this situation (managers are human) is for you to blow your top. If you are a good manager you will do so in private with the employee but you would still blow your top. If you are a great manager you will remember that blowing your top will damage the relationship from the other side. It is very rare that people come away from a scolding feeling good and if your employee did believe that they were doing the right thing then you now will have two problems. 1. Why was the employee so far off the mark and 2. How do I fix a broken relationship? Here is the truth, it will be much easier to fix the employees perception of the issue than it will be to fix a broken relationship with the employee. So here are some recommended steps.

1. Complete damage control with the management team.
2. Separate yourself from the employee to assess the situation
3. Separate the personal impact for you from the issue to be addressed.
4. Take time after the issue to assess how the employee came to this point
5. Reassess any instructions you had given (or lack of) that may have led the employee to this point.
6. Assess how you will communicate the issue with the employee (remember they got it wrong and need to know this)
7. Put yourself in their shoes: How ill the feel, react when they get the feedback? (Probably the same as you when you sat through the presentation)
8. Now craft your conversation around determining what can be done around recovering and moving forward.

Remember to always separate the person from the issue. As the manager you were the one to put that person there and therefore are equally responsible for the outcome. This is a great opportunity to re-assess your knowledge of each other and further deepen the relationship. As a manager and a coach, your relationship and trust of the employee may be damaged but you must not let their relationship with you become damaged. Sometimes we as managers have to suck it up. By building a deeper relationship with the employee they will come to understand you and will ensure that they never put you in that position again. This is surely a win win for both parties.

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