About a year ago, a client and their team were having trouble getting people to shape up or ship out, so we developed “the fork in the road talk”.

If there was a performance or attitude problem, the discussion had to start with the phrase “you have a fork in the road”.

The next part of the talk was sharing the difference between the two forks in the road in terms of outcomes (e.g. you will not be with us is the left fork and you will still be seeing all of us every day is the right fork).

And then the question, “Which fork do you want to take and what needs to happen for you to get there?”

This made it easy for the leaders to begin having important discussions in a powerful way where choices were made in a non-threatening manner.  Of the 15 people that had the discussion, five decided they would be happier elsewhere and were replaced with much better people (improved attitudes and results).  The other 10 became better performers that were much happier.

They started to use this process in situations where it was not a fork in the road for the employee but with project leaders with struggling projects.  It helped there also.

The fork in the road talk is now part of their culture.

• Do you have people on your team who need to pick a fork?

• Does your organization have a process in place to help leaders have the fork discussion?

• Who and what are needed to improve this process?

If you need to get your leaders helping people to choose which fork in the road and how to do it, call us at 800-786-4332, or email JSabatini@AppliedVisionWorks.com.  Your success is in plain sight; it just takes determination and action!  Contact us for your complimentary session; it only takes 30 minutes to get started!