Back in October, guest blogger Joseph Grenny tackled the topic of how to have tough talks. Earlier this month, I addressed a tough but necessary talk many employers should be having: employee attire. Now, The Washington Post’s “How to Deal” columnist Lily Garcia has addressed yet another topic that is tough to talk about but must be addressed.
In her column yesterday, Garcia took a question from a manager whose employee regularly makes a number of embarrassing pronunciation blunders — for example, “liBary” instead of “liBRary” and “mines” instead of “mine.” Clients and co-workers had made comments about the mispronunciations and the manager just didn’t know what to do.
Garcia gave the tough but totally correct answer: The manager must talk to the employee and work with him to improve his pronunciation. Yes, it will be tough, but it’s simply cruel to let someone go along making mistakes that make him look foolish and could be detrimental to your business and his career.
Have you ever had to deal with a situation involving an employee’s pronunciation? Share your tips on how to handle that sort of situation here.
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