Employees are not always perfect. Sometimes, they mess up, fail to show up, miss deadlines and commitments, trample expectations, sport messy work areas, and behave inappropriately with coworkers. I have witnessed screaming matches in the middle of work areas; I've had employees purposefully fail at their jobs, in order to be fired. Others have presented false documentation about funerals, lied on their applications, and abused intermittent FMLA time. All of these situations, and many more not mentioned, require difficult conversations.

You can become effective at holding difficult conversations. Practice in a variety of situations, and these steps, will help you build your comfort level to hold difficult conversations. After all, a difficult conversation can make the difference between success and failure for a valued employee or, at least, an employee in whom you have invested valuable training and time. Care enough to hold the difficult conversation before the employee is unsalvageable.

Tell us about difficult conversations you've either held, or need to hold, in "comments" below. Thank you for sharing.

More About Dealing With Difficult Employees

• Dealing With Difficult People at Work.
• Managing Day-to-Day Employee Performance.
• Culture: Your Environment for People at Work
.

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My quarterly update of the one-page policies, procedures, checklists and forms sample page is complete and ready for prime time. Find all of the latest samples on the site here in a convenient location. Bookmark the page and return when you need ideas, inspiration or samples to use or adapt for your organization.

I am always looking for your input about requested additions to this resource. Additionally, I'm happy to publish samples that you've created and use in your organization. Submit your sample policy, procedure, checklist or form. You'll receive author credit and my eternal thanks.

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I have mentored, for years in some cases, a number of women over the course of my career - all of whom are doing very well in the professions or lifestyles of their choice. So, when Kim Yorio of The Girl's Guide … and YC Media fame contacted me for an interview about team work, I was happy to talk with her. In addition to the team work questions, she asked questions about why women appear to have lower scores in areas such as leadership, problem solving, inspirational behavior, and more when male and female employees are surveyed.

My position is that, while business has not always been, and is still not, in many cases, female-friendly, many of the reasons involve behaviors and attitudes that women can do something about. At this point, there are still too few women in executive positions, but I can also speculate several reasons why.

As an example, I am recently aware of research that says women lawyers make less money than their male counterparts and it has a lot to do with the fields and specialties chosen. Women apparently pick careers with more flexibility to balance family matters; the money comes with grueling hours, cross-country travel, and decidedly unfriendly family practices. (Source: Thomas Sowell in Economic Facts and Fallacies. Compare prices.)

Women are much more likely to interrupt their careers with time away from work for tasks such as raising children. This interferes with their ability to remain in the manager pipeline that is feeding into the executive positions. Second, women are not majoring in, studying, or obtaining degrees in several of the high need, high growth areas of employment such as technology, engineering, and science.

Women need to be cognizant of the language they use. As an example, a VP at a client company came to me to reject several female candidates for an executive role because they had not "accomplished anything" as far as he could tell. I asked how he had reached this conclusion when I believed they were highly qualified for the role. It was a language thing. The male candidates said things such as, "I expanded sales in the division by fifty percent." The women candidates said, "The team grew the business by fifty percent." and "We accomplished this."

Finally, according to Judith Lindenberger, women need to work in the line organization, in jobs in which they have profit and loss responsibility. Line success adds significant credibility to a woman's career progression possibilities.

I have not done a lot of research in this area, but the interview with Kim certainly got my attention. So did this: Women who wear short skirts that display a lot of leg may be overlooked for promotion and pay increases. So says a study conducted by Tulane University. Overt sexual behavior at work, whether men and women are consciously aware of it, or not, can submarine your career.

See Why Sexy Isn't Better: How Sexual Behavior Can Submarine Your Career.

More Resources for the Workplace

• Women and Work: Then, Now, and Predicting the Future for Women in the Workplace.
• How Real Women Get Ahead: The Woman's Advantage at Work.
• Work Success and Happiness, Business, and Management Tips.

_{Image © Kelly Young}

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I've found several interesting sites to share with you today. Please email me or post in "comments" if you use additional sites that you find consistently worthwhile. I'll feature them.

This month’s presidential inauguration has sparked more media interest in whether political discussion belongs at work. You know my position about political discussion at work, and I also realize that there is an occasional workplace in which employees can talk about politics at work without creating hard feelings or disruption. But, in this political month, I did an email interview with Susan Straight for Washingtonpost.com and recommended employer approaches: Leave Politics Out of the Workplace.

New Human Resources Carnival

Gautam Ghosh hosts the new Carnival of Human Resources. As always, he Carnival provides a chance for you to read unfamiliar blogs without wandering all over online.

The Gevity Institute

The Gevity Institute sponsors research with major universities. Their goal is to identify and quantify the association of Human Resource practices and small- and medium-sized companies’ performance. In a recent study performed by Cornell researchers, the following was discovered about the right people, in the right places at the right time, doing the right things:

• "Keep an eye on the future when hiring: Companies should seek to hire exceptional talent capable of making a positive, long-term contribution to the firm.
• Manage employees through formal HR processes and professional standards: Companies benefit from developing formal HR management systems and using professional standards to manage their employees.
• Community is a powerful motivation and retention tool: Workforce alignment, employee motivation and retention are best achieved by building a family-like community."

Visit the site to find out more.

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