Optimus Performance blog

How to apply the steps to progressive discipline to address employee performance problems - Optimus Performance

optimus — Thu, 16 Jul 2026 22:40:48 GMT

It comes a time when you need to confront employees on performance issues. This is where a manager needs to understand and apply progressive discipline to attempt to turnaround problem performance situations.

Progressive discipline when applied correctly is what is best for the employee, the manager and the company. Even if you do not have established policies in your company you can follow these steps. They will let the employee know you mean business and will protect you and the company from wrongful dismissal and lawsuits.

You will need to have been given the authority to carry this out by your boss. You should also get familiar with the legal requirements for employee termination in your province, state or country.

Progressive discipline should be the last step in the management process. You should first confront the employee with your concerns about their behavior or performance and discuss it with them. Listen to what they have to say but end with a call to action.

For example if the employee has been late or missed days at work often, meet with them alone. Let them know how their behavior is affecting the work, the team and you. Ask them what they will do about it as it is not acceptable. Get a commitment and write it down. Make sure they see you writing it down. Set a follow-up date in a week o show them that this will not go away. Meet them whether the infraction has been corrected or not. If they have shown up on time every day over that week, recognize them for it. If they have not respected their commitment, let them know that the next time this occurs they will be getting a written warning. Explain the steps that will follow after that as explained below.

Verbal Notice

The first step is to provide the employee with verbal warning of the situation and that it needs to be corrected. Let them know that if the behavior or poor performance occurs again they will receive a written notice. Make sure you have a file for each employee and write the date of the warning and what you said in their file. Make sure to note their response. You might want to ask them to sign the note or you can have a witness present such as your boss or a colleague.

Written Notice

The next step if the situation has not been corrected by the employere is to give written warning. Refer back to the original reasons for the progressive discipline process presently being implemented. Also state the fact that verbal warning was given but the situation has not improved. The written warning should let them know that the next step if corrective action is not taken by the employee is a suspension without pay for one to three days or more. Also state that the last step will be termination if the cause for the progressive discipline reoccurs.

Suspension

Suspension without pay is the last step in the progressive discipline process before termination. This should be done in writing as well. The length of suspension can vary.

Termination

This is the last step so hopefully the progressive discipline has been enough to change the behavior of the employee. In this case you want to terminate employment immediately. A letter of termination must be given that states the reasons for termination and reference to the progressive discipline steps that were taken.

Ideally you won’t have to do this too often. The goal is to hire the right person for the job and train and coach them for success.

Stephen Goldberg

Optimus Performance

Leadership in a Changing World Addressing Global Challenges and Shaping the Future -

Mercy Joy Asuncion — Thu, 16 Jul 2026 22:40:47 GMT

Leadership holds the key to addressing global challenges and shaping a better future. Corinne Murray, an experienced leader in workplace strategy and design, shares valuable insights on how leaders can navigate the changing landscape.

In today’s world, traditional hierarchies are giving way to a new style of leadership. Corinne Murray exemplifies this shift by being a super connector and facilitator, understanding how different aspects of a business work together and fostering collaboration.

Kindness and a positive leadership mindset are crucial in this evolving environment. By cultivating trust and accountability, leaders empower their teams and create a culture of co-creation. Corinne Murray embodies these qualities, promoting diverse ideas and driving innovation.

To learn more about the transformative power of leadership, we invite you to watch the insightful interview with Corinne Murray. Discover how her expertise in workplace strategy can shape the future of organizations and inspire positive change.

Join us as we explore the possibilities that arise when leaders embrace change and address global challenges. Watch the interview to gain valuable insights and embark on a journey of leadership and growth.

21 Days to Change your Lifestyle Habits: Interview with author Isabel Lipari - Optimus Performance

optimus — Thu, 16 Jul 2026 22:40:46 GMT

Author and wellness specialist Isabelle Lipari has written the definitive guide to optimum health and wellness: 21 Days to Change your Lifestyle Habits.

This guide was created to help individuals change their lifestyle habits, one at a time, by facilitating behavior change. It offers a simple and easy method to adopt healthy habits that will impact directly on the individual’s health and quality of life. 30 habits are proposed, divided in 4 categories:

• Nutrition
• Physical Activity
• Sleep
• Stress Management

Several tools are included in the guide to facilitate the habit changes and maximize the chances of success for all. Further, by adopting the proposed habits, the reader will also be able to achieve life balance.

In this interview with Isabelle we discuss the key components for eating well, being fit and feeling great.

The Importance of Planning for a Manager - Optimus Performance

Stephen Goldberg — Thu, 16 Jul 2026 22:40:45 GMT

The importance of planning for a manager goes without saying. Managers need to strike a balance between job skills and people skills. Planning is a job skill that is essential for managers to both master and devote adequate time.

Planning includes staying abreast of trends, analyzing market conditions, reviewing statistics and various key performance indicators amongst other things.

Personally, when I became a manager I didn’t really know how to plan. I had been a salesman and although planning is an important part of a sales role, I tended to be more action oriented and thus spent my time chasing business. I could’ve been more effective as a salesperson if I would’ve planned better. As a manager, I continued the same way until I realized that it wasn’t okay working and I needed to learn better planning skills.

Approach to Planning

There are different ways a manager can approach planning. He can do most of it himself and communicate his plans to his team members so they can be aware of what is expected of them relative to the plan. This is a top-down approach where the manager makes most of the decisions and the employees act according.

Another way is to seek the input of team members and then combine that with the information the manager may have collected to formulate his plans. He then would communicate his plan to the employees.

Employee Participation

For managers who want to stimulate teamwork, engage and empower employees, a participative approach is best. This style of leadership has employees highly involved in the planning process including researching, analyzing, problem solving and discussions.

The challenge of this approach for managers is time, training and resources. Employees would need the time away from their basic tasks to do whatever research is required and attend meetings for discussion. Essentially this approach means delegating some of the management responsibilities to team members. Training people on some of these responsibilities is required and does take time. But in the long run this approach would be highly effective in terms of building autonomous teams, employee engagement and performance.

Take Stock

It’s important to assess your situation to determine how you can improve your planning skills. Knowing your strengths and weaknesses of planning for a manager is essential. Do you find yourself lacking time to plan because you are addressing day-to-day problems? This is a common situation and often hard to resolve because the cause stems back to planning itself and not having taken the time to prevent the day-to-day problems that keep arising.

How aware are you of different styles of leadership and how they affect teamwork, employee engagement and performance? What is your current style of leadership? What can you do to have employees participate more in the planning process?

These are just some questions that you can answer and develop a plan to improve your planning skills and involve employees in the process. Thus, you will improve your planning skills and engagement and performance of employees at the same time. It’s worth the effort!

Great article on selling for entrepeneurs got my creative juices flowing. Turn tire-kickers into customers - Optimus Performance

optimus — Thu, 16 Jul 2026 22:40:44 GMT

I like reading articles like the one linked here about being creative in selling. As creatures of habit we often get caught up in doing what we thinks works and is comfortable.

The truth is there are always ways we can improve and reading Rick Spence’s well written article got my creative juices flowing.

Turn tire-kickers into customers. Read, enjoy and prosper!

Types of people and neuroscience - Optimus Performance

optimus — Thu, 16 Jul 2026 22:40:43 GMT

This week I delivered a tele-seminar on types of people and explained each type of person according to the system of typology as developed by Fritz Glaus in his book CrazyZoo, know-thyself made easy.

I introduced the three intelligences and the six classic types of people and explained the main motivation, qualities, fears and tendencies of each type.

I also gave examples of how these qualities and tendencies affected a person’s leadership style and they way they worked in a team.

Here is the audio recording of the seminar.

Using What If for Continuous Improvement, Creativity and Better Team Collaboration - Optimus Performance

optimus — Thu, 16 Jul 2026 22:40:42 GMT

The term what if has been used by motivators and trainers to encourage people to challenge their beliefs and think of new ways of doing things.

I have been using this lately to spark creativity and better collaboration and teamwork. You can do the same whether you’re a leader or a team member working on a project. This approach works best when working on a specific project but it can also work to spark ideas to improve an existing situation or process.

How it works

When working on a project with a deliverable by one of your team members there is always specific tasks or milestones to achieve towards realizing the finished product. When someone presents their work for review and approval we either approve it or tell the person what we think should be different. Rather than saying what you want them to change, you could use the what if approach to suggest the change. It may sound like the same thing but there’s a subtle difference, which can have a powerful impact on the way the other person perceives your feedback. By saying what if you are not insinuating that what they have done is wrong, but rather suggesting a modification or alternative.

Ideally you would combine positive feedback with the what if. You would say what you like about what they’ve done and then use the what if to suggest what could be improved or changed.

Example

Suppose someone is working on a PowerPoint presentation that you’ve requested. They send you a draft of the presentation and there are certain things that you like but several that you don’t. The first step is to tell them what you like about their work and then you use the what if to suggest the changes you want.

For example if you like the template that was chosen you would point that out and why. You could say “your choice of template was well thought out as it really represents the image we want to project for this presentation”.

But let’s say there’s too much text and not enough images on some of the slides. You could say “what if you use powerful images to represent the points and reduced the text to a few words to complement the images?” You could continue to add more what if’s to suggest more of your ideas. Once you start with one what if more seem to flow easily.

Visualization

Somehow using what if generates images in the mind, not only for yourself but for the person receiving your ideas. This helps everyone get a better picture of what the outcome should look like.

Motivational approach

This type of approach is more motivating for everyone as it stimulates creativity and collaboration. Rather than receiving negative feedback and then being told what to do, using what if feels more creative and collaborative. And if you suggest that your team members use this approach as well you could bounce what if ideas off each other and come up with some really crazy concepts that just might work and make your project excel and standout.

Get going using this now and see what if!

Stephen Goldberg

The difference between a group and team of people working together - Optimus Performance

optimus — Thu, 16 Jul 2026 22:40:41 GMT

Over the last fifteen years that i have worked in the training and coaching field I have met many business owners and executives who always had concerns about people performance in their organizations. I see this as good because I don’t think we are ever fully satisfied with ourselves and people when it comes to our business and organizational performance. Being able to openly admit what bothers you to a stranger is not easy, but it is always beneficial to voice your concerns.

One thing i have noticed consistently over the years is that most business owners and executives do not understand what teamwork is. They often mistake people working together as teamwork. In our training workshops we explain the four stages of team development and what it means for people to function at each level. Most employees in organizations I have visited or worked with usually had people functioning at the first level of team development most of the time, which we describe as the dependency level.

To have teams function at a higher more productive level requires team members to learn new skills in collaboration, communication, decision making, problem solving etc. It also requires the business owner to change his/her leadership style to foster team development and less dependency supervision. I mention again the business owner because change has to start at the top or the culture of the firm will not evolve much.

I posted the question, what is the difference between groups of people working together versus a team of people to my leadership groups on Linkedin. Interesting responses have started to come in. Someone posted links to two articles which I think are great, especially the first one.
Here are the links to these articles:

The Top 10 Key Differences Between a Team of Individuals and a Group of Individuals
Team Tactics: The Critical Difference between Groups and Teams

So what does it take to create a dream team starting at the top management level? It starts by understanding the difference between a group and a team followed by the role of the leader in making this happen in his/her organization.

This month we will be holding a tele-seminar, Creating Your Dream Team where we will describe the Three Brain Synergy approach to creating a dream team and the fundamental knowledge that it takes to make this transformation a reality.

You can join the discussion by signing up for the free call now.

Stephen Goldberg

Learn to Negotiate the Best Way with expert Al McBride - Optimus Performance

Stephen Goldberg — Thu, 16 Jul 2026 22:40:40 GMT

Are you a business owner or sales professional who is having a hard time negotiating, causing you to often end up compromising and leaving money on the table?

In this video, I interview Alistair Mcbride- a coach, consultant, and experienced entrepreneur.

With his Goliath Negotiation Method, he teaches how to avoid the biggest trap and pitfall in every negotiation and how to uncover hidden value in every deal.

Stop getting outplayed and start making the most out of every deal.

Watch the video interview to acquire some instant tips to be a better negotiator and make more profitable sales.

Learn more about his Goliath Negotiation Method here: https://almcbride.com/courses/goliath-negotiation/

Get access to the free Negotiation Prep Cheat Sheet and the Negotiation Email Mini-Course here: https://almcbride.com/lp/cheat-sheet/

Make The Best Use Of Your Potential - Optimus Performance

Stephen Goldberg — Thu, 16 Jul 2026 22:40:39 GMT

Do you make the best use of your potential?

In my recent videos, I have discussed Types of People and knowing yourself, which is the key to unlocking your full potential.

I recently came across two examples of people. One rose to great heights, and the other became a criminal, and I’m going to talk about them in regard to the Types of People approach.

A movie titled Mully features a man from Kenya named Charles Mully.

As I watched the film about Mully, I thought of him, and which type he could be. And I’m guessing he was probably an active, positive type. We call this the Planner type and the dominant center of intelligence is the Intellectual.

Mully grew up in poverty; his father was an alcoholic, he would beat his mother, and his family abandoned him as a child. He was forced to find his own way in the world, but rather than adapt to a life of poverty, he rose to become very successful. He became one of the wealthiest businesspeople in Kenya.

Searching for purpose in his life and remembering his past, he made it his mission to help orphaned children. He began rescuing them from the street and offered them a way to rehabilitate.

For any obstacle that was put in front of him, he found a solution. He seemed to use his three intelligences in a balanced way, and nothing could stop him, even with limited resources.

Another character is Bernie Madoff. He was a very bright man and co-founded the NASDAQ Stock Exchange.

He introduced advanced computing into the stock exchange and founded a very successful trading company.

However, he also founded an investment advisory company that took people’s money and falsified returns. The money was never invested in stocks but was used to pay back other investors and finance Madoff’s extravagant lifestyle.

Bernie Madoff had even more potential to do good than Mully as he was never abandoned and went to university. But he became quite unbalanced and succumbed to his greed and need to be accepted and admired by the wealthy.

I’m not quite sure what type Madoff belonged to but I would guess the Inspirater type. This positive but passive type is good with people and businesses but can suffer from their vanity and cause great unbalance if not worked on.

I thought this was a great example of two people with extremely different upbringings could use their qualities in such different ways, one to do good and the other to self-destruct.

You can learn more about the Types of People approach to self-knowledge and how to become better balanced through my online workshop or soon-to-come elearning. Add yourself to the list to get news of these training programs that will be provided free of charge.

There is a narrative film about Charles Mully on Netflix and a documentary series on Bernie Madoff also on Netflix that I highly recommend.