One area where many dealership managers continue to struggle is in effectively counseling poorly performing employees – and documenting that effort. Those managers who actually document their counseling generally tend to “write up” the employee, describing the events as the manager sees it, followed by a warning that discipline “up to and including termination” may follow. Then the manager presents the memo to the offending employee who is expected to sign it. The signed document is placed in the employee’s personnel file. And life goes on.

While this approach is certainly better than doing nothing, experience shows that it is unlikely to change the employee’s behavior in the long run. Typically, employees improve their behavior for the next few weeks and then gradually drift back to their old ways. The cycle then repeats itself.

We think that we may have found a better way. We are talking about an “interactive counseling” approach which we believe is more likely to bring about an actual change in an employee’s behavior and, at the same time, more effectively documents the problem. It works like this...