Procrastination: How to spot and confront a procrastinating employee.

• The employee is always saying that they are working on it, and never gives you a true update.
• You notice that the employee is always rushing at the last minute.
• Work is completed that isn't up to the employee's performance.

After observing and documenting a number of examples of poor employee performance, it is now time to confront the employee.

The first step is to call a private meeting and bring up your observations. As your second step, ask the employee if they too have observed these patterns. Next listen to the employee's response for indications that they might be attempting to ignore, blame others, or minimize their poor work performance. If the employee attempts to blame others or the company, help them focus on what is in their control to change about themselves.

Provide the employee with prepared literature about workers who procrastinate. Call your Employee Assistance Program (EAP) and ask them to provide you with some appropriate literature.

Ask that the employee read that literature and schedule a follow up meeting in one week to discuss it further.

Listen to the employee's concerns for other tips as to why their concentration and performance has declined, i.e., depression, family problems, or problems with their ability to focus; suggest that they contact the company EAP.

End the meeting by saying something positive about the employee's overall attitude, past performance, or bright future.

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Procrastination: Identifying yourself and taking steps to change.

• Do you set unrealistically high standards that make it difficult for you to start a project?
• Do you get lost in details and find it difficult to get a project finished?
• Do you leave projects for the last minute hoping that time pressure will motivate you?
• Do you take on so many projects that you can't focus on what needs to be done?
• Do you avoid doing projects because you are angry that you need to do it?
• Do you sometimes avoid a task because you fear doing it?
  

The reasons for procrastination are many, with the basic ones being perfectionism, fantasizing, fear, crisis making, anger, overdoing, and pleasure seeking.

Perfectionism: This is probably one of the more common reasons for procrastinating.  The perfectionist avoids starting a task because they worry that they might fall short of their own high standards. A perfectionist will become absorbed in the details attempting to control every aspect of the task and ignore moving a project along until the very last minute.  They don't have to face their fear of imperfection if the task doesn't get done.

Fantasizing:  These individuals are better at dreaming than in dealing with reality.  They find it difficult to turn their grandiose thinking into clear concrete plans for action.  They can make bosses happy with their great and grand ideas, but later make them frustrated with the lack of results.

Fear:  This person actually procrastinates because they fear doing the task or project at hand.  The task has moved them out of their comfort zone and the thought of doing it freezes them into immobility. You often see this occur when people procrastinate making phone calls to others when they fear that the other party may not like what they have to say.

Crisis Maker:  These people believe that they can not get motivated until the very last minute.  They make others mad because they manufacture a crisis and then solve it at the last minute making themselves look good in the process.  To start a task early is just too boring for them.

Anger:  The angry person resents having to do the task in the first place.  They therefore don't do it out of spite and anger because they feel by doing it they will be giving in to the person that they are angry at.  If they do the task because they have too, it is likely to be done wrong or incompletely.

Overdoers:  The overdoer avoids, but they will never admit it, by taking on other lessor important tasks or projects.  They avoid the task by doing more tasks.  Their excuse of why they are late, is that they just have too many things to do.

Pleasure Seeker:  This person's priority is to seek positive over negatives at all times. They delay because there are more fun things to do to fulfill their immediate gratifications than the project you gave them.  These people turn in projects that obviously show that their hearts were not in it.

Click on the above procrastination style that best fits you, for ideas on how to change.

Disclaimer

Fantasizing:  Work at coming back down to earth a bit or a lot.  Your goal is to monitor your talk so you avoid biting off more than you can chew.  Fantasize more in your head than out loud in a meeting.  If you find yourself in a bind by not being able to produce what you convinced others of, go and tell them that you now realize your project needs to be broken down into smaller tasks, with the ultimate goal of getting the whole project done. Set up earlier deadlines than what the real deadline is for the project.  In that way, if you meet your early deadline, you will have time to attempt to expand the project into something bigger.

Fear:  First say to yourself that fear is good.  Go ahead and say it, "Fear is good."  Why?  Because fear makes us grow the same way that water and sunlight make a plant grow.  By overcoming fear we conquer it and defeat it.  So it is better to defeat it earlier than later right?  Yes, because fear can grow like a snowball going down hill if it isn't stopped early.  So as soon as you sense fear, that means "GO" and not "stop."  Just do it!  Your reward is a sense of relaxation that the fear is gone and it probably wasn't as bad as you thought it would be.  Remember that 90% of what you worry about never happens, and the other 10% happens but it is never as bad as you thought it would be.

Crisis Maker:  Your goal is a difficult one.  Because you have probably spent many years feeling thrilled (rewarded) by being under time deadlines.  Hopefully you have had a recent failure that is causing you to think about giving yourself more time to prepare.  Perhaps you made a speech and because you weren't prepared you felt that others knew you were lost and didn't know what you were talking about.  You have the task of setting early deadlines and creating rewards for yourself if you are prepared ahead of time.  Perhaps you can reward yourself by going skydiving or mountain biking to help you get that adrenaline rush you crave.

Anger:  Work to shift your focus of anger away from the job task and onto the person that you feel angry toward.  This might mean that you talk to the person that you feel angry towards, to attempt to resolve your feelings.  If that is not possible, attempt to see a personal worth or reward in the project that you are doing.  Attempt to see something that you can gain by doing it. When you have completed it and are going over the outcomes with your supervisor, show pride in how well it got done and talk about the enjoyment you attain by doing it.

Overdoers:  Have the hardest time recognizing themselves as overdoers because to them everything is important.  "How in the world could they ever let anything go, they tell themselves." "Just who else would do it!"  Prioritizing and delegating and saying "No" are not the overdoers strong points.  But that is exactly what they need to do, but not all at once because the world just might stop spinning. Get paper and pencil and force yourself to prioritize what is really important and what is just busy work.  "Yes, busy work."  You no longer have the excuse, "I was just too busy to get that project done."

Pleasure Seeker: Are you the grasshopper that played music all summer long while the ants stored away food for the winter time?  Remember, rewards come after work and not before work, just as desert comes after dinner. Usually the reward for not doing a task is the reward of avoidance of pain.  So you need to start by changing the word-feeling "pain" to a word-feeling that is not as bad as pain such as "temporary inconvenience."  Next visualize how good it will make you feel to have the task done, and then double your reward for a task done one time vs. the reward you would give yourself by procrastinating the task.  So, give yourself two scoops of ice cream instead of one.  And don't give up if you don't succeed the first time, or succeed on your first attempt only to fail on your second attempt.

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