Reprimanding Associates

I’m not trying to be a jackass, but I also have clients and a business I’m responsible for. We have a couple of associates that are failing at the basic stuff. not law stuff, not experience issues, but just completing a project and forgetting to send it to the client after it’s completed, forgetting to calendar a deadline, not getting me a draft on the day they said they’d “absolutely get it to you by then” which then requires me to work the weekend to get it turned around. These are dumb mistakes, and many are organizational.

I try to mentor and teach, but a couple of these associates are making repeat mistakes like this and I’m at the end of the rope. I had a client call me today to tell me that they’ve left 2 VMs and emailed my associate twice for a week and never got a response. When I confronted the associate, she said “Oh sorry, I meant to call him back.” Unacceptable and will lose a client eventually.

In any event, short of firing people, what the best way to have “the talk”? I’m a very direct person and dont sugarcoat things well. Last time I had this talk I said “To be clear, this can’t happen again under any circumstances if you want to continue working here“ and I thought the dude was gonna cry Right there and then.