What would I do?
These two approaches are highly polarised and unilateral: are you perchance a merkin?

Your instinct to be a "really good manager" sounds marvellous to me, but it's troublesome unless you really know why you wanted to talk to "the woman who was taking lots of sick leave". Be honest: Was your first priority
(a) to help her out of a problem and to progress, or
(b) to build a case for ousting someone you were convinced was swinging the lead?
Did you feel concern for her or did you go in thinking 'she's taking the piss'? While I hear the twinge about naïvety, you didn't need "someone from personnel" to be there if your only concern was her wellbeing: it seems you envisaged difficulty in tackling the subject.

Neither answer is wrong, but if your answer was 'b' you needed to be up front with her first off: 'You're taking too much time off sick, and that's causing problems for the business. If you've got a genuine issue let me help how I can, but otherwise we [and I use the word 'we' deliberately] need to improve your performance.' If you answered 'a', great, but did you ever really ask her what might be wrong and offer help in a way she would've clearly seen and understood?

Now, swinging the other way and placing every transaction on a formal footing is going against what seemed like a spot-on, instinctive philosophy of trying to deal with the problem maturely. Exorcising discussion from the process is counter-productive and wasteful. Go with the approach you felt when you got promoted: it could turn you around. As for your new approach, that way lies Gareth Keenan.

Good luck!
(Good old boy just like yer grandma!, Mon 14 Jun 2010, 0:42, Reply)