establish a strong rapport with their employees by having ongoing candid conversations about performance without too much angst. From the employee's point of view, frustration occurs because most managers do not bring up areas of improvement the employee can work on throughout the year; instead observations regarding a less$-$than$-$stellar performance are typically highlighted at this once$-$a$-$year, stress$-$filled event.

Read the case and answer the questions that follow.

Jada Bowman is frustrated. She has just met with her boss, Ellie Wendorf, to discuss her annual performance evaluation, and her overall evaluation was less than satisfactory. Jada is one of six project managers who report to Ellie, and she has worked at Seidling Technology for three years. Ellie was formerly Jada's colleague, but she was promoted to manage the project managers more than a year ago, in her first job as a supervisor. Ellie highlights three key areas that Jada needs to improve upon: communication, problem solving, and decision making. Jada can't believe that Ellie thinks she is doing an unsatisfactory job and goes back to her office to think about what just transpired during the meeting.

Sometimes Ellie doesn't even know things have gone wrong, especially when it comes to providing performanceh feedback to her employees. As employees describe her, Ellie is a whirlwind who moves from one problem to another without giving much thought to the details.

How could Ellie have handled the review process differentlv?