Responsibility-Centered Discipline
Responsibility-Centered Discipline is Larry Thompson's model for correcting behaviour through a five-part conversation he calls Give 'em Five - Support, Expectation, Breakdown, Benefit, Closure - rather than a warning handed down, so the person keeps their dignity and still owns what happens next.
The conversation's five themes sit on cards in the order they're meant to be worked through, Support first and Closure last.
Reach for this when…
- A mistake keeps recurring and warnings alone change nothing.
- You are the only one enforcing standards and it is wearing you out.
- Someone shuts down or turns defensive the moment you raise a mistake.
How to run it
- Support: open with something genuine - a strength, or the relationship - not the offence.
- Expectation: state plainly what you expected.
- Breakdown: name where that expectation wasn't met, without judging the person.
- Benefit: explain why meeting it matters, to them and to others.
- Closure: agree together whether it's resolved, or where it goes from here.
A worked example
Situation. Sean O'Brien supervised the machining floor at Emerald Precision, an auto-parts plant in Cork, Ireland, where the same two safety shortcuts kept recurring despite formal warnings.
Applied. He stopped issuing warnings and instead sat down with each operator for a five-part conversation: naming their skill on the floor first, restating the safety expectation, naming exactly where it broke down, explaining who the shortcut put at risk, then agreeing together whether it was resolved.
Result. Near-miss reporting went up, not down, because operators stopped hiding the small stuff to avoid another warning. Repeat incidents on the two shortcuts fell within a quarter.
The catch
This only works if the words are genuinely yours and not read off a script - the five themes are fixed, but Thompson built it so you choose the language, and a rehearsed version falls flat fast. It also assumes there is an actual relationship to draw the Support step from; used on someone you barely know, that opening can ring hollow.
Skip Closure and you haven't finished the conversation - you've delivered a lecture with a softer opening.
Origin: Larry Thompson