Is there anyone in your team who isn’t doing their job as well as they should? What have you noticed? And what are you doing about it?
Allowing poor performance to go on unchecked has very serious repercussions, not least of which is the damage it does to the team overall. Everyone needs to feel that each member of the team is doing his or her very best to contribute to the team’s performance.
So, you know you’ve got to act. But it’s one of those management ‘tricky situations’ – and it’s tempting to find ways of avoiding the issue. Please don’t! Things will only get worse if you don’t grasp the nettle and deal with the problem.
The situation can be even more awkward when the person who is underperforming is part of a team that you inherited from another manager. If you didn’t recruit them to be in your team, you need to be particularly careful that this isn’t a personality clash or a personal dislike, but a genuine performance issue.
The first thing you need to do is to collect the relevant information about the performance of the person who is causing you concern. You must be certain of the facts. Hearsay, grudges and opinions have no place in dealing with a poor performer. Gather evidence of the problem behaviour, of specific instances and individual examples of when performance has not met your expectations. Write them down and think them through. Is this a list of actual examples which demonstrate your reasons for concern? What, exactly, are they doing (or not doing) which is a problem? You must be very specific – general dislike for their ‘attitude’ or ‘poor concentration’ will take you down a path that leads you open to counter-argument. Your examples must be concrete and unequivocal. For example, ‘for the last four weeks you have been three days late with the stock figures’ – and not ‘you are always late with the stock figures’.
Inform the individual that you want to meet with them to discuss their performance and make it clear that you are open to hearing their point of view. The only thing you know at this point is how the situation appears to you. You can’t read their mind or know what is going on – so you need to sit down together calmly and have a frank and honest conversation in which you explain that you have some concerns about their performance at work and that you want to discuss this with them. You need to explain how things look from your standpoint and make it clear that you want to hear their point of view too. And then you need to listen carefully. Together, you need to arrive at a description of the performance that you both agree with. And only then can you move on to resolve any issues, being clear about what you expect and giving a reasonable amount of time for performance to come into line with those expectations. Follow-up and review is important too.
Inheriting a Poor Performer
A poor performer in your team means that work isn’t done as required and team morale is damaged.
Watch our featured video ‘Management Challenges: Inheriting a Poor Performer’
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Blog by Catherine de Salvo, November 2016