One of the most common mistakes of leaders of all experience levels is failing to act in a timely manner on poor performers. This is certainly consistent with our firm’s findings in interviews and surveys over the past two years, where the winner for number one self-described weakness was delivering constructive feedback. (Choose your label: constructive feedback=the tough performance discussion, robust dialog or candid conversation.)
Apparently, many of us are wired with a naive sense of optimism and a willingness to continue throwing good time and money after bad in the never-ending hope that the poor performer will see the light, make adjustments and turn things around. And it does happen. Rarely. In fact, so infrequently, that in my opinion, the leader is better served operating with the parable of the scorpion and the frog in mind. In case you don’t recall, the scorpion convinces the frog that he has changed and should the frog kindly agree to transporting the scorpion across the pond, the scorpion promises not to sting him. Needless to say, they don’t make it across the pond. With their last gasps, the frog asks why and the scorpion responds with, "It’s my nature."
I suppose I am offering a slightly cynical perspective on the ability of people to change, but it is a perspective that has been well-honed and battle hardened from creating and observing too many mistakes in this area. We spend too much time with the wrong people, trying to turn-them around, help them compensate for their weaknesses and hoping that they will reward our kindness in delivering second, third and fourth chances with remarkable performance heretofore unimaginable. In my best slang, "It ain’t gonna happen."
Before I step further down the path on my guidance for culling poor performers from the herd, let me offer some important caveats. The leader must always be fair in assessing performance, and working with the professional to address performance short-comings. Feedback should be candid, timely and frequent, with both parties always knowing where they stand. The leader should exhaust opportunities to understand the strengths and interests of the individual and if it makes sense, the leader should provide support, training or reassignment. If as a leader, you’ve done your job, exhausted the steps and actions outlined above, the only thing that you should feel guilty about is delaying a single second on eliminating your poor performer.
In case you are not convinced, consider the impact on your team or organization of failing to take proper and timely action on poor performers:
- Everyone is watching how you handle situations with poor performers. Your credibility as a leader is on trial and you best not be found guilty of either treating someone unfairly or failing to deal with the situation in a timely manner.
- Handle poor performers improperly, and you’ve lost the powerful tool of accountability with your team members. You will have no moral high ground to stand upon when imploring the rest of your team members to move faster and work harder. Once you’ve lost credibility as a leader and the notion of accountability has been damaged by your own behavior, your only leadership tool is the weakest of all…trying to lead by authority.
- Your unwillingness to deal in a timely manner with a poor performer directly affects your value proposition with your organization. Once you fail to take action, the poor performance belongs to you, not the individual in question.
- Perpetuating poor performance directly affects the livelihood of everyone around you. Your inability to take proper action increases the risk that the organization will not execute against strategic objectives. Taken to an extreme level, an entire organization that accommodates and sustains poor performers is providing an opportunity for competitors to directly challenge and win against your firm in the market.
Hopefully, the above message is coming through loud and clear. In related reading on the lighter side of this important topic, Greg Strouse offers his own perspective in an amusing but appropriate posting entitled: "You Can’t Fix Stupid."
The bottom-line:
In flipping this issue to the positive side, if you are guilty of any of the above, you can’t go back in time, but you can resolve to improve going forward. Recognize that a key part of your role is to evaluate talent and field a team with the skills, values and attitudes that your firm needs to succeed. If you don’t have performance metrics in place, it’s time to create them. Not overnight, but in collaboration with your team, and in alignment with your firm’s objectives. Set clear objectives with your team members, meet frequently, provide timely feedback on the tough stuff as well as the positives, and when you see a problem, work on it until it is resolved one way or the other. Ultimately, you are the victim if you fail to deal with poor performers or performance problems. Instead of victim, strive to be the beneficiary of a collection of capable individuals working hard towards clear objectives. Trust me, it’s a better place to be.
Mark Twain once said that a cat who sits on a hot stove will never sit on a hot stove again. But he won’t sit on a cold stove either.
The problem isn’t limited to the fact that too many managers don’t talk to people who are things that need serious correction. The problem is that they’re not talking to anyone.
They’re not talking to the people who need slight correction. They’re not talking to the people who need encouragement. They’re not talking to the people who are doing just fine, but need to be told so.
Those are what I call Supervisory Conversations and they are the core of the job for anyone responsible for the performance of a group. Great supervisors have dozens of them every day.
So, why don’t most supervisors do the same? There are a few reasons.
First, we don’t select people for leadership roles based on their aptitude for those roles. Mostly we select them based on their performance in some completely different kind of work. One key aptitude that makes for supervisory success is the willingness to talk to the people who work for you about behavior and performance.
Next, we don’t tell new managers that talking to their people is a key part of the job. We don’t tell them before we promote them and we don’t tell them afterwards. Instead, we expect them to influence behavior through some mystical, magical leadership process.
We don’t teach managers the simple things they can do to defuse the more confrontational aspects of these Supervisory Conversations. Holding more of them is important, but so is technique.
And, last, we don’t hold them accountable for having Supervisory Conversations with the people who work for them. It should be part of the key job tasks and it should be a key part of the manager’s performance evaluation.
An alternative to reaching this point is to have an employee assessment before offering a position to someone.
My company, Enlightened Leadership Solutions, offers these and in a recent project we realized that the bottom 20% of a companies performers shared very similar characteristics and so did the top 20%. That company used our findings to test each potential hire. The people that are getting jobs now have test results similar to the current top performers in the company.
The best part is everyone is happier. Management likes the results, employees like the job and there isn’t any inter-office anger because certain people aren’t pulling their weight.