Managing an Underperformer Who Thinks They’re Doing Great
Author: Liz Kislik
When you become a manager, your hope is that everyone on your team will be a star performer. But unfortunately, that’s not always the case. People underperform at work for a variety of reasons—from not understanding a project’s objectives, to not feeling motivated or valued, to not having the support they need to succeed. As a leader, it’s your responsibility to identify what’s holding them back and help them find ways to improve.
Here are five things you can do to help underperformers move forward.
Learn More About the Underperformer
If you don’t understand an underperformer’s goals and interests, it will be impossible for you to determine why they’re falling short in their role. Even if this person has been on your team for a while, people’s motivations change as circumstances evolve. Set aside time to directly ask what’s currently driving them. This is especially important if you’re working in a hybrid or remote environment, where you may not have the benefit of casual, in-person contact to pick up details about family, hobbies, or past work successes.
You should also check in about their preferences regarding how they work. For example, do they prefer strict deadlines to structure their often-interrupted workdays or more flexible deadlines to help them deal with home obligations like child- or eldercare? Based on their answers, modify your management approach to match their needs. For instance, you might learn that they miss working side by side with colleagues and would perform better if they were assigned to projects that involved more regular interaction.
Revisit Your Expectations
Once you better understand the underperformer’s motivations, you should also reflect on what you want most from the employee, and why you feel you’re not getting it. Start by reviewing your recent directives and whether your communications about what’s expected have been clear and consistent from the beginning. This is something you do with underperformers in any context, but if you work in a remote or hybrid environment, it’s even more important to ask yourself whether your statements have been ambiguous. Part of this process is separating out whether your dissatisfaction is with their work products or with the way they deliver.
If their style or approach is the problem, check to see if you’re expecting them to work the way you do. If that’s the case, let go of those expectations and dispassionately assess their real strengths and capacities for contributing to the team’s work.
If you suspect the underperformer’s difficulties come from insufficient experience, specific skill deficits, or a lack of business or organizational acumen, consider whether they need training or to partner with a more experienced colleague.
Level with Them and Be Specific
Once you better understand the underperformer (and your expectations), you need to provide direct feedback. Many people who aren’t doing well have a vague feeling that something is wrong, but don’t really know which of their behaviors isn’t working. For example, telling a team leader that they need to be a better listener doesn’t help them understand specifically what they need to do differently. It’s much more helpful to explain that when they turn away during video conferences or change the subject while team members are speaking, the team loses trust and confidence in them. The feedback gives them the opportunity to actively practice modifying those behaviors.
Help Them Learn How to Improve Their Own Performance
As much as possible, use questions to encourage them to self-diagnose and to project into their own future: “How will this experience set you up to do better in the future?” I often ask coaching clients, “Why do you think I’m asking you this?” to encourage them to reach their own conclusions, rather than telling them what I have observed. Giving them an opportunity for self-discovery can provide a kind of aha moment that directly telling them your thoughts won’t. This will also help you avoid micromanaging, which is a significant temptation when you’re trying to be extremely clear about expectations.
Stay in Close-Enough Contact
It’s on you as a manager to stay in regular touch with underperformers and to keep them in the loop. Don’t assume that no news is good news. After you’ve given an underperformer candid feedback, if they don’t hear from you, they may start to worry that you’re ignoring them because you’ve written them off, and their performance can deteriorate further. Schedule regular meetings to talk about their progress.
If you’ve asked them to keep you up to date on their progress, make clear how you want them to do that. If they tend to use email, but you’re awash in email and respond better to texts or Slack messages, tell them that. And don’t rely only on video meetings, where the lack of true eye contact can make it seem like you’re getting nonverbal clues when you’re not. If you’re concerned that you’re not getting a good read on your remote team member’s state of mind, plan to have at least some of your interactions by phone and listen carefully. The tone of their voice may give you more clues about what needs intervention.
Firing with Compassion
by Joel Peterson
When an underperformer isn’t receptive to feedback or isn’t making improvements, there may come a time where you need to let that employee go. It’s a difficult decision, and an even more difficult conversation. Here’s how to navigate the process with fairness and empathy.
Prepare and Practice
Rehearsing for difficult conversations may be the single best way to prepare for them. Before entering a termination discussion, I engage in a series of self-talk exercises designed to reinforce the necessity of the action and put myself in the right mindset. Some of them emphasize the need to act with grace and gravitas. (Letting this person go is one of my most important tasks. I will do it with the utmost sensitivity.) I also remind myself that as a manager, I deserve some of the blame for the person’s failure, owing to poor hiring or coaching. (This results from my mistakes as well as theirs.) And, to avoid becoming defensive, I focus on the optimal outcome. (I want to help this person find a place where they can maximize their potential—a place that better fits their skills, personality, ambitions, and style of working.)
Deliver the Message Immediately and Clearly
When you’ve decided to let someone go, schedule a meeting and deliver the message within the first 30 seconds of sitting down: “We’ve decided to make a change/terminate your position/replace you.” To drag it out—which many managers do out of discomfort at delivering painful news—invites misunderstanding and awkwardness. It also gets in the way of moving promptly to next steps—organizing the departure in a way that is most helpful to the employee and least disruptive to the organization.
Don’t Overexplain the Decision
A termination meeting is a time to communicate a decision—not to debate it, defend it, or negotiate it. It’s natural for people being fired to seek more information—to repeatedly ask variants of the question Why? You needn’t offer an elaborate answer; instead, give a simple explanation for the decision—whether it’s due to performance issues, needed cutbacks, or the elimination of roles or functions. If you’ve done a reasonable job of providing feedback, coaching, and context on the dynamics of your workplace before this conversation, the employee already has sufficient information. If the person insists on defending themself, avoid the temptation to engage.
Be Human
Good bosses aren’t automatons. They should recognize that employees who are being fired will feel an unpleasant mix of emotions. They should listen patiently to any reactions and carefully calibrate their responses. It’s natural to feel sympathy or regret that you’re firing someone, but expressing those emotions may encourage an attempt to leverage sympathy and debate the decision. As they deal with their own emotions, bosses must recognize the difference between empathy and compassion (which are useful in this context) and sympathy or sorrow (which can be counterproductive).
Excerpted from the article “Firing with Compassion”.
Managing underperformers isn’t easy, but using specific, road-tested techniques to help them improve will strengthen not only their performance but their relationship with you as well.
QUICK RECAP
Underperformers need guidance on how they can get back on track and improve. Here are five things you can do:
Learn more about the underperformer. Aim to understand their goals and interests, so you can determine why they’re falling short.
Revisit your expectations. Reflect on what you want from the employee, and why you feel you’re not getting it.
Level with them and be specific. Give them direct feedback, so they can modify their behaviors.
Help them learn how to improve their own performance.Use questions to encourage them to self-diagnose and reach their own conclusions.
Stay in close-enough contact. Schedule regular meetings to talk about their progress.
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