Two in the morning.
Look at that guy at the bar.
Slumped over. Drunk out of his mind. Red in the eyes. He mumbles. Stumbles. Falls. Wobbles to his feet. Orders another round. Just one more.
Huh.
What does that guy at the bar have to do with managing an underperformer?
Everything.
Here’s the real effing question
Underperformers hurt. They hurt teams. They hurt productivity. They hurt themselves. That’s a lot of hurt. Their managers feel the pain, too. In many ways.
But no time for complaining or shaming or blaming. A good people manager will take action to manage an underperformer. Ironic. Isn’t it? If the people manager had been managing the underperformer all along, well, the underperformer would be, at the very least, a good enough performer.
Reality has entered the blog post.
In spite of a people manager’s best intentions, crap happens. The manager gets overloaded. In the meantime, a team member’s performance begins to decline. The manager is juggling a great many things. The decline continues. One day, the catalyst happens. You know, that missed deliverable, the earsplitting escalation or that ugly metric on the team performance dashboard. All of a sudden, except a gradual decline is not all of a sudden, the manager has to manage an underperformer.
To reiterate, a good people manager will take action to manage an underperformer. An exceptional people manager will take the same action and ask the effing question: How in the eff did this happen?
Poor return on your investment
Underperformance is an expensive problem.
Time and money are invested to source, interview and hire the person for the role. Time and money are invested to onboard and ramp up the person. In most cases, that’s a sound investment. Most employees turn out to be productive. Not in this case. The low performer yields a negative return on our investment.
Let’s look at our options:
- Rehabilitate
- Terminate
- Ignore
All three options carry added expenses. Rehabilitation takes time and money. Termination may create liabilities for the company. Ignoring the underperformance problem is the highest cost of all. Let’s be real. We’ve all seen (mediocre) managers sweep underperformers under the rug. The result is always the same. The team suffers. Productivity drops. The business loses.
Take action but not that action
Rehabilitation of the underperforming employee is the best option. We’re not going to ignore the problem. Nor are we going to terminate our team member. Not at this point. Aside from potential liabilities from an immediate termination, taking that action now is morally wrong. Someone, a person, a fellow human being, is struggling on the job. Rehabilitation gives our team member a fair chance to raise their performance to an acceptable level. Termination is on the table, but only if the underperforming team member is unable to demonstrate consistent improvement.
Wait a minute
So, are you saying rehabilitation with a knowing wink and sly grin? Because everybody knows that once an employee is subject to any sort of performance improvement plan, the inevitable end state is termination.
Not always.
In my 10+ years of people management experience, I’ve seen performance improvement plans go several ways. Some underperforming employees show improvement, becoming consistently good performers in the long run. Others do the double dip, improving for a short period of time until their performance takes another slide. Of course, others never show enough improvement, ending in termination.
The actions taken by people managers to rehabilitate underperformers can make a difference on the outcome of a performance improvement plan. By definition, we’re managers of people. Therefore, we have an obligation to try our best, coaching and supporting our struggling team members through their difficulties.
An interlude with a familiar stranger
Four in the afternoon.
Look at the woman at the coffee shop. Tense. Nervous. Slumped over her laptop. Squinting. Thinking. Peeks at her phone. Sips her latte. Shuts laptop. Opens laptop. Peeks at her phone again. Wants to scream. Doom scrolls instead. Avoiding. She’s avoiding.
What does the woman at the coffee shop have to do with managing an underperformer?
You’ll see.
Beware of the temptation
Company policies on performance management vary. Most companies have some manner of a HR-driven performance improvement plan (PIP). It’s tempting to pass on an underperforming employee to HR, punting the problem away.
Stop.
Don’t do it. Not until you make an effort to coach your team member to improve their performance. Once you go to HR, you’re setting the stage for termination. You’re not ready to go there. Like it or not, the performance problem happened under your watch. You have a responsibility to help your struggling team member improve before you take the case to HR.
Ready, set, rehabilitate
We’re moving forward with rehabilitation. Follow these steps to rehabilitate your underperforming team member:
- Investigate performance concerns
- Hold initial discussion
- Administer performance improvement plan
- Check-in to review progress
- Take the next steps
- Answer the effing question
Investigate performance issue
Your team member is a low performer. How do you know? Are people on the team complaining? Have you seen signs of low performance? Are their tasks and projects dragging on?
You need evidence to support your supposition. Let’s say your team uses Jira or a similar tool for issue tracking. Review the data to corroborate your hunches. Identify specific examples of subpar performance, including metrics.
Data only tells part of the story. Ask your direct reports and other leaders across the org for their feedback on the struggling employee. Similar to the data, get specific examples, focusing on the employee’s failings to deliver on tasks and projects. Document all of the evidence to wrap up your investigation. Now you have a document to reference throughout the performance management process.
Hold initial discussion with employee
This meeting serves a couple of purposes. First, you’re notifying the employee about their subpar performance. Second, you’re giving them an opportunity to tell their side of the story.
Be direct when you put them on notice. Cite clear examples of underperformance. For each example, make the point: This is how you didn’t meet my expectations. This is how you can meet my expectations. Convey how their underperformance has been hurting the team. State the consequences of continued underperformance.
Shift to an empathetic tone when you listen. Give the employee time to speak freely. Listen to their reasons for their performance struggles. Remember the drunken guy and anxious woman from earlier in this post? Either one of those people could be your underperformer, struggling with personal issues outside of work. Or maybe aspects of the job have been affecting their performance, factors like feeling overloaded with work, lack of direction, poor time management or knowledge gaps. You won’t have the full picture until you hear their side of the story.
To end the initial discussion, show your support for your struggling team member. No blaming or shaming. Your role is to coach your employee to improve their performance. You put them on notice. You provided examples. You set clear expectations. Now, we need to take action on a performance improvement plan.
Administer performance improvement plan
You completed the initial performance management discussion. The employee should have a clear understanding of their areas for improvement and your expectations for improved performance. Time to create an informal performance improvement plan. Not to be confused with the official HR PIP, this plan will be administered by you. The goal of this improvement plan is to avert the need for taking the case to HR.
The employee needs to be responsible for creating this plan, not you. Think about it. All employees are driving their own careers. This particular employee has been struggling. They need to take the initiative to get their career back on track, showing us their plan for improvement.
Your role, as a people manager, is to administer the plan. Provide the employee with a document template consisting of a timeline, action items, measurable outcomes, milestones and due dates. The employee will use the template to create their improvement plan. Review a draft of the plan with the employee, checking for achievable improvement milestones and due dates within a realistic timeline. You’ll oversee the plan by setting a regular schedule for check-ins with the employee to monitor for progress and blockers.
Check-in to review progress
Use the check-in meetings to review progress on the improvement plan with the employee. Hold them accountable for their performance. Focus on each milestone, ensuring the employee is demonstrating the required improvement. Provide feedback, encouragement and coaching. Take notes during the meeting. Be diligent about the notes. If this case goes to HR, you need to be prepared with documentation. Just as important: Commend the employee for any notable progress, encouraging them to build upon their improvements. Email the meeting minutes from the check-in to the employee. Include any follow-up actions in the email.
Take the next steps
The employee has completed your informal performance improvement plan. Now, you need to make an assessment. You’ve had several weeks of meetings. You have notes. You have the documented milestones. Review the data. Has the employee consistently demonstrated the required improvements? Great. Job well done. For follow-up, keep an eye on their performance. Many employees will show improvement for a short period of time, only to revert back to their previous struggles. Has the employee failed to show the required improvements? You’ve done all you can to help them. Escalate the case to HR. In all likelihood, HR will put the employee on an official PIP.
Answer that effing question already
Wow. That’s a lot of work. Isn’t it? You’ve used your valuable time to directly manage an underperforming employee. All of those meetings. Copious notes. Mental toil. Plus, all of the other work on your plate.
We’re not done yet.
We hold post-mortems for technical incidents. We need a post-mortem for this people incident. Nothing too complicated. Ask yourself one question: How in the eff did this happen?
Seriously.
Because you do not want to go through the performance improvement process again. Not if you can prevent it.
Asking that effing question will trigger probing questions. Questions like: Has this employee always been an underperformer? What did we miss during the hiring process for this employee’s role? Is anybody else on the team slipping as a performer? How can I do better as a people manager to keep my entire team performing at a consistently good level?
Improvement is a two-way street. Make an effort to practice what you expect of your team. Look for your own opportunities to improve your people management skills.
Closing thoughts
You can find scores of articles online about how to manage an underperforming employee. Most articles are dry and informative, never delving into the interpersonal relationship aspects of performance management, especially as it relates to the relationship between the manager and the employee. This post is centered around the King’s Bookstore T-Shirt for a good reason. Writing from a manager’s perspective, managing a performance improvement plan is like living through a horror story.
I’m not talking slasher films. I’m talking psychological horror of the Stephen King variety.
As the performance improvement process moves along, a compassionate people manager wrestles with moral ambiguities. At work, their job is to represent the best interests of the business. If an employee isn’t productive, the manager has a responsibility to terminate them. Privately, the manager feels a sense of unease gnawing at their soul, bordering on disgust. Their employee has a family and problems and hopes and dreams like anyone else. They are a nice person. They could be your friend, family or neighbor. Could be? Maybe that person is your personal friend. Deep down inside, a compassionate manager feels a little sick, knowing they might have to terminate that person.
But you gotta suck it up.
This is business.
Bury those personal feelings.
That employee isn’t performing.
You have to do your job as a manager.
Fear, another dominant theme of horror, stalks the underperforming employee. Once an employee is called out for underperformance, fear and anxiety take hold. They know. Everybody knows. Failure to improve your performance will result in unemployment. Every interaction with their manager has the employee on edge, wondering if they are one day closer to their last day of employment. It’s a terrible feeling for them, knowing the consequences of unemployment. There’s so much uncertainty. Sleepless nights. Real horror.
As a people manager, I’ve experienced the horrors of performance management. Sometimes, the story has a happy ending. Sometimes. Other times, well, we have to make those tough decisions. It never gets any easier.
