Episode 411: Thinking Time - Managing Team Member Underperformance
A manager's framework for fixing underperformance: first establish clear expectations, then provide training and coaching. Ask team members to write down what they think their role is and compare it to yours. Most problems resolve before you need to change compensation.
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Hey everyone, I always like to try to do these Friday Thinking Time sessions. We're usually 2 to 3 weeks, maybe 4 weeks ahead because I'm sharing with you things that are happening kind of real time that happen with conversations or maybe even things that happen in our own business, but conversations with clients, et cetera. And oftentimes I get inspired maybe to do these episodes if I hear or have a similar conversation 2 to 3 times in a week. And that's the case with today. And so, one of the members that I was having a conversation with last week initially, he was talking to me about a pretty substantial compensation change and specifically was talking about adding in a performance incentive program. Now, who is not against you know, having a performance incentive program for their employees. I don't think anybody, any business owner is really against that. And, but one of the kind of radical parts that he was going to do was make a percentage, you know, fairly substantial percentage change decrease in base salary and then augment that with an increase with commissions, bonuses, et cetera, so they could actually earn more than what they currently were. And I, you know, did not initially just say, hey, I don't think I would do that. Let's have a conversation about it. But more so, part of coaching— this is hopefully good for your team members as well— is that if you can help someone to arrive at a conclusion themselves as opposed to just giving it to them, it will resonate with them more. And so after some poking and some prodding, the main thing that we ended up having a discussion about is what, how, and will. What, how, and will. More importantly, what he was actually trying to do was solve a problem of underperformance. But after having a discussion with him, the very first thing I went to was how do you know, how do you know that you know that your entire staff know what is expected of them? So that's key number 1. Are you clear? Do they have very clear expectations of what you want them to do? And after 15 to 20 minutes, he came to the conclusion himself and said, you know what, I don't know. I don't know if I have the level of confidence that I need to be clear that everybody knows exactly what is expected of them. Number 2, if they know what is expected of them, do they know how to do it? And that's where training and coaching come into play. I like to think about training initially as when you're training on— especially when you're training on new things. And then coaching is helping someone to be able to take that thing that they just learned and be able to implement it in their day-to-day. And so if you're training a basketball team on how to run a new, you know, ball screen action, well, you've got to train them initially on what the play is, and then everything else from that point is traditional coaching, of course. How you cut hard to the basket, how you, you you know, run off of a ball screen in a sports sense, on and on and on. So do they know what is expected of them? Number 1. Number 2, do they know how to do it? And then number 3, if it's not one of those 2 things and those 2 things are very clear, then they just have the will. And some people don't. But I will tell you, in my experience, I believe 90% of the time, we can stop at the what. They, we think that they are very clear on what's expected of them. But when you ask and you kind of maybe even, and I'll give you a tactic or maybe a strategy to be able to use, or maybe I should say a test to be able to use for this to know. And here's what I would do. If you want to be sure that your team members know exactly what's expected of them, in your next one-to-one, ask them to write down on a piece of paper, what are your clear expectations here in your role? And what you want them to answer is, however you have set it up, whether you have clear expectations weekly, monthly, Quarterly, annually, maybe even daily, or maybe you have all of those, or maybe potentially you've said, here's your monthly clear expectations and your annual clear expectations. However you have set it up, have them to write it down. Do it with all of your team members and then basically compare the two. Compare what it is that you wrote down whenever you do it This is exactly what Sally needs to do. This is exactly what John needs to do. This is what they wrote down. And the closer those two things are, the better off you're gonna be to be able to help develop and even specifically help underperforming team members in your organization. So I always go back to what, how, and then do they have the will? But I'm not really not even gonna get into the will part. Because most things can be solved with the first two. Do they know exactly what's expected of them? And then if they do, what have we done? Have I allocated my time or a manager's time? Have we allocated enough time to the training and to the coaching so we can hold them accountable to it? It's hard to hold somebody accountable to something that they just don't know how to, how to do. In my, again, basketball analogy, I was watching practice a couple weeks ago, and coaches were holding one of the players accountable for messing up some action. Well, the player said, I don't know this play. He had missed a couple practices due to football, I believe. And they said, oh, oh, we have— okay, we haven't, we haven't gone over that with you. And so they went over it with him, and they were trying to hold him accountable to something he didn't know how to do. How often is that the case in business? So if you have someone who is not performing at the level that you want them to perform, okay, you're trying to get a lift. I'm not saying compensation and performance incentives is a bad thing. It can be a really fantastic option to choose. But you first have to know, all right, am I clear that they know exactly what I want them to do? Do they know how to do it? Do they have the will? To supplement this podcast, I did a solo podcast back. We'll link it in the show notes. But if you go back in the archive of the episodes, I did one on OTA, and I talk about clear outcomes, clear transparency, and clear accountability that go along with what's called a performance culture. And so, this episode and that episode really dovetail. Nicely together. So if you want to go back and check that episode out, all right everyone, have a great day. And until next time, lead well and go be great.
