Best Of: How To Influence An Underperformer
6 May 2019 · 9 min
In this best‑of episode of the Brendon Show, Brendon Burchard delivers a concise, actionable framework for leaders who need to address underperformance on their teams. He begins by reminding listeners that it is a leader’s responsibility to call out bad performance and hold people accountable, rejecting a culture of coddling. He then outlines a four‑step conversational model: 1. Own the responsibility – acknowledge that confronting underperformance is part of the leader’s role. 2. Honor frame – start the dialogue by affirming the person’s value (e.g., “You’re important to me, so let’s talk”). 3. Openness frame – ask about feelings, goals, obstacles, and listen without assumptions, staying open to the individual’s potential. 4. Influence frame – help the person think differently by prompting alternative perspectives and encouraging them to act from their “highest self.” 5. Challenge frame – set a clear demarcation line, requiring a decision to either step up to higher performance or part ways, thereby creating urgency and commitment. Throughout, Burchard stresses the need to avoid premature judgments, to respect the person’s struggle, and to use high‑performance habits as a foundation for sustained improvement. The episode also includes promotional plugs for his High Performance Monthly program and a call‑to‑action for listeners to share the episode on social media.
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Foreign. Hey, my friends, it's Brendon Burchard and welcome to a best of edition of the Brendan show. These best of episodes feature training that I have done live, sometimes online to 10 of thousands of people or live on stage where I was speaking on some stages across the world. Or these might be some of my monthly training programs and highlights of those that I do every single month with our monthly students.
So I know you're going to really.
Enjoy these because these are a little bit more of a deep dive look at some of my training as a personal and professional development trainer. You know, I focus so much on helping you find that deeper level of motivation and, and start practicing some of those high performance habits. Well, you hear me talk about many of those concepts in these special episodes here. These are my best of trainings only and exclusively right here on the Brendon show. So I hope you enjoy them. Please note that as you hear me speak in many of these, you'll hear me reference something because sometimes I'll have been training live or on video or on stage or through a broadcast. So you might not be able to see something, I'm sorry, suggesting or motioning tool or maybe even drawing out on a flip chart or motioning towards on a presentation. But you'll get the gist of it. So make sure you bust out your journal. Take some good notes here because this is really valuable insights on the mindset or the strategies that you need to adopt in order to improve your life. And if you want to go and get more content like this but much more deeper and have more of an interactive relationship with me in this type of training, make sure you join our high performance monthly training program. That's our monthly subscription program where I go live with you and our high performance students every single month and I train on a new topic or a new piece of research that we've created from the high performance institute and I train on that and then I do Q and a and actual live coaching, interactive coaching with people every single month. That's called high performance monthly and you can Access it at brendon.com monthly that's brendon.com forward/monthly b r e n d o n.com monthly to get deeper dive training similar to this. So if you like this, you would love that training program. But without further ado, let's jump in right now to one of the Brendon show's best of trainings.
How do you help somebody who is, you know, hurting or sad or frustrated, you know, when they're on your team or you're married to them and they're somebody who you really care for and their results really matter to your business, to what you're doing. How do you help somebody get better? I mean, how do you call somebody out on when they suck and their performance isn't any good? And like, you're like, oh my God, you have to be better because your results are actually counting on them. If you are leading people and you're the person who's in charge of getting them better results and it really matters if they do better for you because that person is your team member, it leads to sales, leads to something else. I'd like to share a couple quick tips with you, and that's really specific. So you guys are going to want to write this down. Get your journal, get a piece of paper, write it on your phone. But I'm literally going to tell you what to say to people to address the fact that they might be underperforming for you. Meaning if it's a team member and they suck at sales or it's somebody who you just, it's so important they do better and you have to get.
Through to them and you're in that leadership role.
Here's how you do that. First, you have to own the fact that as a leader, it is your job to call out bad performance. It's your job to let people know when they're not hitting their numbers. It's your job to let people know when their negativity is impacting you. It's your job to let them know when they're not showing up as them best selves. And I think what we have right now is a culture that unfortunately leaders and people like us have forgotten that we have to hold people accountable to high standards. And so what is happening right now, everyone wants to be liked and be friends. So leaders are coddling, not challenging. Leaders are forgetting that it is our role, it is our job to challenge people to the highest level of potential that they can reach, the highest level of service they can reach in our teams, our organizations, those who we serve. And it's our job. Challenging, not coddling. So first you have to own it. If you're seeing it, you've got to call it out. You have to step up. Because otherwise people will just underperform forever. They'll not be good for years and years and years and not break through. And you didn't say anything or you just try to keep cheering them on, or you were scared to confront them because they might quit. Your team or they might leave. It's your job to call it out. You have to own that as leader. So here's how you have that conversation. First, you have to approach them from a place of honor. So here's a simple phrase. I want you to say this to people. You lead all the time. I just told this to an audience here in Las Vegas today. And that is always start that conversation by saying to the person explicitly, hey, you're important to me. So I want to have this conversation with you. It's like a magical phrase. Hey, you're important to me. So I want to have this conversation because I know you guys know this. The number one reason people leave jobs around the world is because they don't feel appreciated, recognized, or respected. And so it's your job to approach someone and say, hey, you're important to me. So let's have this conversation. Then the next part of the conversation, you do this. You ask them how they're feeling, what are their goals, and what is it they're doing to meet them. Super simple. It's like, okay, I've seen you've been struggling here, or I've heard that you want to go to another level. How are you feeling? What's up with you? What are you trying to achieve? What's getting in your way? And I know that sounds so simplistic, but here's what we're doing. The first frame we're opening is the frame of honor and respect. Hey, you're important to me. So let's have this conversation. The second frame we're opening is an openness to learning. And this is important for everybody. So really tune into this. This is. This is something I didn't talk about in my book, High Performance Habits. It is a chapter. It actually didn't make the book. I wish I could have got it in there. And that is, how do you influence an underperformer in a specific way? So you start with the honor frame, which is, you're important to me. Then you do the openness frame, which is how you feeling. What are your goals? What are you doing to meet them? And you just listen. And here's what's the most important thing. Leaders, you cannot assume why they're underperforming. Here's what happens. Leaders tend to know their people well. So they say, well, I know she's not going to deliver. He's never going to show up. They're not going to be great. And so you discount people and your assumptions about how they performed. A year ago, six Months ago, three months ago, have locked you into a belief about them. And I always say, never ever, ever, ever, ever question the potential of God's children. Never question the potential of somebody else. Listen, you sucked at some point, too. And you struggled at some point, too. And some of you are doing that right now. And so you can't be just judging other people all the time, because you've been there, too. We've all been down and out. So we have to honor their struggle as much as we hope they honor ours. And so instead of saying, well, they're an underperformer and they suck because these seven reasons, their personality is bad, or this or that, no, stay open. It's the job of the leader to stay open to the future potential of their people. Write it down. It's the job of the leader to stay open to the future potential of their people. And so what you say is, you're important to me. You know, I want to have a conversation. How are you feeling? What are your goals? How are you trying to get there? Once you do that, now you get to step in that leadership frame where now you do what we talk about in the book, High Performance Habits, we talk about setting influence, and that's how we start challenging how they think and we start offering other ways. Well, what if you thought about this way? Or what other ways could you think about it? What other ways could you approach about it? You know, if you were thinking about this as your most courageous or confident self, how would you go about it? And you just stay open. But now you're prompting them to think differently, because that's what leaders also do. You have to teach people to think differently. And there's a chapter on there, on influence, where I talk about the first thing you have to do is help people think differently. So you have to get them thinking about themselves differently, thinking about their contributions differently, thinking about their connections, how they treat other people differently. So if you can help somebody, start stepping through that, what have you thought about this way? What's another way to think about it? What's another way to approach it?
If you thought about it from your.
Highest self, what would you do? When you do that, you gain leadership and influence with them. If you don't influence how people think strategically and purposefully, you're not leading. Well, then we move into the challenge frame. This is the last piece. Challenge frame, what does that mean? Challenge frame is now you challenge how they show up. So you say things like, you know, hey, Susan, you know, as you're sharing all this with me, and we're thinking through it. At some point, if you are going to go to another level, you're gonna get better results. You and I both know you kind of have to draw a line in the sand. And this is what I tell leaders all the time. I just share this with a group of 500 people right here in Las Vegas. You have to set a demarcation line for people. You have to say, listen, you have to make a choice today. It's a decision. You can either stay as you are, keep getting the same results, and do what you're doing. And if you have no bigger ambitions for yourself or your family and you're just good at home stasis right now, that's cool. But I can't really lead you anymore and I can't mentor you and I can't take you to another level. So I'm going to step back and I'm going to let you do your thing. But if you're committed to making this line right here today, and you're committed to owning a bigger dream, owning a bigger ambition, owning something better for your family, for what you want in your life, then here's what I'm going to do for you. I'm going to be there. I'm going to cheer you on. But you need to make a decision right now that you have to show up better, show up more often, more consistent, greater levels of work, a greater level of just, I mean, grit to show up each and every day. So you got to make decision. If you want my support, you have to go to another level. And we're going to have to work harder and get you right size. We have to get you right on the right track. Or I'll just, you know what? Go do your thing. Or if you want to quit or you want to leave or you just don't want me to bother you, that's okay, too. But I need to work with people who are willing to go to the next level. That's your job as a leader, is to challenge people to show up differently with a higher willingness to go to the next level.
All right, my friend, I hope that you enjoyed that best of episode. Was that inspiring? Were you fired up? Did you love it? If you did, make sure you do me a favor. Go out on social media somewhere and share that episode. Just go out, post it somewhere, post yourself, listening to it. Make sure you hashtag the Brendon show, because when you do that, I can look you up and we can find you on Instagram and post that on social media and sometimes we do all expense paid trips to people we find. We just randomly select people, we send them gifts, autograph books, swag T shirts, all expense paid trips to some of my seminars. So make sure you let us know, share what you thought about this episode out there on the social media worlds and then we can find you and celebrate you. And also I would love to invite you to join us in our high performance monthly program. So just go to brendan.com monthly. That's brendon.com monthly. That's where we do deeper dive trainings like you just heard. But we do that every single month and there's some live Q and A there and I do some giveaways and we give students in that monthly program tickets to my seminars and some extra special training on leadership. So make sure you check it out@brendon.com monthly. I appreciate you being part of this community of so many people dedicated to finding that deeper drive of motivation and practicing high performance habits so that they can become extraordinary in their careers. In your personal life, in your health, you can live an extraordinary quality of life. And sometimes you just need a little bit more training and a little bit more nudge, a little bit more energy, a little bit more drive and consistency. And I'm hoping that being part of this community with the Brendon show, I'm providing that to you in some way. So thank you, my friend, for listening. I look forward to seeing you or listening with you on the next episode of the B R E N D O N show.