A new manager inherits an employee with great reviews who's now underperforming. Have a direct conversation acknowledging their past work while making clear that recent performance doesn't meet expectations. The goal is to reset expectations and set them up to succeed.
Chapters
Things we run into a lot is sometimes we as leaders have inherited a low-performing individual, right? We haven't been their leader, but they've been there for 10 years, and we've only been the leader of the department for the last like 3 to 6 months, and we're thinking, oh my gosh, how does this person still work here, right? And then we look at their performance reviews for the last 10 years, and they look amazing, and you're thinking, who was their leader, right? And you're thinking, oh my gosh, how did this person get a good review? So what you got to do in that situation is is you do need to be honest and you need to talk to that person, the low-performing person, and you need to say, "Hey, listen, I need you to understand that despite the fact that it looks like historically you've had really good reviews here, you've had really good performance evaluations, I need for you to understand that in the last 6 months that I've been here, you're not meeting expectations. And, you know, I'm sure there's a lot there, but I need you to understand that because I want to set you up for success."
