Having a team member not perform to our expectations can be one of the most frustrating things when building a team.

If you listened to episode 78, we explored what we can do from a leadership perspective to minimize our impact on their performance. And yet we will still encounter performance problems with our team.

So what now?

In this episode, we’ll explore a process for documenting, confronting, and ultimately fixing their performance issues.

Let’s get started…

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Transcript

Unfortunately, the topic for this episode is one of the more uncomfortable things that we have to do. But we must do it. And this is when team members stop performing or when their performance is not meeting standards. So I just want to throw back to Episode 78, which was like a week or two ago, which I talked about, maybe the problem is you. So let's just imagine a situation where the problem isn't you. Let's be honest, part of the reason for that episode was so that we first look in the mirror, and make sure that we're doing everything we can to ensure success. When we're doing that.

Now we can have this conversation with an open heart because we have indeed done everything that we can do. We've put things in place, we've, you know, establish reasonable KPIs, they have processes to follow. They have feedback loops to ask for for, you know, to give their opinion on things and to give their feedback. And anything that we can improve from a process standpoint. And they have lifelines to reach out to if needed. But yet, still, despite all of that you're going to have, at some point in your career, if you haven't had already a team member which stops performing. So what do you do now, this is important, there's a way to go about this, that will not only give you the peace of mind to do it, in a way that man this can feel so it really can this can be one of the worst parts about being a leader. So let's try to really control it as best we can. And follow a process when we're following process. We're able to work with our full capacities. You know, the process just works. It works for everyone, including us as super high D leaders, even though we're very comfortable in that position. process works. So what do we do we notice a team members not performing, we might notice this at a at a review, we might notice that deadlines are being missed. It's a number of different ways this is going to come up come over our radar, what do we do now.

Now we can have this conversation with an open heart because we have indeed done everything that we can do. We've put things in place, we've, you know, establish reasonable KPIs, they have processes to follow. They have feedback loops to ask for for, you know, to give their opinion on things and to give their feedback. And anything that we can improve from a process standpoint. And they have lifelines to reach out to if needed. But yet, still, despite all of that you're going to have, at some point in your career, if you haven't had already a team member which stops performing. So what do you do now, this is important, there's a way to go about this, that will not only give you the peace of mind to do it, in a way that man this can feel so it really can this can be one of the worst parts about being a leader. So let's try to really control it as best we can. And follow a process when we're following process. We're able to work with our full capacities. You know, the process just works. It works for everyone, including us as super high D leaders, even though we're very comfortable in that position. process works. So what do we do we notice a team members not performing, we might notice this at a at a review, we might notice that deadlines are being missed. It's a number of different ways this is going to come up come over our radar, what do we do now.

So the first thing I recommend doing before we take another step is we start gathering evidence, screenshots, you know, saved files, anything that you can gather, that gives us legitimate evidence of have the fact that they're not performing. If we have tasks that are not marked complete, grab a screenshot tasks or mark complete, you know, days after they were due, you know, most of those project management software's will tell you when it was mark complete. If it was an interaction with a customer or another team member that we have captured, use that you're gathering evidence to not only paint the whole picture for yourself, because that's important when we when we take the time to gather evidence, sometimes we can see where there could be disconnects, we should could see where maybe things aren't clear enough. But also because you really need to arm yourself here. Not like the I'm going to shoot something way. But Arm yourself for the confrontation that's coming. Because unless you have evidence, it will be a confrontation, I can guarantee you that, especially if it's with a very strong willed person on your team. So gather evidence take that time, it shouldn't take you long, but it'll paint that picture. Once you've gathered that evidence, I'd like to get another person involved. If it's a trusted confidant, someone who's either on the level with me or maybe in middle management, maybe upper management. So as the operator you can bring the CEO in and let them know that this is happening. And take the time to review that. Take the time to discuss what could be the problem because ultimately before you move forward, you have a very important decision to make And this is one of those, once you make the decision, there's really no going back, you need to decide is this a rescue or a termination? Sometimes, it's gone too far, and we have to terminate people. I prefer if we can to try to rescue someone, to try to coach them into excellence to give them another onboarding. Because we work so hard to hire people. Hiring is not fun, it takes time, we know that. But we take even longer to install someone into our culture. And then they become a part of a team. And what happens when we let go of team members, it has an impact on the rest of the team. So I'm going to always lean towards rescue with the exception of if someone broke, either this is the second or third time we've had to revisit this same thing that they're not performing on. Or if they broke a rule that is an unforgivable that we need to have those. And they should be in your employee handbook. If you're, if you've written that yet, if you have more than three to four people on your team, and you'll have a handbook, you don't have like a guidelines of what can get you terminated. And in terms of employment, like dude, you got to do that, I would recommend that like soon. Because you need to have a clear not only to your team, but to yourself. Okay. Ultimately, this decision must be made, though, are you going to rescue or terminate. So if we terminate, obviously, there's a process for that. But here, I'm going to go under the scenario that we're going to try to rescue. Because that's actually the more complicated one, that's the one that takes a little bit more work upfront from you, where it could be easier just to terminate someone. I mean, that opens up a whole nother rabbit hole of tasks. But it makes this whole process over. So if I make the decision to rescue someone, I'm going to schedule a meeting with that team member. And I'm going to be out front about it. Like, hey, we need to have a meeting to talk about your performance. I'm not going to sugarcoat it, I'm not going to pretend this is a happy meeting, I'm going to let them know upfront because I don't want them to come into that engagement without knowing that we're talking about their work. I don't want to put them on the defensive, I want them coming in knowing this. So they can take the time to digest that. To come in without being on the defensive. In that meeting, I'm going to present the evidence that I gathered, I'm going to show them not only tell them that we noticed their performance is lagging, but show them they have no argument. Any argument they had is now neutered by the fact that you showed them evidence where they're falling short. So I mentioned this is for a rescue. So you've shown them the evidence. Now we need to come up with a plan to bring them back to get them back where they're supposed to be. So we need a retraining plan, we need to find a way to coach them into excellence. I recommend this to be written down. So I use a 90 day onboarding cycle for new team members. And when we're in a rescue retrain, it's another 90 days. This allows us to do it deliberately have checkpoints along the way. And 90 days is a long time. There's a lot that people can improve in 90 days. The key is that retrain plan that rescue plan is developed with the team member in the room helping to formulate what they need. Why are we doing this? For two reasons. Two reasons is because I want to know the areas of async think they need more knowledge and I want them to have an input into this. But more than anything, I want them to have agency. When they help plan, their retraining. They are part of it. When we allow people to be part of something like that. They now have ownership and ownership is really what you want want at this stage. They feel in control. They feel as though they have a say in this. They do to some extent. It's going to really help through the whole process. It's going to make the likelihood of a positive retraining to be more Much, much more likely, because they have ownership.

And ultimately, that's their plan. They've agreed to it, because they helped put it together. And from that point, it's all about coaching them and monitoring their progress. During that process of creating that 90 day plan, we're outright stating what the goal is, what the objectives are what we want their KPIs to be. It's not going to happen overnight. We know that. But we want to monitor their progress through those 90 days, we don't want to get to the end of the 90 days and pull surprise on them. And they realized they weren't improving their performance enough, we want to give them their desired outcome. Give them their target, so they know what to reach for. Ultimately, I have yet to do this kind of a plan. That over a 90 day cycle, we didn't meet KPI I have yet to have that happen to me.

So first time for everything. So knock on wood. I haven't have had it happen yet. But I've retained a significant number of employees through this process. It works. It works for your perspective, as the operator takes a lot of guesswork, a lot of stress out of this. It also works from the employee perspective. And when all these things are working together, we're working on the team perspective. Keeping cohesiveness, keeping people satisfied in their role. And in the big picture, helping them continue to grow, continue to, to build their own contribution. So they can take things over from us take on bigger and better responsibilities as a company grows, it doesn't mean that someone is going to always, you know, advance up into, you know, management, that will never happen. You'll never have 100% Advance advancement into management from all your team members. But some team members really don't want to be there anyway, they're happy where they are. So let's keep them there. One less stressor that we need in our lives.

So if you have that employee that's not performing and you've realized it's not you, I hope you got a lot out of this. It's definitely something that coaching will help you get through it if you're working with a coach. So do you know if you're experiencing these types of problems on your team, please do feel free to reach out to me. Let's get on a call. Let's figure out how I can help you. Because this is a really, this is an opportunity that you have in front of you right now. And I want you to flip the paradigm from a problem that you have to deal with to an opportunity that you have to show your leadership.