A simple diagnostic framework to improve performance management, keep top talent, and fix systemic problems.
Learning to manage underperforming employees is crucial to success as a manager. Yet, doing it poorly can cost you good employees, or worse, the respect and trust of your other employees.
Worse still, there’s a ton of conflicting advice on how best to do it. And it ranges from enlightened to dumpster fire.
If you’re dealing with an underperforming employee, it can be tough to cut through the noise and know where to start. Here’s a simple process that you can easily recall in your next 1:1. But, before we get into that, we need to address the voice in your head.
Stop telling yourself stories
Our brains love a good story. We’ve evolved to share information that way.
The problem is our brains love to use stories to fill in information gaps. And the stories we tell ourselves come with a lot of bias concerning other people.
In psychology, this is known as Attribution Bias. In simple terms, we’re prone to attribute our situations to external factors, while we attribute other people’s situations to internal or character ones.
When we’re late, we know it’s because our kids didn’t wake up on time, or an update reset all the alarms on our phone. When somebody else is late, we assume it’s because they’re a jerk who is always late because it makes them feel superior. Okay, I exaggerated that last one to make my point.
When entering a performance management discussion, you need to set aside all assumptions you have about the person involved. If you go in assuming their performance is lacking because they’re a lazy employee, you’ll never find a favourable resolution.
The whole process turns into a self-fulfilling prophecy where you seek to confirm your bias. If instead, you’re willing to examine external factors with the same rigour, you’re better positioned to get to the heart of the problem.
The Three-Step Diagnostic
In the 1970s, Robert Mager and Peter Pipe developed a diagnostic flowchart for performance management. It’s fine as far as tools go, but it’s complicated. You’re a busy manager; you don’t have the time to run through a 10-plus step flowchart every time you have an underperforming employee. So I’ve pared it down to three simple questions.
These three questions provide an actionable diagnostic framework that helps you get to a solution faster. They’re adapted from my DRIVE framework for fixing employee underperformance. You can grab that for free here. Let’s jump in.
Question 1: Getting some clarity
In my 17 years of leading nimble teams, when I was dealing with an employee who wasn’t living up to my expectations, it was almost always a problem with clarity. It’s the most common problem dragging your employees down. So you need to find out:
Can they describe exactly what’s expected and what success looks like?
I also learned that this lack of understanding occurred when I didn’t explain my expectations or ensure understanding. Eliminating ambiguity from my communications proved the most potent way to manage underperforming employees.
If their answer to this question diverges from your expectations, it means you need to clarify their goals, priorities, and how they know they’ve met or exceeded your expectations. And remember, you always have more control over your messaging than you do over your employees. If there’s a clarity problem, start with what you’re saying and how you say it.
Question 2: Checking for capacity
Once you’ve confirmed that the employee understands what is being asked of them, you need to determine if they were set up for success. A clear understanding is essential, but it is irrelevant if the employee doesn’t have the necessary resources to complete the task.
Do they have the time, tools, training, and authority needed to meet your expectations?
I worked with an organization that had a habit of letting go of underperforming employees instead of managing them. Management would say things like, “They weren’t a good fit,” or “They didn’t try hard enough.” New employees were thrown into the deep end, and, if they didn’t learn to swim, that was their problem.
This sink-or-swim mentality led to a rigid, siloed culture of high performers. Each silo got its work done, but struggled to see outside its operational focus.
To break down these barriers, management should have scheduled regular check-ins with their employees to ask if anything was holding them back. Timely feedback, support and rebuilding department cohesion would have gone a long way.
Most of these problems were systems, not employees. Correcting or replacing an employee will never be as impactful as fixing a systemic problem. That’s the true path to long-term success.
If you need an experienced guide to fix system problems, book a free, no-obligation call with me. In less than 50 minutes, I’ll help you spot what’s really holding your team back—and how to fix it.
Question 3: Confirming commitment
When you’re at the point that neither clarity nor capacity is the cause of the problem, turn to commitment. Not just the employee’s level of commitment, but several corroborating factors.
What would increase their motivation or sense of ownership in this work?
Examine their values, interests and career goals; determine if this project aligns with them. Look at incentives. Does this project come with the visibility and recognition they desire?
This can be the most challenging question to work through, as you may need to balance competing interests between the employee’s needs and the team’s or company’s best interests. Despite the work, getting alignment on this final question helps build a stronger relationship with your team member that’s built on trust and respect.
When to part ways
If, after working through all three questions, the employee performance issues haven’t been addressed, you’re in a strong position to start managing them out of the organization. After you’ve successfully addressed clarity, capacity and commitment, if you’re still stuck in performance management, you’re not firing an underperformer so much as you’re releasing a mismatched candidate.
And if you found this article helpful, don’t miss the next one.
