Are You Dealing With Under Performing Team Members? Read on...
One of the biggest
challenges most business owners face at one time or another is dealing with a
team member that isn’t pulling their weight or someone that is performing well
below their potential. This can be very frustrating not to mention costly and
extremely time-consuming.
As a Business Coach, a question I frequently get asked is “Is it time to move this person on or should I persevere and address the performance issue?” to be honest I prefer to start with the latter because in most cases when you dig a little deeper it isn’t the team members fault. Let me explain…
In a lot of businesses when someone joins the team their induction to the job goes something like; “Here is your desk, this is your computer (providing someone has remembered to order it) any questions just ask Rodney in the next office.” Is it any wonder that problems follow?
Before attempting to employ anybody some questions that need to be asked are; How well defined is the role? How clear are you on what you expect the person to do?” What Key Performance Indicators do you expect the person to meet? What responsibilities will the person have? How clear are the standards you expect the person to perform at? This is not an exhaustive list yet having clarity on these points will increase your chances of successfully integrating somebody into your company. Without them there may be a gap in expectations between you and the team member.
Once you are clear on the role the next step is to get agreement. What you are looking for here is clarity and buy in. “Here are my expectations” to which you want them to reply “Yes I fully understand those expectations.”
Next we need to have in place a system for providing accountability which simply means, how are you going to keep score. This will normally take the form of some kind of KPI or Key Performance Indicators that are activity based, for instance number of business owners spoken too per day or number of sales meetings booked per day.
Business can be quite predictable and once you understand the numbers in your business it is relatively easy to predict the outcome of a team member’s activity or indeed lack of activity. To keep people informed how they are doing you will need some kind of feedback system, be that a daily or weekly one-one, a scoreboard to which people can refer on a regular basis or a group catch up. A key thought here is to catch people doing things right and feedback how awesome that is as opposed to the more usual approach of catching people doing things wrong. The upside of this approach is that they are more likely to repeat the same behaviour.
Occasionally you may need to provide feedback to correct behaviour, helping the person get back on track and have them take responsibility for achieving their agreed upon goals.
You will often find that by introducing the 4 steps above, team member performance will start to improve massively. An added bonus with the process is that the people who are unable to meet your standards will normally leave of their own accord because they realise they are not up to the job.
To recap, apply these four steps to your hiring process and watch your results improve:
As a Business Coach, a question I frequently get asked is “Is it time to move this person on or should I persevere and address the performance issue?” to be honest I prefer to start with the latter because in most cases when you dig a little deeper it isn’t the team members fault. Let me explain…
In a lot of businesses when someone joins the team their induction to the job goes something like; “Here is your desk, this is your computer (providing someone has remembered to order it) any questions just ask Rodney in the next office.” Is it any wonder that problems follow?
Before attempting to employ anybody some questions that need to be asked are; How well defined is the role? How clear are you on what you expect the person to do?” What Key Performance Indicators do you expect the person to meet? What responsibilities will the person have? How clear are the standards you expect the person to perform at? This is not an exhaustive list yet having clarity on these points will increase your chances of successfully integrating somebody into your company. Without them there may be a gap in expectations between you and the team member.
Once you are clear on the role the next step is to get agreement. What you are looking for here is clarity and buy in. “Here are my expectations” to which you want them to reply “Yes I fully understand those expectations.”
Next we need to have in place a system for providing accountability which simply means, how are you going to keep score. This will normally take the form of some kind of KPI or Key Performance Indicators that are activity based, for instance number of business owners spoken too per day or number of sales meetings booked per day.
Business can be quite predictable and once you understand the numbers in your business it is relatively easy to predict the outcome of a team member’s activity or indeed lack of activity. To keep people informed how they are doing you will need some kind of feedback system, be that a daily or weekly one-one, a scoreboard to which people can refer on a regular basis or a group catch up. A key thought here is to catch people doing things right and feedback how awesome that is as opposed to the more usual approach of catching people doing things wrong. The upside of this approach is that they are more likely to repeat the same behaviour.
Occasionally you may need to provide feedback to correct behaviour, helping the person get back on track and have them take responsibility for achieving their agreed upon goals.
You will often find that by introducing the 4 steps above, team member performance will start to improve massively. An added bonus with the process is that the people who are unable to meet your standards will normally leave of their own accord because they realise they are not up to the job.
To recap, apply these four steps to your hiring process and watch your results improve:
- Clearly
define the role, responsibilities and expectations.
- Gain
agreement to the clarity and buy in from the new team member
- Have
a system for accountability to whatever you have agreed.
- Provide
regular feedback and if needed correction.
One final point with this system in place life was a lot less stressful.
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