Episode 56- Finding Ways to Help Underperforming Employees
Speaker 1:
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Lou Quinto:
Hi. Welcome to Q&A on Breakthrough Leadership. I'm Lou Quinto.
Craig Anderson:
And I'm Craig Anderson.
Lou Quinto:
In today's episode what we're going to do Craig is, you and I have found that this is an issue particularly well, even before COVID times, but now, especially during COVID times, it's finding ways to help underperforming employees, because more than anything right now, during these times if we've got an employee and they're underperforming, it's better to try to get them up to snuff versus unfortunately going through, a let go and then hiring somebody new and bringing them on and training them. And so Craig and I thought today that it would be good to talk about ways to help those underperforming employees. What we'll do is we'll cover three specific areas. The first one is taking action as soon as you notice the under-performance taking place. I think Craig, you said on multiple occasions that you had a boss once that said problems don't age well, so I think you can bring up that quote again. Well, you don't even have-
Craig Anderson:
No. I don't need to. [Crosstalk 00:01:34]. There was my whole topic.
Lou Quinto:
The second area we're going to talk about is, meeting with the employees to talk with them about their job performance. And then the third area we're going to talk to is about establishing the cause of the under-performance, because if you can get to that root cause you'll be able to solve that problem a lot quicker. So Craig, why don't you talk to us about taking actions as soon as possible since you had a good learning experience about this?
Craig Anderson:
Yeah. Let me tell you about this thing my old boss used to say. [crosstalk 00:02:06]. No it's okay.
Lou Quinto:
But I did it intentionally.
Craig Anderson:
Yeah. Thank you. Now that's twice. Okay. So here's what we need to do. One, this is so simple, but so difficult. We were talking to somebody at one point about how kind of growing up as a Gen Xer and being kind of between the old boomer leadership mentality and the new kind of millennial generation mentality. I've been on both sides of this and this whole idea of, well we sit down once a year and review your performance. Who wants to do that? We need to do it more frequently. Get in touch with your employees, set up monthly meetings to talk about progress on how they're doing along the job. We used to set it up, so we met with them at least once a quarter, met with them every month to check in, but then kind of did a mini review every quarter to say, "All right, how did you do on your goals this quarter? What are you focusing on next quarter?" So it's that constant continuous feedback that's so important to help employees understand where they're at and what's going on.
Lou Quinto:
Right, yes. And the other thing too is, it's so important that we think is, because someone has been in a job for a period of time and they start to underperform that there may be some other areas that are affecting it, but a lot of times, Craig, it's just going back and retraining them in specific areas of their job, because they have gone through the training once we think, okay, one and done. But you and I had both taken classes. Back at school, I think I took Econ 101, three times. And it wasn't because I liked the professors so well that I took it three times, it was because I didn't get it the first two times. Unfortunately in a lot of situations with, on the job performance and if training is involved, sometimes it's that training both formal and on the job training where they just didn't get it right the first time.
Lou Quinto:
I definitely recommend that when it comes to taking action as soon as you see it happen, put that in the back of your wheelhouse so that you can consider retraining. And the other thing too is, obviously once you've seen that the employee is underperforming, you've got to meet with the employee to discuss the situation that you have, because if you [inaudible 00:04:26]... Well, I'm going to put it to you this way. Most of us don't like conflict. And when it comes to working with an employee who was underperforming, sometimes a leader will consider that it's going to be a conflicting situation or there's going to be conflict and there's going to be feelings and emotions. It's going to be up and I'm going to avoid it.
Lou Quinto:
No, don't. You need to meet with that employee and you need to talk to them about their job performance. And the first thing you want to do is, you want to mention that I see our numbers have been down the last quarter, what's going on? And at that point, folks shut up and listen, because you need to find out what's going on from their side. Don't try to fix a problem that you don't know what the cause of the problem is. You need to listen to them because if you don't, you may miss the cause entirely and you'll come up with a solution to a problem that doesn't even exist.
Craig Anderson:
Yeah, no, absolutely. I think because of the fear of conflict or just because you've let it linger too long, these conversations can be really difficult and you want to kind of come in wagon the finger and you really have an opportunity to listen to what the employee is going on. Because you don't know what's going on in their personal life, how can you tee up? What structures do you need to put in place with them? So I think it's important not only to help them see what it is they're trying to do, but then sit down and figure out, what are we trying to achieve here? Let's circle back on the goals, short-term, long-term and really focused on what we need to do to start moving you back onto the roadmap.
Lou Quinto:
Right. Yes. I pushed ahead a little bit for the third area that we're going to talk about, which was establishing the cause, but it's part of that meaning. And so you and I have talked about, which comes first the chicken or the egg here? But I think in this particular instance until you meet with somebody, you won't know what the cause is, which leads us into the next third areas. You need to establish the cause of the under-performance because what ends up happening, Craig and you, and I both know is that if one, if you're not specific in here's where you are underperforming, as opposed to just going in and saying, "You're doing a bad job." But, what do I have to do, to do a good job? It's not tangible.
Lou Quinto:
And so you need to establish the cause of the under performance and it needs to be specific because in order to put together a good plan of action, it has to be based upon something that is specific and most importantly Craig, quantifiable. So that at the end of a week, at the end of the month, at the end of the quarter, you and I can sit down together and look at it objectively and agree that my performance is up. So, I hate it when someone says, "You just need to do a better job." Well, help me here folks, what is a better job? I don't know Craig. What have you found?
Craig Anderson:
Well, I think Where you have quantifiable things, it's really helpful to be specific on what it is. So if it's a performance metrics type thing, hold times, answer rates, number of sales, it's important to get to the quantifiable ones. I think the hard ones are where it's behavioral issues, where they're abusive to other employees, where they're difficult to work with or whatever that might be. Those are the really difficult ones to tackle because you want to say, "Just be less abusive." How do you measure somebody on the jerk scale? And that's a tougher one because really the quantifiable metric-
Lou Quinto:
[inaudible 00:08:05] Craig. I think I've got a measurement for you here on the jerk scale. So hold on a second. Let me laugh.
Craig Anderson:
It's really hard because, then the quantifiable thing is, am I still getting complaints about you?
Lou Quinto:
Right.
Craig Anderson:
So, those were the ones I dreaded the most. It's easy enough to say, "I need you to do more of this or less of this," where it's behavioral, that where it becomes a much more difficult thing to do, but it is not that we're specifically talking about this today, but it's why it's so important to be clear what your culture is, because then you can point to the metric that says, "This is the kind of place we work. This is how we treat people here. And the way your behavior is working is not okay. So I need you to change how that behavior works," but it is much more difficult to handle those issues I think, in the work place when it's behavioral.
Lou Quinto:
Yeah. And the other thing too it's important also when you've got a situation like this is that sometimes that particular task or assignment may not be what is in that person's forte. And it may be difficult for them to get there, but they're still a valuable member of the team. So perhaps you might want to look at assigning a new task to them and see how they take charge to give them that learning experience so that this way they can get over all of that. And they can associate their job to the new task and you can start to give them that encouragement that they're doing things well, and then put them back on the road of the old task that they're doing. So, sometimes we just need a diversion every now and then, but if a person is... If they're worth keeping around, we need to find a way to make sure that they stay.
Craig Anderson:
Absolutely, where can we put them where they can bring the highest contribution to the team?
Lou Quinto:
Yeah.
Craig Anderson:
And maybe that's not the job we hired them for, but we found something that we can put them in the place to actually be a major contributor and a place where they can feel like they are part of the mission of the organization and driving things forward. Don't you think?
Lou Quinto:
Absolutely. So, Craig, what are your key takeaways when it comes to ways to help underperforming employee?
Craig Anderson:
Well, I think the keys to how we help under underperforming employees is we don't let it fester, we see these opportunities. I think we just spent time talking on another episode of don't focus on the negative all the time. And it's good to catch the positive things, but it's also important to correct the negative things. So I think there's a sense of immediacy but approaching it with a sense of empathy. What's going on? Instead of coming over and beating them down, find a way to lift them up and to get them on the right track. Because as you said, it's a lot easier to improve the employee than go out to find a new one, unless we're Jack Welch and we're just cutting the bottom 10% every year.
Lou Quinto:
Yeah. And you definitely don't want to do that. So my key takeaway Craig, to all of that is you need to get down to the root cause, because sometimes there may be some circumstances outside of what's going on, that is causing that under performance. And so you need to have that discussion with them. But second, it's got to be quantifiable in order for me to meet a goal, if I'm talking to you as my leader, I need to know what the bullseye looks like. So that this way you and I can both look at this and know, am I making an advancement toward that bullseye? Or am I still way off of that bullseye? Because if not, you're wasting a lot of time and I'm wasting a lot of time because I'm doing something that is not directing me in the way that I need to go. So it's coming up with that root cause and making a quantifiable.
Craig Anderson:
Excellent, great takeaway. Well, thank you everybody for joining us for this episode of Q&A on Breakthrough Leadership, where we discussed ways to help an underperforming employee. So if you enjoy this episode or you know a manager who's terrible at doing this, please share it with them. Like it if you think it's a great episode and subscribe so you never miss another episode. We are on qaleadership.com. We have all of our episodes there as well as on Facebook and LinkedIn, and all our episodes are also available on your favorite podcasting platform, just search for Q&A on Breakthrough Leadership. So until next time I'm Craig Anderson.
Lou Quinto:
And, keep your hands washed, keep your distance. I'm Lou Quinto.