Stop tolerating poor performers before your productivity declines. Are you a manager who tolerates poor performers because:
- you either don’t want to rock the boat
- don’t feel you have the time or interest to devote to coaching the employee
- or don’t know how to coach for performance?
1. Don’t Rock the Boat
You may be a manager who worries that correcting poor performance will possibly make things worse. Perhaps your staffing is low, and you don’t want to risk losing a filled position. Perhaps, as a manager, you feel that the employee’s performance, although subpar, is not so bad that it is worth stirring the waters. Or are you afraid of your employee’s potential response and just want to pretend the matter will resolve itself? You may also worry that having a poorly performing employee will reflect badly on your management capabilities.
2. Don’t Have the Time
If coaching is required to improve performance your employee’s performance, that requires time. Time to prepare and conduct the coaching, schedule and take monitoring action, and hold your employee accountable. If your employee’s performance is so bad that taking disciplinary action seems likely, you may not want to go through all the disciplinary steps involved. It can be time-consuming to counsel employees, document performance, and involve human resources personnel.
3. Don’t Know How
As a manager, you may simply not know how to coach for performance improvement. So, you do nothing, and the poor performance continues.
Consequences if You Ignore Poor Performance
- When an employee is allowed to continue performing below established standards and expectations, the morale and productivity of other employees are often negatively affected.
- If an employee is not doing their fair share, the other employees have to pick up the slack, which can lead to resentment, if not burnout.
- In addition, if your other employees see that subpar work is acceptable, they may decide that doing their best work isn’t necessary, either.
In all three cases, productivity suffers, deadlines are not met, customer needs are unfulfilled, and the organization looks bad.
What you may not realize is that if you take no action to correct your employee’s poor performance, this will also cause your other employees to lose respect for you as a manager. It is very difficult to manage when you lack credibility.
When you are uncomfortable or unwilling to coach for improved performance, it is to everyone’s benefit for you to learn: (1) that it needs to be done and (2) how to do it.
Luckily, coaching is a skill that can be learned and developed.
If you are reluctant to have a frank and constructive conversation with a poorly performing employee, contact me and let’s talk.
May your learning be sweet,
Deborah
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