The 5 Questions to Unlock Poor Performers and Decide: Up or Out?

How do I handle an underperforming employee?

There is no question I get asked more often.

And it makes sense. Our lowest performing employees:

• Take an outsized amount of our attention

• Breed resentment among their peers

• Often present us the most HR risk

• All while contributing the least

Worse, that vicious cycle above makes us want to avoid them altogether.

And round and round we go.

But how I handle an underperforming employee isn't the right question.

The first question to ask is, "Why?"

Why is this person underperforming?

The play we'll run depends on the answer to this question.

And the answers run along a spectrum.

And as we move from left to right on that spectrum, two things are true:

1. Ownership shifts from us (the manager) to them (the employee)

2. The problem becomes more personal (and therefore harder to hear) for them

And by working left to right, we a) increase their odds of succeeding and b) increase the confidence of our assessment.

They don't have the resources.

This one is 100% our problem, not theirs.

We can't send them into the wild unarmed and hope they survive. We must give them access, software, process, and support upfront.

Being thoughtful at this end of the spectrum will take common excuses off the table later.

And ask them.

Knowing what they need to succeed is a good doublecheck and helps accelerate trust.

They don't have sufficient training.

This is a shared responsibility.

• We own making sure that they have access to training.

• They own making full use of that training to come up the curve.

We also need to beware of the bottomless training trap. We should strive for sufficient, not exhaustive. Enough to help "reasonable" hires get up to speed is our target.

Finally, it doesn't have to be overly formal. Peer mentoring. Office hours. Curated YouTube videos.

There are many methods to offer training even in fast-moving, startup environments.

They don't have the desire.

Warning: This one is the most personal. It also carries very clear consequences.

How long will we let them keep a job they don't want to do? Not long.

So they quickly consider what that means:

• How will they pay their mortgage?

• Pay their kid's college tuition?

• Feed their family?

The implications are real.

And if we've been clear about expectations for the role from Day 1, this problem is entirely theirs.

We can be their fan or their coach, but we can't want it for them. 

And if they don't have the will to do what is necessary to meet the required standard, then we're at an impasse. And we must remove them.

Three tactics that can make this smoother: