Your team of engineers is underperforming. How can you get them to work together and achieve success?

When your team of engineers is not hitting the mark, it's worth considering that even a star performer might be facing challenges beyond work. Underperformance doesn't always come down to tasks or team culture, personal issues can play a role, putting mental pressure on individuals. People might not spill the beans on these matters unless you ask. In such cases, it's crucial to create an open environment where team members feel free to share personal challenges affecting their work.

I know my engineers. If they are "underperforming" as a group, its probably because my leadership has sent unclear messaging of focus, priority, gratitude, etc. To correct the ship, I start with myself and re-center as to 'why' we exist as a company, 'how' we seek to solve our reason for existence, and 'what' we produce to meet that need. I work to communicate an alignment of their tasks with those principles and then start good conversations. I would also probably have this meeting around midday, make my apologies and give them the rest of the day off with the expectation that they come back tomorrow and we hit the ground running. That teams gives from their heart and they deserve good leadership.

For engineers, it is helpful to have a career matrix that shows specific example of what it means to perform well on a specific level. For example, some newly promoted senior engineers might not realize that it is not only technical skills they should be paying attention to at their level, but also, their communication and leadership skills (i.e. how they are navigating through dependencies with other teams, how well they are able to translate business requirements from partner stakeholders and/or product team, how they are rallying and motivating the team to align on goals, etc.). If there is a list of examples to follow or learn from, it would be easier for them to figure things out.

the feedback process, when combined with celebrating small wins, becomes a powerful tool that can significantly elevate our team towards success.

For the team to be committed and able to achieve high performance, it is important that professionals feel that, although everyone is aligned in the pursuit of common objectives, each member has certain autonomy and decision-making capacity in the tasks for which they are responsible. For professionals who are part of the team to feel this autonomy, it is important that the leader knows the difference between control and supervision well. We must avoid generating an excess of control that makes workers not agile in their processes due to the continuous review of the different tasks they perform. This excess of control points prevents the fluidity of the workflow and can overload the leader of the team with low-impact work.