Dealing with Poor Performers

Grand old manager of the champion New York Yankees in the 1950s and later the hapless New York Mets, Casey Stengle, told one of his bumbling players: “I wish I could buy you for what you’re worth and sell you for what you think you’re worth.”

Dealing with poor performers entails one of the most persistent and difficult challenges of leadership.????

Aside from the problems directly associated with their poor performance, having to deal with them squanders time and resources.?“Forty percent of my time,” a CEO told me, “is taken up dealing with ten percent of my problem employees.”?

Furthermore, poor performers are usually not content to be lone wolfs. They need to recruit others onto their poor-performance team – or at least keep them from joining your team.??

Doing so, they’re usually smart, adaptive, innovative, and – yes -- good leaders.?Your thinking of them as anything less gives them leverage against you.????

Still, poor performers can be a boon to your leadership – if you employ these responses. ?

(1) Know your choices.?You have only three choices when dealing with poor performers.?You can choose to live with them as they are.?You can choose to get rid of them.?Or you can choose to try to change them.?There’s no fourth choice.??

(2) Choose one of the three.?For our purposes here, let’s say you focus on the third choice.?You want them to become good performers.?

Mind you, simply choosing this course doesn’t guarantee success.?Many poor performers absolutely refuse to change, no matter how skillfully and persistently you try to get them to change.?On the other hand, many are open to change, and this process may help make such change happen.?

(3) Give Leadership Talks.?The Leadership Talk is the key process in dealing with poor performers.?It’s not about ordering, but about setting up and an environment in which the person makes the choice to change.?It’s important to understand this choice.

(See my 1.11.22 article.)

Changing the relationship dynamics from “you have to do this” to “you GET TO DO this” makes a fundamental shift in the results-generation potential.

In essence, the Leadership Talk is the highest level in the hierarchy of verbal persuasion.?The lowest levels, the least effective, are speeches and presentations.?Speeches/presentations communicate information; Leadership Talks, on the other hand, have leaders establish deep, human, emotional connections with audiences – indispensable in achieving great results.

Leadership Talks help you deal with poor performers because they set up an environment of free choice.?One might say, if you give poor performers a choice, they’ll simply choose to be poor performers.?My answer is, “not necessarily.”?Free choice is the only long-lasting response to poor performers.?

When they freely choose to be your cause leader, great things happen.?But to get them to make the choice, you should draw up a Leadership Contract.

(4) Generate Leadership Contracts. This may be written -- from a few, scribbled to a formal text version calling for your signatures -- or the Contract may simply be an oral agreement, sealed with a handshake.?Clearly, it’s not a legal instrument -- nor should it embody legalese.?It’s just a spelling out of the leadership actions you both agree must be taken to accomplish your goal.?

(See my 9.19.2022 article.)

Here’s the key: The best way to get that agreement is first to have them talk about actions they propose to take. Make sure they describe precise, physical actions. And not just any actions, but leadership actions.?Discourage them from talking about how they’ll be doing tasks.?Instead, encourage them to talk about how they’ll be taking leadership of those tasks. (There is a big difference in terms of results generated between doing and leading.)?Then ask how they need to be supported in those actions. Finally, ask them how those actions should be monitored and evaluated.?In getting answers to these questions, you’ll be putting together a Leadership Contract by giving a Listening Leadership Talk.?

(5) Give Listening Leadership Talks.?The Leadership Talk is the greatest leadership tool. But often your talking is not as effective as your audience’s talking.?When your Leadership Talk comes out of their mouths, not your mouth, you have increased the power of this powerful tool to a much higher order of magnitude.

(See my 11.21.22 article.)

6) Be aware of your emotions.?A manufacturing leader said, “You gave me a good process with the Leadership Talk, but I keep getting sidetracked by my emotions.?Somebody’s not doing their job – and I flip.?That emotion gets in the way of dealing with the person.”

I told him that it’s not what you feel that can hurt you in your relationships with poor performers, it’s what you’re not aware you are feeling.?Being aware of your emotions is a key tool in dealing with poor performers.?Your anger, frustration can be tools that help you.

As Aristotle wrote in Nicomachean Ethics: “Anyone can be angry. That is easy. But to be angry with the right person, to the right degree, at the right time, for the right purpose, in the right way ?? that is not easy.”

(7) Develop 90-day Improvement Plans.?A business leader tells me that he uses such plans as tools for change. Each plan is comprised of two pages: the first page pointing out that the individual must improve and the second page detailing the precise ways that improvement must take place. “Be specific about improvement,” he says. “For instance, one leader I gave an Improvement Plan to was very bright but was not getting results. He tended to deal with future strategic issues; whereas our business wants results now, preferably yesterday. We identified specific ways he could improve his performance in getting results, such as precise calls to customers to make and exact, quick-closing targets to pursue.” The objective of 90-Day Improvement Plans should not be to get rid of people. “Their objective is to improve performance,” he says. “Though I do write on the first page, ‘If the objectives are not met, further actions, including dismissal, can be taken.’” He sometimes combines Improvement Plans with the force-ranking of all his leaders into a 20/60/20 continuum. The bottom 20 percent get the Plan. He says, “My objective is to have the bottom 20 percent be indispensable leaders.” Mind you, in developing a 90-day Improvement Plan, keep Aesop’s fable in mind and seek not compliance but commitment.

The Improvement Plan must not be imposed from without, but agreed upon. Here is a four-step process to do that. First, all parties must agree to develop a 90-Day Improvement Plan. If people are forced to do it, it won’t work as it should. Second, ask the poor performers to describe what should be in it. Remember, you can veto any suggestions. However, it is best if its key components come from the other people. Only after they have run out of suggestions do you incorporate yours. Third, develop the Plan together, and agree on its action steps. Fourth, implement it. Have weekly or bi-weekly meetings to ensure the Plan is being carried out. If the Plan is forced upon someone, he/she could think it is another screw to put into them, another imposed reward/ punishment. However, if it is put together with mutual consent, indeed with mutual enthusiasm, it becomes the screwdriver by which poor performers may very well gladly put the screws into themselves.

Copyright ? The Filson Leadership Group, Inc.

Brent Filson is the founder of The Filson Leadership Group, Inc., which for 37-years has helped thousands of leaders of all ranks and functions in top companies worldwide achieve sustained increases in hard, measured results. He has published 23 books and many scores of articles on leadership. His mission is to have leaders replace their traditional presentations with his specially developed, motivating process call the Leadership Talk. www.brentfilson.com and theleadershiptalk.com?

Besides having lectured about the Leadership Talk at MIT Sloan School of Management, Columbia University, Wake Forest, Villanova, Williams, Middlebury, I also brought the Leadership Talk to leaders in these organizations: Abbott, Ameritech, Anheuser-Busch, Armstrong World Industries, AT&T, BancOne, BASF, Bell Atlantic, BellSouth, Betz Laboratories, Bose, Bristol-Meyers Squibb, Campbell Sales, Canadian Government, CNA, DuPont, Eaton Corporation, Exelon, First Energy, Ford, General Electric, General Motors, GTE, Hershey Foods, Houghton Mifflin, IBM, Meals-on-Wheels, Merck, Miller Brewing Company, NASA, PaineWebber, Polaroid, Price Waterhouse, Roadway Express, Sears Roebuck, Spalding International, Southern Company, The United Nations, among others.