Tell me if this sounds like you?

…You’ve stopped asking your team to do things (as you believe the only way to do things right is to do them yourself)…

…You’ve decided the only person you can rely on is yourself…

…You’re stressed out to the max because you’re picking up absolutely everything…

If what I’m describing sounds like your typical day in the office, I’m going to make another diagnosis:

You may have what I like to call ‘Poor Performer Syndrome’:

Poor Performer Syndrome: when you have poor performers in your team who have adjusted to you letting them get away with murder

So today I want to help you with three things:

1. Help you to identify who might be a poor fit or poor performing employee
2. Help you to discover why that might be the case
3. Help you with some strategies around what to do next

Ok, so first off let’s get clear on exactly…

How to spot a poor fit employee

Jack Welch has two great models that I like to combine. His Commitment versus Competence model and his 20/70/10 Model.

The first is based around the below measures of Commitment and Competence:

The second is based around his 20/70/10 Model which essentially provides a framework that assumes:

• 20% are All-Star High Performers
• 70% are average or good employees and should be encouraged to get into the top 20% (you need to show them what they specifically need to do)
• 10% need to be actively developed or gracefully exited from the company (as it’s in both the individual and the companies best interest if they don’t improve)

** If you have to exit someone, candor is always better than false kindness. Clearly explain what their shortfalls are and help get to the best place for them either inside or outside your organisation.

Now I like combining the two models by adding your team under the first column and then identifying whether they are competent and/or committed.

This gives you the best of both worlds taking into account both performance and mindset.

It’s an interesting exercise to see what percentage of your team sits in the different quadrants and whether this marries up to your All Stars, Average and Bottom performers:

If you’re honest with yourself, you can generally identify who your bottom 10% are.

However, below are some clues in case you need help:

• They constantly under-deliver versus the rest of the team
• Generally you have to spend most of your time on them
• You already know that you’ll need to double check their work as this becomes part of the routine
• They can’t be left to their own devices without getting distracted or off topic
• They spend most of their time either complaining, whining with others, or on personal social media or looking at the clock
• They are rude to other staff and your customers (and yes, sometimes even you, but you have learnt to live it with it)
• They need to be managed and constantly driven to deliver any result
• You need to always ask more than once for something to get done
• They are the ones that you will argue or be defensive or be negative about anything you have to say
• You personally try to avoid them as you know asking them to do something will be met with resentment and arguing
• You feel you need to watch what you say in front of them, as you generally know that no matter what you say, it is going to be taken in the wrong way

N.B. For the sake of the determining a poor fit employee, I’ve combined both poor performance and poor conduct – although it’s important to know there are slightly different methods of dealing with both of these areas from an industrial perspective. This will be the subject for another article.

Ok, utilising the above you should be able to identify the employees who are a poor fit within your business.

“But I don’t like being nasty”…

This is what I often hear from managers and business owners.

However, here’s the brutal truth:

The job of the manager or business owner is to determine the reason for poor fit, articulate that clearly and then actively address the situation for the best interest of both parties.

As a manager, you’re doing your staff a disservice if you’re not telling them what they need to do to be successful and improve performance or fit. Given the amount of time that we all spend at work, I genuinely believe that if someone truly doesn’t enjoy their work or the business, the kindest thing you can do is assist them make the decision to find somewhere else they will enjoy.

So, now that you’ve identified your poor performers…

I’ve found there are generally a handful of reasons for poor fit and performance…

8 reasons for poor performance

And what you can do about it

Managing difficult or problem employees is not an easy or enjoyable task.

However, not managing them is even worse!

To give you a shot of additional motivation… 

An interesting exercise is to calculate the amount of time you spend fixing, managing or thinking about these employees each week.

Now times that by 48 weeks! Scary stuff! 

Your challenge this month:

Take up the challenge to use the above tools and exercises…

Identify your poor fit employees and set action points to either train and develop, or exit them respectfully.

It’s your business performance and your personal and team sanity on the line!

Watch out for next week’s blog as I share how to terminate poor fit employees, and still leave them advocates for your business!

Any questions?

If you have questions on this topic or any others, feel free to reach me by email or set up a free one-on-one consultation session, or drop me a comment below.

Thanks for sharing!