Terrible or Tough When You Handle An Under-Performer

Many managers avoid the handling of poor performers.  They are afraid to do anything for fear of losing that staff.  Some have no guts and zero assertiveness, that's why they do nothing.  Others went the other extreme and become a terrible boss and undermine the entire team. 

We know that a manager is responsible for what his team does, so if his people are not performing, that means the manager is not performing. Therefore it is imperative that a good manager must handle under-performers without undermining them.  There are 4 steps to do this:

1. Identify and Agree on the Performance Shortfall.  You need to analyse the areas of shortfall (like not hitting sales targets consistently), obtain agreement from the staff and most importantly, let the staff know how that shortfall is affecting business in the whole organization.  
2. Reason for Shortfall: The manager should not be crudely attach blame but jointly identify the facts that have caused the shortfall.  So no use saying that the economy is bad, but how we respond to the poor economy is the reason for our performance shortfall.  In other words, the real reason is always an internal one, not something from outside that is uncontrollable. 
3. Action Required.  The manager and the staff will now have to decide and agree on the tough action required.  Most of the time it would entail changing behaviour, attitudes, skills, mindset and most importantly, managing expectations.  A good manager will use this chance to provide more support to the staff, yet let the staff know that he must put in the efforts or there will be no improvement.
4. Monitor and Feedback.  This last step is the most critical: the manager must monitor the change in performance and give the right feedback.  If the shortfall is still not corrected, he must repeat the above steps. If there is still no improvement after an agreed timeline, the manager must make a difficult decision: how to handle that persistent under-performer?  Should he fire him or fire him up?  Read this in our blog.

By Andy Ng, whose course on How to be an Effective Manager has now reached Thailand, Japan and Philippines.  For list of courses, click here or visit www.asiatrainers.com.  Related articles:

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