employee performance

How to Deal with Mediocre or Poor Performing Long-Term Employees

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I’ve often discussed with business leaders and managers about how to deal with mediocre or poor performing long-term employees.


In fact, this came up recently in a group discussion with a few business owners who I am coaching on dealing with challenges in reaching specific business goals.


One of the members has a goal to diversify the client base of the company to not be reliant on public contracts only. To achieve this requires him and his partner devoting time to strategizing and business development.


The main obstacle is time, but it goes deeper than just scheduling time and this is where the performance of a long-term manager/employee comes into play.


The business owner and his partner find themselves having to help the manager/employee when her workload increases past a certain point. In other words, they end up doing her job and this makes it very difficult for them to spend time to work on their goal.


It seems that this has been going on for quite some time and now, they don’t know how to deal with it. The business owner says things like well, that’s the way she is and she won’t change; we have to help her or the work won’t get done and it will hurt our business; she doesn’t use her team well to assign tasks and delegate and we can’t get her to improve in that skill.


The problem here is that this issue was identified but not addressed many years ago. Now they feel it is too late to fix. But the business cannot scale if this situation lingers. So, what are the solutions?


Solutions


Here are my recommendations to the business owners and anyone who is in a similar situation.

  1. Meet with the employee and discuss the situation. Explain the goal to diversify the customer base and how important it is for the company and the employees.
  2. Explain to the employee that they need to devote time to work on this and that you can no longer keep helping the employee do their work if the new goal is to be achieved.
  3. Ask the employee to think about how they can work with her team to become more autonomous. Listen to the persons response and gauge her willingness to work on the problem. Give her time to think about solutions and schedule another meeting in a couple of days. Let her know you are willing to provide the support required.
  4. Meet again with the employee and discuss solutions to the problem. Once you are satisfied with the solutions, ask the employee what support they would need from you to apply these solutions. Make sure the solutions and support needs are written down by both of you.
  5. My suggestion is to use my win-win agreement process and form to put the commitments in writing. The employee should be the one to complete the form and submit it to you. The form states the performance commitments of the employee along with the request support commitments from you. It also includes rewards and penalties for achieving or not achieving the goal.
  6. Do what you need to provide the support commitments in the agreement. Schedule a review meeting to track the progress of the performance commitments and discuss and find solutions to any challenges.  Keep scheduling additional sessions until the commitments have been met and the solutions implemented.

I suggest using the same process for new employees once the basic orientation and training period has been completed. There are always new performance goals that can be set. This is how you assure the organization can continue to grow and scale.


In the example used in this article, the penalty might be a demotion from manager to employee. Right now, the business owners are putting up with the current situation. They are not doing their job as leaders in confronting the employee and making the hard decision, which might be demotion.


The buck always stops at the top and leaders cannot afford to make excuses for the poor performance of their employees and managers and play the role of rescuers. This impedes the organization from growing and sends the wrong message to all the managers and employees.


developing autonomous teams

Two Essential Skills for Developing Autonomous Teams

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In this video I explain the two key skills that all team members must learn and apply if teams are going to become autonomous and self-directed.


These skills are confronting team members or employees from other departments on performance issues using diplomatic disagreement. The other skill is learning and applying mutual coaching techniques.


In the video I give an example of a situation that happened with a client.


job description

Writing a More Complete Job Description to Reflect Your Corporate Culture and Values

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Writing a good job description is essential for hiring the right person for the job. It makes it clear what you are looking for and tells your candidates what the job entails.


I have written and made videos about how to write a job description and provided a template form to download for this purpose. But the world is evolving, and companies are being more specific about the type of person they are seeking, especially for management positions.


Many companies are putting greater emphasis on building a more people focused culture that puts the wellbeing of employees as a high priority. Companies like CGI with 68,000 employees worldwide puts on an annual global event called Walk Around the World as part of their commitment to employee wellness.


In 2017 Glassdoor named Shopify as the number one place to work in Canada. According to Konval Matin, director of culture at Spotify, “Everyone we hire adds something unique to our culture that wasn’t previously there”. Creating a culture of trust is a core value of the company and they strive to hire outstanding people who can help the company grow.


I write and talk a lot about leadership and teamwork and creating a culture of collaboration. So, it’s important when writing a job description to put greater emphasis and importance on these people type skills and personal qualities. Even if someone does not possess all the skills or attributes to reflect your values, at least you want to know that they are coachable and willing to learn and grow in this way.


Someone sent me this link to a job posting that defines the qualities the company is seeking for a management role. It shows the importance they are placing on interpersonal skills that reflect the culture they want to build in their company. This is reflected in the professional requirements section, which is quite detailed.


Here is an extract and I have highlighted specific requirements that I find interesting.

  • Bachelor’s Degree in business administration, commerce or science.
  • MBA preferred.
  • 10 years or more experience in 3-tier winery sales and marketing.
  • 5+ years in a senior management position of a winery with proven ability to be an effective, innovative, and enthusiastic leader. Collaborate with key stakeholders within the Okanagan Valley wine and business community, Okanagan Valley wine community, and national wine community to include winery customers, industry, trade, and media.
  • Passion for in-depth knowledge of wine and wine production. BC Experience, WA State and WW Valley a plus.
  • Significant exposure to and proven success in the areas of employee management, sales management, expense management, inventory management, reporting, and forecasting.
  • Significant experience in strategic planning. Ability to formulate a plan for long-term success and gain support for the vision and plan implementation.
  • Understands family-run business with a corporate culture and organizational structure.
  • Ability to work with Consultants when necessary, ability to be humble and collaborate with others.
  • Strong communication skills – being a good listener, concise communicator, and understands the importance of open and direct conversations.
  • Boardroom quality, polished public speaking and presentation skills.
  • Strong human resources experience including compensation, benefits, employee recruitment, hiring, coaching, discipline, and termination.
  • Valid driver’s license; physical ability to travel both by car and plane.

good leadership behaviour

Train Employees by Walking the Talk and Demonstrating Good Leadership Behaviour

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Leaders need to mindful of the impact they have on employees and especially those in management roles who report directly to them.


Managers look to their boss for guidance on how to lead and manage their own staff. Observing the behaviour of a leader of an organization greatly impacts how people think they should behave towards their team members.


The old expression, do as I do not as I say still rings true today. In others words no matter what the leader says it’s what they do that people learn from.


So, if you are a leader and manager and want people to behave a certain way towards others, make sure that you are walking the talk and leading by example.