Managing to Change the World

by Alison Green

  HOW TO DETERMINE IF YOU HAVE A SERIOUS PERFORMANCE PROBLEM

  Sometimes it’s clear you have a problem: your accountant repeatedly makes serious errors on financial statements or your membership coordinator isn’t sending out renewal notices. Other times it’s not as clear-cut: your lobbyist seems up-to-date on legislation but hasn’t actually moved any. Or your communications director has creative ideas for generating media coverage but doesn’t always follow through on the plans she forms.

  Maybe there are good reasons that your lobbyist hasn’t delivered any results. After all, legislators have their own priorities and outside factors can derail the best of plans. And perhaps your communications director’s workload is so high that no one in her shoes could carry out all the plans.

  Perhaps. But perhaps these things are true and you still have a problem. How can you decide?

  Rule #1: Keep the focus on what the ideal staffer would do in a similar context.

  Managers often tailor their expectations for a position to the person who happens to be inhabiting it. Certainly it’s sound management to play to your team members’ strengths and weaknesses, but this should not mean lowering your expectations about core results. The bar you use to assess performance should not be “the best this particular person could do,” but rather a vision of what a truly high-performing staff member would be doing in the role.

  Maybe your vision of a star lobbyist tells you that although she wouldn’t necessarily be able to pass your model legislation quickly, she would still be able to build relationships that would allow you to tweak related bills and advance your agenda in less direct ways. In the case of the communications director, maybe you can’t be sure that the workload isn’t too great for one person. But you do know that an outstanding employee would handle a high workload differently by keeping the work organized, updating you about what isn’t getting done, and not forgetting about projects entirely.

  Rule #2: Determine if the problem is one of fundamental fit for the position or one that could quickly be resolved through more guidance.

  Once you have a clear vision of what you expect from the position and how the person in it is falling short, determine whether the problem is likely to be correctable.

  Begin by considering the employee’s basic talents and inclinations and how well matched they are with the needs of the position. For instance, you want an assistant to be uptight about details and organization. If you have an assistant whose nature is simply more laid back, she may be able to improve but likely will never obsess about the details of your travel schedule at the level you need.

  Be careful to avoid the trap of sinking too much of your own time or the organization’s resources into remedial training. For example, you might believe that if you were able to spend several hours each week with a staff member working on her writing, you could get her to an acceptable level, but that might not be a good use of organizational resources.

  Another area to consider is the extent to which you have clearly communicated your expectations to the employee. If you haven’t already, you should talk explicitly about those expectations now to try to get into alignment. That said, even when you have not communicated your expectations as well as you could have, sometimes there’s still a question of fit.

  ASK THE RIGHT QUESTION

  Imagine that you’re in a relationship with someone who isn’t quite what you’re looking for. You like the person but know deep down that it isn’t the right match for you. Most people would agree that it’s kinder to be honest and end things than to continue stringing the person along. The question you ask yourself isn’t, “Do I have enough reasons to break up with this person?” but rather, “Is this person so great that I want to stay with them long-term?”

  But when it comes to employee fit, the picture gets much fuzzier for most managers. Managers tend to look at mediocre performers and ask, “Is this person really performing so badly that he should be fired?” when the question to ask instead should be, “Is this person performing so well that I should retain her?”

  You’re never going to have done absolutely everything you could have to create the optimal environment for every staff member. Think about what top performers would have done in similar contexts: Would they have found a way to succeed with the same resources and guidance?

  An extreme example of this is a client we worked with who hesitated to hold a staff member accountable after the staff member twice missed planes and trains to important meetings. The manager worried that perhaps he hadn’t set clear enough expectations for the staffer: after all, he had never spelled out that the staffer needed to be on time for such things. Clearly a great performer (or even merely a reasonable person, in this case) wouldn’t need that guidance.

  Rule #3: Trust your gut.

  In some cases, you may not be sure if your concerns are valid. Perhaps the employee’s work is in a field far outside your expertise, like technology, or perhaps the position is a new one and so you haven’t seen anyone else tackle the work.

  In such cases, listen to your gut, because it’s likely reacting to a larger body of knowledge than you realize. For instance, you may not feel equipped to judge much of your technology director’s work because of its technical nature. But you have noticed that your e-mail network has more downtime than feels reasonable, the director doesn’t react with a sense of urgency when things go wrong, and you’re often told that problems “can’t” be fixed.

  If the small amount you do feel competent to judge is mediocre, it’s likely representative of the rest. Don’t be afraid to generalize from what you do know, and keep in mind that you don’t need to prove your case with courtroom accuracy. The question for you is whether you’re getting what you need from the employee, not whether you could convince a jury.

  Rule #4: Pretend it would be easy.

  Make your assessment independent of how difficult the next step may be to execute. Don’t focus on the discomfort of having to tell someone she isn’t meeting your expectations or the hassles of interviewing and training someone new. The main question before you is, “Is this the best person for the job?”

  Time and time again, we see managers who know deep down that they should replace an employee but want to avoid the discomfort of addressing it head-on.

  Here’s a revealing test. Pretend that you have a red button that, if you pushed it, would lead to your staff member’s being replaced instantaneously, without any accompanying drama or pain. Would you push it?

  Another way to look at it is to close your eyes and pretend the staff member walked into your office and told you she was leaving to take another job. How did you feel? If your major feeling was relief rather than panic, then deep down you know that you would be better off letting the person go. Now you need to develop a plan to make it happen.

  WHAT ABOUT HIGH PERFORMERS WHO AREN’T A CULTURE FIT?

  What if you have a high performer who delivers when it comes to the meat of her job but is difficult to work with in other ways? An employee who is abrasive, unable to get along with others, or otherwise culturally off can be as disruptive as one who isn’t meeting a performance bar.

  Alison once worked with a research director who was highly skilled when it came to knowledge, research, and writing. His many years in the field had given him an almost unparalleled body of knowledge, and he had a unique talent for making highly complex subjects easily understandable by laypeople. However, he increasingly wanted to focus solely on his own interests and began swatting away ideas that weren’t his own. Frequently when staff members inquired about getting research done to support a project another department was working on, the research director would cite a minor obstacle and respond that it couldn’t be done. Only after much coaxing would he agree to do the work requested of him. He also scoffed at and shot down other people’s ideas in meetings, something that was particularly corrosive on less experienced staffers who weren’t confident in their ability to push back.

  Staff
members like this can be poisonous to both your culture and your results. Yet when the employee is producing good work, a manager may be hesitant to consider firing him.

  Rarely are such cases solely a bad cultural fit. The results usually can be seen as performance issues as well. The research director’s naysaying prevented the research department from tackling projects as vigorously as it otherwise would have, ate up the time of other employees when they had to convince him that it was worth doing the assigned work, and eroded the willingness of other staffers to contribute. Therefore, it would have been reasonable to decide that a can-do attitude and a willingness to explore new ideas were key requirements for a successful research director, and to hold him to that bar.

  When you face a staffer who doesn’t fit with your culture, try viewing the troubling behavior through the lens of substantive performance and consider if it might be about performance after all.

  PROGRESSIVE DISCIPLINE AND COACHING OUT

  Once you’ve determined that the performance issue is a serious one, you have two paths for addressing it:

  The more traditional path of progressive discipline

  A less traditional, but sometimes kinder and more effective, path that we call “coaching out”

  Progressive Discipline

  Progressive discipline consists of a brief series of increasingly serious warnings, culminating in dismissal if an employee fails to improve sufficiently. Typically there are three stages: an informal verbal warning, followed by a formal warning with a written improvement plan, followed by termination if the employee fails to make sufficient improvement. At each of the first two points, the employee can make the necessary corrections. If she doesn’t, you move to the next stage of letting her go.

  THE THREE STAGES OF PROGRESSIVE DISCIPLINE

  1. Informal warning

  2. Formal warning

  3. Termination

  Some organizations differ in how they apply progressive discipline, and in some contexts, you might skip the informal warning and move straight to the formal warning. Except in unusual circumstances, we don’t recommend skipping the formal warning, lest your staff begin fearing being terminated without notice.

  Note that each step foreshadows the next (“If this doesn’t get better, we’re going to have talk about a more formal plan”), so that the staffer is clear about where she stands and isn’t surprised by negative consequences. We’ve seen numerous situations where a manager gives lots of negative feedback to a struggling staff member but never explicitly says that the person’s job is in jeopardy—and the staffer ends up shocked when she is fired. This is unfair to the staffer, who deserves to know the severity of the concerns. It can also create significant anxiety and a culture of fear among other staff members, who may begin to worry they’re on the verge of being fired every time they receive negative feedback. A progressive discipline system, like the one in Tool 9.1, lets your staff know that they won’t be fired without first knowing that their job is in jeopardy and having time to improve.1

  FIRING WITHOUT USING PROGRESSIVE DISCIPLINE

  Some situations are so egregious that they warrant firing without moving through the stages of progressive discipline or attempting to coach the person out—for example, an employee who embezzles or physically accosts someone.

  Step One: Informal Warning

  Let’s say you’ve considered what a high performer would be doing in a given situation and have realized that you have a serious performance problem: a staff member whose performance does not reach the level you need it to. She must show significant improvement in order not to be fired. You may have tried some of the development techniques in Chapter Seven, like naming the issue, giving feedback, and even modeling, without result. What next?

  The first step is to deliver an informal warning: an honest talk with the employee. Your goal is to let her know that her performance must improve, be specific about what improvements are needed, and be clear about potential consequences if she doesn’t make the improvements.

  This is different from the sort of corrective feedback we discussed in Chapter Seven: you’re making it very clear that this isn’t routine feedback. You’re addressing a more severe problem that is holding the employee back and has the potential to become an even more serious problem if not fixed. In other words, the conversation has an “or else” attached this time. The staff member must improve, “or else” you will have to let her go.

  In some situations, the staff member will have recognized the problem and may feel relieved to discuss it openly. In others, the staff member may not have realized that the problems rose to this level, which of course makes the conversation even more important to have.

  Performance warning conversations need to have an “or else” attached, spelling out what happens if the staff member does not improve.

  No matter what the outcome is, you will be doing the employee a significant service by speaking honestly about where her performance is falling short. Too many managers never put aside their discomfort about such conversations, and as a result, many employees never have the opportunity to learn how they could do better.

  Let’s walk through the informal warning process step by step (Tool 9.2 provides a sample script of how this conversation might go):

  1. You may want to give your employee advance warning that you need to have a serious conversation about her performance. Consider, though, how much advance notice you want to give. Although you don’t want her to be caught entirely off guard, too much advance warning can make her go through days of worry in anticipation of the meeting. Whether it happens a day in advance or at the start of the meeting, raise the subject by saying something like, “I want to step back and have a conversation about your performance.”

  2. At the start of the meeting, explain that you want to talk about changes you want to see from her. You might say something like, “As I mentioned in my e-mail, I’d like to talk about your performance lately. To be honest, your work is falling short of what I need from you.”

  3. Explain your general categories of concern, and offer specific instances to support your points—for example: “I’m concerned about the quality of your recent grant applications, as well as the fact that you’ve been missing deadlines lately. Your last several grant applications were disjointed, confusing in places, and didn’t make a compelling case for funding our work. And you’ve missed three deadlines this month, including one that caused an important mailing to be held up.”

  4. Ask the employee to tell you how she perceives the issues. Say something like, “I’d like to hear your thoughts about what’s causing these issues. What’s your sense of what might be going on?”

  5. As you would with corrective feedback, probe to understand what the root of the problem might be. Pick a few specific instances where the staffer didn’t perform as you would have liked and delve into what happened. For instance, if you’re concerned about poorly written grant applications, probe for factors that could be at work other than that she isn’t a strong writer. Is she a poor time manager and writing at the last minute? Have you and she agreed on what a good grant application should look like? Is the fundamental issue one of responsibility, in that she isn’t assuming ownership for ensuring that grant applications are as strong as possible?

  6. If you’re able to identify factors contributing to the problem, make suggestions you have about how the employee might do her work differently. For instance, if she has a time management issue, you might suggest she begin planning projects backward and set interim deadlines for herself to better structure her work. In some cases, you might decide it’s worthwhile to make a one-time investment trying to help the person improve. With someone who chronically misses deadlines, you might spend time suggesting organizational systems and walking her through the basics of how to track projects and deadlines. At other times, you may decide that it’s not reasonable for you to spend your time on this sort of intensive development. If you do decide to offer such help,
be sure it’s not unlimited. You can’t afford to spend significant amounts of time hand-holding an employee who shouldn’t need that level of help.

  7. Regardless of the cause, be explicit about the standard you need the person to meet, and hold firm. For instance, say something like, “I need you to begin producing grant applications that are clearer and more compelling, using the samples I showed you as the standard, and which don’t require more than minor editing from me. And I need you to start meeting deadlines right away. In the rare case that you do need to miss a deadline, I need to be informed ahead of time, not after the fact.”

  8. If you sense that the staff member believes that your expectations are too high or that she is doing the best that can be done, a good response is to acknowledge that the bar is high while holding firm about your needs. For instance, you might say, “I know that the bar is high, but we need someone who can do this work and keep track of deadlines without a lot of supervision. I hear you that it’s hard and I know it’s a challenge, but in this context, we need someone who can handle a large workload and get the very difficult done with limited staff resources.”

  9. Most important, clearly state the consequences if her performance does not improve. Explain that the next step would be a formal improvement plan, and if that doesn’t lead to quick improvement, you would have to let the staff member go—for example, “Assuming your performance improves and you sustain that level, then we’ll just move forward. But if we’re still seeing these issues in three weeks, I’ll need to put you on a formal improvement plan. After that, if it doesn’t improve, I’d need to let you go. So my concerns here are serious ones. I think you have a great deal of potential, but I also need you to be performing at a higher level.”