Hey Leader! You can’t fix other people’s problems, but you can help them to do so.
No one likes to be an underperformer. People usually hate to be bad at their job. As a Leader, if you pay enough attention and you dedicate some time to finding an actual cause, you are able to define steps on how to get to where you and your team members are satisfied.
The best you can do is to find a common understanding of the situation. In some cases, people don’t see that their behaviors affect the team, the project, or the company. You should put things out. Share your perspective, how you perceive the work of one and what effects it has (remember we talk about the work, not the person itself). Your intention is to either change your perception or diagnose the problem. And it has to be pure, with no hidden agenda. It also has to be communicated to the party.
Don’t let your thinking fall into “what I am going to do about it”. It’s not about you. You cannot solve problems on your own. If you try to, you can easily find a trap of workarounds — give less responsibility, move somewhere else, change the importance of the work, take over the job, etc.
Your role here is to support the solution, not to create one.
The plan needs to be built, of course. But in order to make it happen, first, you need both to agree if there is something “to be fixed”.
Discuss if the party also feels that this is a problem. Share your thoughts on why you think it’s important. Get the other perspective. Go under the surface, and ask multiple times “why do you think like that”, “how does this work in a long perspective”, “what happens if we all apply the same behavior”, and “what do you want to achieve by doing so”, “is there an alternative”.
And remember, focus on the future, not the past. Sometimes, you don’t even have to know what exactly happened, because that conversation can really go into blaming. You don’t want to do that right. So instead let’s focus on what’s next- what are we going to do about it.
Once you find that mutual understanding of the problem, diagnose.
It’s important to look at this from a wide angle. It can be the misunderstanding of the goal, lack of skills, lack of knowledge, terrible environment, issues with the relations in the team, or even personal stuff happening. You don’t need a perfect plan. Define the first steps on how to make a slight difference and see how it goes.
From now on, you should both focus on validating the progress. Why do I mean both? Because it is on you to share your thoughts on how you see progress. What is changing and what things are addressed is not enough. The same goes for the team member. One should make sure if one puts effort into something, you actually know about it.
Aligning the perspective on the progress avoids escalation in the future. You both are aware if the progress is going well or not. You can do it in your 1on1 meetings, by asking “How it goes with X”. That approach means no surprises in the performance review.
Key takeaway:
As a Leader, you should focus on making people aware of the problems.
Help them to understand how the problems are affecting the work.
Don’t bring solutions, be curious, and stay conscious.
You participate in plan creation, but you don’t own it.
You help to solve issues that go beyond individual work.
