Managing Successfully Low-Performers - Anthony Chaine

“Life has no rehearsals, only performances.” Anonymous

Whether you manage teams, divisions of salespeople or just yourself. At one point you had to deal with performances problems that affected your team, your job or career.

While under-performers exist across trades, functions, industries, and cultures. We will focus primarily on the sales profession here.

Rookies are expected to make mistakes to learn and grow, but often it’s the tenured, experienced salespeople that fail below-expected performances probably due to lack of proper orientation, training or adoption of innovative methods and approaches that the market requires. Either way, occasional low performance does happen. The key is how to deal with it as a manager?

And, most importantly how to reverse this trend?

“Being relaxed, at peace with yourself, confident, emotionally neutral, loose, and free-floating – these are the keys to successful performance in almost everything.” Dr. Wayne W. Dyer

Day-to-day coaching and training on specific subjects that needs improvement, one-on-ones, performances planning conversation and similar activities are intended to uncover the gaps, analyze them thoroughly, draft a coaching progress and improvement plan to correct the wrong approaches or behaviors to meet objectives.

It’s entirely reasonable to expect occasional lapses in performances at all levels. But, let’s not confuse occasional lapses with sustainable under-performances

Cronic Problem Performances

Under performances become a problem only when sustained or denied.

Sustained low performances are often attributed to lack of proper knowledge, personal and mental deficiencies to do the job and often the lack of capability, skill set and or will see to meet required objectives. Occasional wrong hiring decisions occur, the key is own them and address them. As a manager, if you determine the presence of skill set, desire to do the job and capability then it’s probably an issue of execution and or priorities to attain set goals.

Occasionally, the historical top producer may find themselves in similar situations as well. Your job as a manager is to figure out if it’s a behavioral, attitudinal issue, or a legitimate issue that can range from lack of adaptation to the newly adopted company new technologies, new sales methodology, changes in the market or industry to personal/ family issues that affected your top producer. The key here is to play the role, of a coach, a therapist, and a parent figure to support, and guide back to the right track.

This affect everyone, occasionally, the historical top producer may find themselves in similar situations as well. Your job as a manager is to figure out if it’s a behavioral, attitudinal issue, or a legitimate issue that can range from lack of adaptation to the newly adopted company new technologies, new sales methodology, changes in the market or industry to personal/ family issues that affected your top producer. The key here is to play the role, of a coach, a therapist, and a parent figure to support, and guide back to the right track.

“When you’re a manager, you work for your company. When you’re a leader, your company works for you.”– Stan SlapIt’s Tough, deal with it

Most managers prefer to ignore for as long as possible these problem performers. Because either they feel they part of the natural pool of expected team performance (big mistake) or despite their current contributions they will be hard to replace. Other reason may be.

Addressing low performers is always a challenging task for both parties
Conflict, tension and defense walls usually rise during these conversations
Investing the same somewhere else may generate better ROI
The low performer may point to the coach shortcomings in term of coaching duties

Rather, than avoiding these tough conversations, smart managers address them head-on, with smarts, empathy, sensitivity, care, and bravado. New fences should never be built to protect low performers; rather they should be exposed and dealt with immediately in a tactful manner. The coaching period should stay as long as needed or until notable progress is accomplished over a good period.

Managers and organizations that protect and accept low performers are by default contributing to their people demise. Not addressing this issue will erode the whole organization performances overall. Top performers love to work with great performers, neglecting low performers often accelerate the exodus of top performers that seek competitive environments where the scrutiny and demand are high along with the potential rewards. The good and success of the team is often the doing of the manager. A bad manager performance reflects on the overall performance of his team.

Managers have the duty, responsibility and obligation to do whatever it takes ethically to improve the team performance and set low performers back on the prosperity track.

“There are only three measurements that tell you nearly everything you need to know about your organization’s overall performance: employee engagement, customer satisfaction, and cash flow. It goes without saying that no company, small or large, can win over the long run without energized employees who believe in the mission and understand how to achieve it.”– Jack WelchPerformance is a metric; therefore it can improve.

When dealing with low performers, stick to addressing the performances issues and the reasons behind it, it’s not about the person. It’s all about the behaviors and ability to perform the job satisfactorily and attain expected objectives. Do not judge the person, work with him/her with the full confidence that they will become a turnaround success story.

Performance is a KPI that is influenced by mindsets

Start the conversation with a positive, open mindset. Start with the positive accomplishments, then, gradually move to the subject of the performances that you need to address. Express how much you believe in the capability of the person, and stick to it until their confidence and self-believe kick-in. You are both looking forward to performance improvement; hence you are together tied by the hips until you fulfill your mutual shared goals.

Encourage self-professing of issues

The purpose is to identify performance issues, while that may be obvious based on the manager research, planning, and preparation. It may be wise to hear the perspective of the under-performer, the manager observations may be entirely different from the low-performer observations. Allowing the latter to identify, profess and reflect on his shortcomings may bridge the mental gap between where he currently stands and how he can address going forward.

The low-performer may address his lack of mastery dealing with a particular aspect of the business. A good example would be, Leveraging current technological resources, identifying the right business solutions to assist clients with their problems, navigating internal processes, managing critical priorities, improving time management effectiveness, as well as customer follow-ups and objection handling, etc.

“There is something that is much more scarce, something rarer than ability. It is the ability to recognize ability.”– Robert HalfListen…

Great managers listen first, identify problems, write them down, create a resolution plans driven by shared agreement and collective insights. Tackle one skill that requires improvement at the time until mastery, then move to another and another. Grade low -performers skill progress from one to five, with five being the lowest level, as they progress upwards, share the accomplished progress. The aim is to achieve better mastery of the deficient skills.

If the manager realizes that they are simply too many issues, knowledge gaps, and failures in execution, then it may be that the person is not a good fit for the position. Assist them to find a better fit somewhere else.

Bad Attitude and Behaviors must be dealt with swiftly and accordingly

Low-performers who are toxic destroy team morale and harmony. Toxic behavior should be addressed quickly to discontinue or be consequently terminate for lack of compliance. It’s better to lose a bad apple than corrupt the team moral. You are the manager and it’s your responsibility to act as the protector of the team performance and harmony. Be fair, document everything, and ensure that attitude and behaviors in a professional environment are as important as performances.

Finally, while dealing with low performers is always a difficult challenge to address. It’s always better to handle it the moment it manifests rather than deal with it at a later stage. There is a direct correlation between one performance and one state of minds. Great managers know how to touch people’s minds, hearts positively to create happy employees clients and prosperous organizations.