How to course correct when a team member is not delivering results

In situations when I have done that with team members, when I’ve been kind of disappointed or surprised to see that a project wasn’t moving as fast as it was supposed to or things weren’t coming along as smoothly, in those moments when I say, hey, what’s getting in the way? Like more often than not, team members have shared a really simple fix. Something like, hey, you know, I’m so glad you asked. I’m having a lot of trouble with this one stakeholder or this one client.

Would you mind attending a meeting or two with me to help kind of iron out what they’re really looking for? And then I’ll take it from there. Because I opened the door instead of making the assumption that, hey, this team member sucks and they can’t cut it, because I asked that question, now I’ve given them a space to tell me what’s going on so that I can help them. Welcome to the Managing Made Simple Podcast. I’m Leah Garvin, your host and team operations consultant.

Through this show and my signature Ops Playbook, I condense a decade of experience driving team operations in some of the most influential companies in tech to save you time, money, and stress. It doesn’t matter if you’re a business owner who realized that running a team isn’t as easy as you thought it would be, or a new manager looking to learn the ropes, or are a seasoned manager ready to up their game, everyone is welcome to hang out with Managing Made Simple.

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Kind of nice, right? So if you are ready to make this whole managing thing easier while scaling your business, head to leahgarvin.com slash the book or amazon.com and get your copy of The Unstoppable Team today. Welcome back to the show. Today, we are talking about that frustrating situation when a team member is not delivering the results that we wanted or expected. And this happens to all of us, to business owners, entrepreneurs, team leaders. It doesn’t matter what situation you’re in.

This kind of thing is so frustrating. It can make us stay awake at night thinking about what we’re going to do. It can lead us to overcompensating, right? Where we’re jumping in and having to take on responsibilities that we don’t have time for, maybe aren’t even very good at. And it’s one of those things that I think can lead us to thinking, well, I got to just get someone new. I got to hire someone else. This person doesn’t work.

And as we talk about what to do about the situation, I want to first ask you to try starting by assuming that there’s hope in the situation. Because when we start by just writing that person off, we may not give them the right feedback that they need, the right opportunity to fix things, turn around, and we might salvage a situation that actually isn’t so bad. And so again, I’m urging you to start with trying some of the things that I talk about in today’s episode and then seeing, yeah, is this something that we can work through?

Now, when someone is not delivering the results that we have expected, well, the first thing we got to ask ourselves is, are they clear on the expectations? Am I assuming that because they started in this job and we had a conversation in the interview or we talked about this thing one time that they know exactly what I want to see from them? And again, it can be easy to assume, hey, I hired them saying, I want a self-starter.

I want this person to be proactive. I want you to do this. And the person said all the right things in the interview. But when they’re not delivering, then it’s really important to first check ourselves around, was it really clear what my expectations were? Was it something that we had a conversation around, whether in onboarding, in the beginning of a project, whatever? And if the answer was yes, then we want to move into delivering feedback around that there is a gap in seeing the results we wanted.

Now, if our answer is really, no, I don’t think I really have set the clearest of expectations, then the first place we want to start is having a bit of a reset conversation with someone, saying, either way, that feedback, hey, I’m not really seeing the results I was expecting. I want to make sure the expectations were clear here. And this is XYZ, the responsibility of the job. I need to see XYZ progress in these intervals. Here’s what success looks like.

We want to have that conversation as we’re delivering the feedback. So if you haven’t quite set expectations, want to dial it up a little bit harder on, well, make sure, I don’t know if I was clear here. Here’s where we’re at. If we have set expectations and we’re just jumping right into the feedback, really making clear again, these were the expectations that we had talked about, pointing back to that initial level setting conversation and saying, you know, we’re not seeing what we need to at this stage.

Now, in that feedback conversation, we want to make this a dialogue. So instead of saying results aren’t hitting and, you know, you got to turn this around or else, remember, we’re assuming that there’s hope for the situation. So you want to ask the person, you know, what’s getting in the way? Is there something, some more support you need is, you know, tell me what’s going on here. And in situations when I have done that with team members, when I’ve been kind of disappointed or surprised to see that a project wasn’t moving as fast as it was supposed to, or things weren’t coming along as smoothly.

In those moments when I say, hey, what’s getting in the way? Like more often than not, team members have shared a really simple fix, something like, hey, you know, I’m so glad you asked. I’m having a lot of trouble with this one stakeholder or this one client. Would you mind attending a meeting or two with me to help kind of iron out what they’re really looking for? And then I’ll take it from there, right? Because I opened the door instead of making the assumption that, hey, this team member sucks and they can’t cut it because I asked that question.

Now I’ve given them a space to tell me what’s going on so that I can help them. So you’re having this dialogue. You’re talking about, well, what’s getting in the way? What can I do to better support you? In this same conversation where you’re delivering that feedback that you’re not hitting the mark, you’re resetting your expectations, you’re making a dialogue, you want to talk about, well, what are, what do you expect to see next? When do you want to check in on it?

And, you know, how do you know that things are going well? So in this conversation, because it is a pretty kind of, you know, sort of a reconciliation conversation, we want to come away with that having a very specific time you plan to check in and what you want to see in that next conversation. Okay. Because this, this serves as the container for you to point back to in a few weeks to see, you know, have things turned around.

Now there might be some actions that you’ve committed to in this conversation. Like maybe someone is feeling that they need some support from someone, they need some coaching, they need some help on, on talking to a stakeholder, like we said, they need some clarity on answering some questions, whatever it is. If you’ve taken on some actions or you’re supposed to move the ball forward in some way, you got to deliver on that. So in that timeframe between now and when you check back in, you got to make sure that you’ve upheld your end of the bargain.

Okay. So now a couple of weeks have gone by and it’s time to check back in. In this situation, there’s typically three possible outcomes. Okay. Now, again, we’re assuming there’s hope as we go into the conversation. So before we go into this meeting to, to check back in on how things are, you want to take stock on, well, how do I think things have been going? And ideally what’s happened is the person has made some improvements.

Things are getting back on track. They’re starting to hit those results, or there’s a clear science moving in the right direction. That’s ideal. And then the check-in conversation is, Hey, you know, I’ve been seeing some good progress. Keep doing what you’re doing. Let’s keep, you know, stay on top of it. We’ll keep checking in at these more frequent intervals right now as we kind of get back on, you know, get back into the rhythm, but all systems go, do you have any questions?

Do you need anything from me? Okay. So that’s scenario one. There’s progress being made. The person’s all in and we’re going forward. Do you want some hands-on support for all of the topics I talk about on this show? Like a team expert who has worked within tech giants like Apple and Google, as well as small businesses on hand to help you delegate and get out of the weeds, handle tough conversations with team members, plan your hiring strategy, and get your teams to help bring in more revenue.

Then it’s time to sign up for my Team Whisperer Consulting Sprint. For 90 days, you have me in your back pocket to help you navigate any and every issue happening on your team. DM me the word sprint on Instagram or email me at hello at leahgarvin.com and let’s build your unstoppable team. Scenario two, which I’d say happens more than I wish, but scenario two is things haven’t really improved, but that person is really committed. So, you know, you have the conversation, you’re thinking, yeah, like things haven’t really improved.

I’m going to hear what the person has to say. So scenario two is saying, hey, you know, we’re coming back together. It’s been three, four weeks, not seeing the results. We talked about a number of things. What’s getting in the way? Again, you’re having a dialogue. And in this situation, you know, if the person says, gosh, I’ve been trying so hard, you know, I had, you know, I got sick or I had this situation and I wasn’t able to focus on this thing or, you know, they have maybe some reasons and you may agree or disagree with them, but they’re really committed.

They’re telling you, you know, I’m so sorry. I really want to do this. Here’s the progress I’ve made. I don’t know if you knew I’ve been doing this and that. And they’re really, really showing I want to fix it. I just needed a little bit more time. Okay. Then this is course correctable. Okay. So I would say, hey, this is the, the, this isn’t hopeless at this stage. Now I’m going to actually come back around to this.

Let me go to scenario three. And then I want to come back to scenario two and where the pitfalls can be in this situation at face value and say, there’s still hope. And maybe you check back in now in another week or two and say, okay, I’m going to give you a week, but we got to see these two or three things. So you reset expectations. You shorten the timeline to when you’re going to check back in and you go from there because the person is really committed.

Now, the third scenario, which is incredibly frustrating and is one of those things that can kind of freeze us out a little bit on giving feedback is when we go, we have that conversation, things haven’t improved. And your team member is very defensive, dismissive, you know, blaming you all these different things. And this is something that shows, Hey, this person might not be a great fit. The progress didn’t improve, even though you were super clear and they’re not taking responsibility.

Now, when someone doesn’t take personal responsibility or accountability for the results, that is a pretty big problem with someone not really being a team player and a big fit and a good fit on your team. So I think it’s, you know, it’s that moment when I think you can figure out like, how does that conversation have to go from there? If they’re saying, you know, well, I didn’t have this and I don’t think, I think it did go fine.

And these things like, where are they at with that conversation? Now, are they in a, you know, critical path role where you need them to perform this job for a certain amount of time? Is there a way they can start handing things off? You know, do you want to have a more kind of conversation around, well, I don’t know if you’re a fit overall. You know, you’re going to have to work through those different scenarios on your own, just to what you think.

But I would say if you’ve given someone feedback, you’ve given them an opportunity and they’re really dismissive around feedback improving, and they’re not willing to change, that’s not a great sign. I think that’s the situation when the person may not be a fit. Now, I want to jump back to scenario two, because a lot of times I hear this so often, especially with small business owners and entrepreneurs. You have a team member. They’re awesome in terms of loving the company.

They are great to work with. They are super easy, super personal. They’re fun. They bring the team together. They may be helping on the team culture side, but their results are not landing. And you’ve tried and you’ve coached them and you’ve given them support and you’ve tried shifting responsibilities a little bit and changing the scope, and they’re just not hitting the mark. And what happens is business owners like you come to me and you say, gosh, this person’s great.

I don’t want to let them go, but it’s just not hitting the mark. And what happens is you are spending time making up for that work. You’re taking on their job. You’re staying up nights and on the weekends, and you’re taking your time away from actually growing and scaling the business to do a job that you’re paying someone significantly less than the revenue you could be bringing in if you were focusing on growing the business. And not only is this really causing your business to slow down, to be focusing on something that you had a team member that you’re paying to do for that, but it starts to burn you out so that you don’t have even the mental bandwidth to focus on growing your business.

And again, I’m saying this because this is the trap I see business owners and team leaders fall into the most, is that you have someone and it’s uncomfortable to performance manage them. It’s uncomfortable to give them the hard feedback because they are so bought in, they really want to be good, but they are just not a fit. And if someone is not a fit, either because they’re not willing to change and not willing to hear feedback, like I’ve talked about in scenario three, or because it’s just a skills gap.

And in the interview, it seemed like it’d be fine, but they’re just not learning the stuff. And you’ve tried maybe slotting them into different roles or tried changing their scope, tried giving them the support, tried the training, tried the coaching. Then I think it’s okay to have that conversation that, Hey, really, you know, I love the energy you bring. It’s been great right now. This is what the business needs. And I think it’s, you know, ideally likely not.

It’s a, it’s a positive conversation. And you can say, Hey, you know, I want you to really develop in this area and come back to me. We’d love to have you on the team and give that person a chance, showing the doors always open, but it’s not worth slowing down your business for having someone that’s the wrong fit. Because for that person too, they’re not growing. They start to see, you know, when you’re not delivering, even if you really want to be somewhere, it’s demoralizing for yourself.

And you’re actually limiting your own career by not being in the right job. And so give someone a glowing recommendation. You can introduce them to someone where it’s a role that’s way more of a fit for them, but having them in the wrong role, that’s going to slow them down and it’s going to slow down your business. Okay. So those are the things that’s the way to drive the conversation that I’ve seen most effective when you have a team member and you’re just not getting the results you want.

Again, you want to start by reframing, resetting our expectations and delivering the feedback that, Hey, this is not coming together. As we talked about, I’m not seeing the results that I want. Then we talk about, you know, well, what are the expectations again? When are we going to check in? What do I expect to see at that check-in over the course of that time? You do the stuff that you had committed to, right? If it was about making an introduction or helping with something or whatever, you deliver on your side of it.

You assess, Hey, have they improved before you have that next conversation? You have the conversation and either A, they’ve turned things around, it’s going better. B, they haven’t turned things around, but they’re so committed to doing it. And then we talked about a couple of situations with that. Or three, it hasn’t turned around. They’re not taking responsibility and yeah, they may not be a fit for your team. And so instead of just jumping to number three, right out of the gate, let’s give them an opportunity to turn around because I swear to you more often than not, I see that when we start to have those feedback conversations, we give support, we give someone an opportunity to turn things around, they do it.

And so why would we jump to the expensive and time-consuming and stressful process of hiring a new person when all they needed was that feedback? So we always got to start with the expectation of the feedback, give someone an opportunity to turn things around, and then assess from there. And if you want more specifics on how I drive these conversations, how to either have a feedback conversation with someone that’s not quite hearing it, if we want to talk about expectation setting, which are the things to hand off, how to frame up these conversations, send me a message because I know this stuff is tough.

I know it’s really tough with team members that we work closely with every day. It can be hard when you have that sort of family dynamic that many teams have, especially in smaller businesses, and it’s hard to have those harder conversations. So send me a message. I’ll talk you through it. Set up a scale-up strategy call on my website, LeahGarvin.com, and we can talk through all this good stuff and get you the help that you need.

All right, see you next time. That’s all I have for today. Thank you so much for tuning in to the Managing Made Simple podcast, where my goal is to demystify the job of people management so that together we can make the workplace somewhere everyone can thrive. With that said, let’s spread the word. If you love this episode, please pass it along to someone who might benefit from it. See you next time.