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Reasons Staff Perform Badly – How To Handle Poor Performers · Enhance.training

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: In my experience, there are four main reasons that staff perform badly.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: To learn how to handle poor performers and to be a lot more successful in managing teams, the actions you take should address each of these reasons.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: Staff performing badly or poor performers have a big impact on the whole of your team.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: When you're trying to raise standards and the performance of your team, having one or more staff consistently not meeting those standards or expectations blows your authority and credibility out of the water if you don't take action.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: Poor performing staff create psychological impacts that reduce the performance of all team members.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: Lower team performance creates a big indirect cost to the business, which is why it is so damaging to the manager.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: Developing a reputation as a manager that doesn't effectively handle poor performers is tough to recover from.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: Removing the bad performing staff member as quickly as possible is one option and in some cases the best option.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_00: Generally speaking, most employees want to do a good job.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: If they're performing badly, the chances are high that you can fix the reasons for their poor performance more quickly, more easily and more cheaply than firing the individual and hiring a new team member.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: I have turned around the performance of multiple teams and functions in a range of different companies and achieved great results quickly.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: In my experience, removing poor performing employees should be a last resort if you want to improve team motivation and increase team performance as quickly as possible.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: The main reasons staff perform badly are firstly, the underperformers don't know what standard is expected of them.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: Secondly, those underperforming don't accept they are below expectations, third, underperformers don't know how to improve their performance, and fourth, some underperformers don't want to improve.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_00: There are classic signs to look out for for each reason and actions for how to handle poor performers fairly, reasonably, and to create the best chances of improvement.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: The first reason staff perform badly is they don't know what is expected of them.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_00: Many of you might be thinking, you know, do staff really not know what is expected?
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: Surely most staff know exactly what to do and how they're being assessed as good or poor performers.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: In my personal experience, which includes working at many top companies, most managers don't do nearly enough to make clear expectations, goals, and how staff are being assessed.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: As an example, in one of my first jobs in my career, I joined as the least experienced member of a team and was given a few basic instructions and then left to get on with my job.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't receive that much useful feedback and I didn't have much of an idea about what I should be doing to improve my performance.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: This was my worst experience of not being told what is expected.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: I wanted to do a good job, I just didn't know what doing a good job meant at the time.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: You don't know what you don't know.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: Most employees want to do a good job.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: They want to do their fair share within the team.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: When you spend time with your team members and spell out what is needed and why, you remove confusion and ignorance.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_00: Provide a lot of feedback on individuals' performance and you have a foundation for great performance.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: The easiest way to find out if a person knows exactly what you want from them is to ask them to tell you what is the most important goals for you to achieve this week, or what do you think I'm expecting from you this week?
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: Ask questions like that.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: Make sure that each of your team members and the team overall understand exactly what you expect of them.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: Even more important is that you live your own expectations in front of the team.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: The second reason staff perform badly is they don't accept they are performing below expectations.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: Surprising as it may sound, I know there are a lot of employees who don't really know what their boss thinks of them.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: Just take a look at the stats from surveys.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: The bottom line is the majority of bosses don't give enough feedback or the feedback is so general that it is largely useless.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: How many of your team are confident they know exactly what you think of their performance week in, week out?
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: How often do you provide clear, useful and specific feedback to them so they know exactly how you view their performance?
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_00: There are staff that kid themselves that they are doing a better job than they really are, for all sorts of reasons.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: The more feedback you provide your team, the harder it is for any underperforming staff member to think they're doing a good enough job.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: Give clear, honest and specific feedback once each week to each staff member as a minimum.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: My name is Jess Coles.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_00: If you're new to the podcast, Enhance.training shares people management expertise, resources and courses teaching you how to be a great manager and build high-performing teams.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_00: I've included links to additional resources in the podcast description which you'll find useful, so do take a look at these.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: The third reason staff perform badly is that underperformers don't know how to improve their performance.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: When staff regularly get stuck, produce work below the minimum standards, take a long time to deliver or ask a lot of questions, they may not know exactly what to do.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_00: These underperforming staff lack knowledge, skills, relationships or resources to do their job to the standard being asked of them.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: Ask your staff to explain and show you what they're doing.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_00: This is a great way to understand exactly how much they know and understand.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: If they don't know enough to do a good job, then help them learn.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: You can teach and mentor them personally, or you can ask others to do this for you, you know, using internal staff or external resources.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_00: The more your employees understand exactly how they can do their jobs well, the better they will potentially be able to perform.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: This maximizes the benefit the team, company, and you get from employing each person.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: This is a core job of a manager.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: Make the time to teach and mentor team members.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_00: This is 100% in your interest as a manager, as you will get better team performance.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_00: You also get a ton of other motivational benefits within your team.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: You have so many skills that you can pass on that will help the overall team improve their performance.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_00: Investing the time to teach team members is a brilliant investment of your time and a great way to leverage your efforts through the team to increase team performance.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_00: The fourth reason staff perform badly is that some underperformers don't want to improve.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_00: Not wanting to improve performance or behaviour comes from a big range of reasons.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: You know, for instance, it could be anger at management actions or decisions that they feel impacts them unfairly.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_00: Or it could be being poorly treated at work by colleagues or bosses or being bullied, for example.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_00: Or it might be experiencing organisational conflict they don't feel they can do much about.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_00: Or it could be having character flaws such as being lazy, or it might be experiencing major problems in their personal life, or it might be having really low energy levels.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_00: Some of these reasons for staff performing badly as a manager you can fix.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_00: For example, organizational conflict.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_00: Other reasons need to be resolved by the team member themselves.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_00: You might be able to help, for example, by helping them improve relationships with colleagues or yourself.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_00: For those that don't want to improve, even though you have done your best to help and support them improve, you should look to remove them from your team to improve team performance overall.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_00: Make the time to find out what the reasons are for staff members being angry or upset or frustrated.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of the time you're able to fix the problems and you gain a loyal, motivated staff member as a result.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_00: So, in summary, most employees want to do a good job and not let their team members and boss down.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_00: Most, but not all, underperformers would like to improve and have barriers in their way to improvement.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_00: Helping them overcome their barriers is the quickest, easiest and cheapest way to improve team performance and impress your boss.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_00: To quickly recap, four reasons staff perform badly are firstly, the underperformers don't know what standards are expected of them.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_00: Secondly, those underperforming don't accept they are below expectations.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_00: Third, underperformers don't know how to improve their performance.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_00: And fourth, some underperformers don't want to improve.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks very much for listening, and I look forward to speaking to you again soon.