The Real Cost of Low Performance

One of the Achilles heels of most clients continues to be how to deal with a low performing team member. It’s hard to understand when you evaluate the costs. It’s easier to understand when you factor in the emotional component. Though it can be complicated, the most prevalent reason I find that leaders allow it to persist is that it’s difficult, time consuming and emotionally challenging to coach an underperforming leader or team member. So they put off dealing with the problem to the point where they may sacrifice:

• Team cohesion and trust – it is upsetting to people who are working hard and delivering results to see a colleague who is not. Everyone wonders why the boss won’t deal with it. Team members talk about it, work around it and eventually it makes team interactions more fractious.
• Team energy and enthusiasm – For most high performing people it is frustrating to have a colleague who isn’t rowing alongside the rest of the team or leading a team to high performance. I don’t think most high performing employees will stop engaging, but they may feel the impact emotionally. It is frustrating to be around someone who is allowed to stay in her or his role and underperform. In my experience no individual is worth the frustration of your whole team. Yet I see managers sacrifice this all the time in order to avoid dealing with the situation.
• Team outcomes – Team members will only work to fill in the gaps of a low performing member for so long. At some point colleagues realize that by compensating for another colleague, they become complicit. A client recently told me a colleague with a fairly large team reporting to him is often MIA, working from home or simply not available. So the team members come to my client all the time for coaching, support and regular management support. This client “filled in” for his colleague for a month but finally got upset and told his colleague that his team needed him. It didn’t change because my client doesn’t really have the authority and the colleague’s boss is not willing to act.
• The boss and team reputation – This is perhaps the most important impact of all. I always tell a client that for the first few months the underperforming employee looks like the problem. But at a certain point, the boss starts to look like the problem and if underperformance is allowed to go on for long, it will eventually impact her or his reputation. When I hear about a long standing performance issue I always ask the client, “Is ________ worth your reputation as a leader?”

Dealing with low performance can be time consuming and requires skill. Putting off dealing with a performance issue makes it more challenging to resolve. Most importantly it is undermining the fact that something else might be going on and unless you address it, will most likely continue. Underperformance is often about poor job, culture or boss fit, or something larger going on in the employee’s life. If you are a leader, your job is to inspire and motivate high performance from everyone. Allowing underperformance is bad for your team, reputation, business and ultimately for the individual who is not being asked to contribute their best. In the end that is what we all want to do.