“Try to look at your weakness and convert it into your strength. That’s success.” — Zig Ziglar
The same goes for a leader, who’s dealing with the underperforming employee. The leader must encourage employee to shape his skills so that they can give their best performance and can develop self-confidence. Performance is more about the right attitude than the capability. So as a leader, you can surely turn an underperformer into a super-achiever by undertaking proper action.
Here are 3 fundamental steps to overcome the performance issue and encourage employee:
Communicate:
To find the root cause of underperformance, communicate with the underperforming employees about the –
- Work-life-balance, employee’s importance for the organization, growth opportunities and work environment. Tell what you have observed (along with the evidence) and how it can affect the company.
- How you communicate here also matters. Have a conversation with the underperformer about his/her performance failure in person and not in public. Make the disengaged employee feel comfortable by talking to him/her calmly and candidly. Explain everything with the support of live examples rather than preaching.
Don’t threaten but inspire the weak employee in such a way that he/she feels self-directed.
Motivate:
- Understand what motivates the weak performer and motivate him/her with proper incentives.
- Give the underperformers a chance to work with the top performers. Their observation may bring out some positive attitudinal changes in the underperformer.
- Involve the underperformer into more challenging tasks/projects. Let the weak performers explore various tasks to break the monotony. These may prove to be a major morale booster for them and they would feel valued.
- Create the struggling performer’s goals together. Give the underperformer proper direction and training to help him/her get better at work. Provide regular feedback to the underperforming employee about his/her performance progress and reward the improved performance.
Proper mentoring plays a key role in turning a weak performer into a super achiever.
Mitigate:
- Stop the underperformance from spreading out across the team. As soon as you notice the underperformance, start taking action to mitigate the risk of underperformance taking over the whole team.
- Refrain from discussing anyone’s underperformance with any other team member but the slow performer. Otherwise, it may lead to negative vibrations in the team.
- Mutually set the goals for improvement specifications and write down the plan to achieve those goals along with a deadline. Keep it as a reference for follow up.
Lastly, we suggest you to analyze the scenario, if you’re legging behind because of loopholes in any team member’s individual performance. And ask yourself ‘Am I putting in required efforts to get my weaker employees at par?’ If not, take the expert’s help.
