4 Ways to Prevent Sabotage from Low Performers

The best managers are slow to hire and quick to fire. Many managers make the classic mistake of waiting too long to terminate a poor performing employee. This only hurts the rest of the team. Consider the following:

1. Have a process to hold the team accountable for results

The toughest part can be identifying if someone is truly performing poorly, and why. I’d recommend having everyone submit a written summary of their week using a tool like Weekly Update. This helps make very clear who is making progress and who is not.

2. Identify people that aren’t delivering

By reading the weekly updates, attending team meetings and looking at the KPIs you’ve set for the team, it should be obvious who is not meeting expectations.

3. Be upfront with them

When you’ve identified someone as performing poorly, it is important to be upfront with them. What are they doing wrong? What do they need to correct? How long do they have to make that correction?

4. If it doesn’t work, make a change quickly

Once you’ve been upfront with a low performing employee of what needs to be done to do better, the ball is in his/her court. It’s up to them to put in the effort to change/evolve/get better. If not, you need to make a change quickly.

Bottom line: you are sabotaging the team by keeping a low performer on it. It’s your duty as a manager to keep only the best talent on the team.