Top Management Story

Writen by Tel Asiado

Managers and team leaders, let's face it, if you accept mediocre or poor performers in your team, you'll wind up with a bunch of lowly underachievers, which can add up to unnecessary stresses in your projects. No team leader would want poor performers, but it's a fact of a project life, sometimes they are thrown into the team alongside achievers, either by an error in selection choice for the role, lack of project funds to hire a competent employee, internal politics, and so on.

Leaders need to push for excellence. We should demand the most from our team members, but with discipline and fairness in our dealings, and they'll strive to deliver. If we tolerate a half-hearted effort, we are sending a message that our standards are easy to meet.

If poor performers happen to be part of a project team, certainly, the responsibility falls on the team leader to do something about them.

By transforming underachievers into performers, team leaders will impress not only on themselves but to their bosses, earning a reputation as a results-oriented leader. Staff members will also feel better about themselves once they see they are part of a team that performs par excellence. The desire to excel will feed on itself and teams will no longer settle for second-rate work.

In professional sports, there are many examples of athletes who struggle while playing for a last-place team only to bounce back when they're traded to a playoff contender. The fact that they are suddenly surrounded by a coach and team mates who expect and demand superior performance causes them to dig within themselves and produce much better results.

New managers may mistakenly spend most of their time with their top staff and ignore the others. Ignoring poor or below-average workers allow them to burrow into teams. They'll become increasingly difficult to dislodge once left alone.

A method I continuously practiced as a project leader was to set incremental goals and cheering efforts of my team members to improve. We need to reinforce to team members what they do right by praising them. If they lapse into mediocrity, by all means, as team leaders, we should intervene and remind them of our high expectations and their responsibility to their team.

Some workers will resist entreaties from their superiors. The more excellence is demanded of them, the more they will gripe. This is not often easy to do, but team leaders should ensure they don't dignify their staff's complaining by nodding or looking sympathetic. This teaches team members that in order to earn full attention, they must cut the complaints and commit instead to improving their performance.

Here are some suggestions a team leader can do to propel poor performers to improve:

Champion their strengths: Emphasise what the poor performers do right. Talk up their assets and make them realize how much more they can contribute by harnessing their full potential.

Challenge them to improve in increments: Set short-term goals that require slightly more effort and effectiveness. With each incremental gain, poor performers will be lifted up on to a higher level.

Enlist peers as mentors: As necessary, make most driven, talented performers alongside these poor performers as mentors. Poor team performers often respond well when they're influenced by more successful and supportive co-worker.