Managing an underperformer who thinks they’re doing great
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The single best tool in handling this situation for me was peer feedback. We instituted a system where peer feedback came from a few peers he selected and a few I myself selected. The person in question was shocked when even the peers he selected came back saying that he simply failed to get stuff done.
This came as a wakeup call for him, and we were able to work on a very clear development plan that minimized distractions and maximized time for deep work. He ended up being a solid contributor.
A gold contributor?
Hiring is not easy, so when I hire, I'm really their biggest cheerleader. I want everyone to succeed, if folks reporting to me succeed, that often means I'm doing my job, makes my life easier, means I made a good hiring decision. I'm not saying that I'm a smart manager, but good managers don't wish to see you fail, they really wish to see you succeed and will do everything possible to make that happen. Just saying this because I know plenty of folks are distrustful of managers.
Everyone has their own style and this is not mine - nor do I believe it is the duty of the manager to do everything they can to rehabilitate someone. Depending on the context, I would go as far as to say that doing so could potentially border on being an immoral disservice to your company, clients, shareholders and team.
Time is the most valuable and scarce of resources. Managers are responsible for executing on their mission (within the legal boundaries of the law and value system of the organization they serve). I have a lot of things on my plate and am responsible for the livelihoods of over 100 people. I want everyone to be successful and we certainly wouldn’t knowingly hire someone we didn’t think would be. If the day comes where it’s clear a person doesn’t get the job, want the job or have the capacity for the job (to borrow from Traction), it’s time to go and go quickly preferably. I would include in this people that would take an inordinate amount of my and the teams time or resources to get there.
There are presumably others who get/want/have those things and it’s my duty to serve THEM in an effort to further the mission I was hired to do.
Neither of us are right / wrong of course. We just have different styles.
What you might not see he is responsible for giving his time to people who contribute positively. Spending time on pulling someone up is taking time from solving issues of others. Where their issues are probably more tied to job at hand and delivering value to the customers.
So what he means is that yes, one should help someone who falls behind but it is not fair to put too much effort that will be taken away from others. It is also not fair for the customers.
How can you judge what is fair share of time to help someone? It depends on a situation of course but mentoring someone 1 on 1 for months or making day a week only for such person is just too much.
So a manager only has to manage people that are good performers and easy to manage, but those that are hard to manage should be just fired? That sounds a bit too convenient for the manager.
If someone's underperforming then it is absolutely the manager's duty to correct that through coaching and leadership before they reach for drastic measures.
Btw, let's not bother to use the customers as an argument. They don't give a crap that Bob from accounting is underperforming. This is normal in any company and par for the course
When I was brought in, I had one employee who somehow got hired way above his competency level. Everybody liked him, but he was too high in the technical chain.
We had a long conversation because I simply couldn't take the time to teach him--it was a startup in which we simply didn't have time (we died about 6 months later). Either he had to go down a level (including salary) or he had to start looking for a new job. I was even happy to give him a decent referral ... but for a lower level.
He left for a new company--I think he managed to keep most of his salary, but I know he had a downleveled title. He did quite well.
Had I been in a big company with runway, I could have taken the time to teach him. And it would have likely been better than trying to hire someone new since everybody actually liked him.
Managing is about balancing conflicting goals. If you think managing is easy, please stay away from it--your team will be better for it.
Interesting you've experienced it taking a year in the US. I would've assumed with employment at will that it was easier, but I guess they want to cover themselves from lawsuits.
During review season, every manager's worst nightmare is to not have any evidence that they can label someone a low performer. Once one is identified, it's in the manager's interest to keep them in that low performer state for as long as possible. This makes it easier to reward high performers when raises and promotions are zero sum within a team. It also signals to upper management how keenly they can assess talent. In short, having an underperformer on the team is a wonderful asset for a manager.
Consider oil extraction, for example: Under more strict capitalism access is reserved for those with large, existing resources, e.g. existing oil producers. But in some contexts, e.g. Alaska under Palin, it's viewed as a natural resource, benefiting every resident.
Why does company X get to keep all the oil that was just there naturally? One can say, 'they did the work,' but others were denied the opportunity to do the work bc it requires loans from the government.
In a nation better set up to respond to its committments to its citizens to enable them to pursue equality, opportunity, happiness, etc., internal competition isn't as ruthless bc all will benefit from its extraction more equally. There's no fight for the precious resources, so we don't have to pretend that certain people suck at their jobs so we can fire them.
If anything, the competition sounded even worse, because losing often meant privation or even death.
its a sickness
OH and to get a cat 1 rating (the best) the suggested level was world expert several patents in own name etc
And yes, achieving "Significantly exceeds expectations" implies some level of walking on water, and is the top 1-2% of the company. This isn't the same as school grades where anything less than an A means you're doing something wrong.
Annual reviews are some of the worst time to get pay raises because of these constraints. Finding ways to get "out of cycle" raises/promotions is much better.
This was the result of very direct conversions with my manager about “I’m at $x, I’d like to be at $y” and he used all the tools he had to get me there.
But yes, normally that’s the only way.
That seems to be a very generous and reasonable sharing of income from the company and your manager.
As well as to have a manager that wasn’t a self-serving jerk, whose intention is to manage you down, instead of managing you up.
Most people are not so lucky.
And most managers are self-serving, despite whatever platitudes they say.
But I think for most people, they must take their destiny into their own hands. And negotiate what is best for themselves.
In a sense, you’re only worth what you can negotiate.
I know because I've been there. I was underperforming and I'm also naturally very self-critical. So in reviews etc I'd be very open about my weaknesses and the need to improve.
In corporate culture there is nothing to gain from self-awareness. You've just handed your manager an invitation to use you as a scapegoat (see @czep's comment), to leave you out of pay rises and give you crappy tasks.
There's everything to gain from being permanently confident and upbeat about your abilities. Then your manager may A) be fooled by the act and think you're a great performer or B) figure out that you're struggling - but then you're in no worse a position than you would've been by being downbeat in the first place.
That's basically the gist of it.
In an effective organisation middle managers are not incompetent rather they are clueless , they entangle their destiny with the organisation's believing falsely that working towards the betterment of the company would be good for their personal careers. They are actually competent, but very gullible to being tricked into by sociopaths (the upper management) for their own gains.
The higher up executives are in fact the least concerned about the organisation, this makes them take bold risks and start new initiatives (which some times succeed, but mostly are a power grab) to further their own goals of power and leadership. They also carefully select the middle management for avoiding blame and responsibility.
At the bottom are losers, some of these are wannabe sociopaths , they effectively spend all their time towards finding opportunities that put them ahead and some of them are dedicated losers who work hard and are setting themselves up for being used as pawns by higher ups.
The rest are either doing just enough to stay in the loop knowing well how the game works or are failing to do even the basics and end up getting fired.
Gist of it is
People who are focused on doing good work and performing well in an effective organisation are promoted to serve the goals of personal power and authority by higher ups. They are deluded into being loyal to the organisation so that more and more work is extracted from workers below. Effectively rendered clueless.
While the enlightened ones at the bottom either just coast along to pay their bills or look for opportunities to seize power and take control while those working hard have less time for thinking about such plans because they are busy doing real work.
The central premise of the article is that this is the most effective way to manage most organisations.
If I haven’t heard that a thousand times. Nothing kills my productivity more than a insincere “good job” while also being handed more work.
The way I heard it explained once (which totally makes sense to me) is not that you're idly flattering the person to make them feel better, because god knows that feels gross; rather, if you can deliver a thoughtful positive comment (that the person knows or can see is true of their own work), it shows that you're making a good faith effort to really evaluate their work. That way, a criticism comes off less like an insult and more like a place to build from.
2. Leading with thoughtful praise is probably necessary when making a negative comment if you don't already have a trusting relationship. If it is reasonable for the other person to think you are just armchair-quarterbacking and don't actually understand their problem, you need to demonstrate otherwise first, and voicing appreciation for things that they have done is one way to do so.
3. If a manager hasn't already established this relationship with their direct reports, then there are probably other problems (unless it's someone new on the team)
4. Having to do this every time will eventually lead to idle flattery or non-sequitur comments just because things don't always happen in a nice 2:1 ratio of good to bad.
I guess the question is whether someone who already has a trusting relationship with the person they're critiquing should still go for 2:1; personally, I lean towards yes. I think regardless of how well you know someone, it just makes for a nice environment when you start and end with some positivity. But you're right that there's not always gonna be enough positive things to praise for that to be possible.
It's a balancing act -- how do I distribute the thoughtful praise I do have so that I can create a positive environment for my criticism?
She is able to not beat around the bush with criticism because of the relationship we have, and it's good that she doesn't because with kids, household &c. there's a lot to communicate and often not a lot of time to do it (plus any time we spend on necessary communication eats into our leisure time together).
With my boss of many years, the conversation is a bit less intimate and frank, but still fairly to the point: "[foo] sucked. You need to figure out how to make it suck less. If you need resources to make it suck less next time, let me know. [Peer A] is quite good at [foo] so maybe you can reach out to [him/her] for some tips."
If it's in the context of a periodic review, there will probably be lots of positive comments too, but that's more natural because (hopefully) no period of work goes buy without both good and bad things happening.
When I got a new manager, the relationship was newer so there was a bit more beating around the bush for things just because the relationship is not as sussed out. This is natural.
Unfortunately, a lot of managers are very bad at their jobs.
People are people - some people don't like feedback however it's presented, some people don't care about the presentation of the feedback, and will take onboard points without sugar-coating, and some people need more delicate treatment.
Being a good manager means learning how to communicate effectively with all these different types of people and many others, but you can't learn that from a book.
1. Some people just have zero clue. They just don't have self awareness of a good set of internal metrics on how to perform. These are almost always people that had flags when we hired them but we were hiring fast for a role and brought them in.
2. As a manager I didn't give hard feedback early on. It is difficult, especially with people with potential to give that hard feedback (you're moving too slowly, this isn't up to snuff). I've had to do hard corrections later on that could have been solved if I had stepped up and spent the time early on to say hey this needs to be better and how.
Also, underinvesting in promising talent is a huge problem at startups. You often have first time managers or execs who are managing way too many people. So potential leaders don't get the mentorship they need. Given that attracting new, good talent can cost tens of thousands of $s in time and recruiting costs, it is a smart move to put money into leveling up and retaining people! Find them mentors outside the company (YC has a great community for this, as do other VC funds and industry groups), pay for coaching, or find a mentor in the company that has more time. It really pays off.
I am kidding but my perspective (as someone who spent lots of time in both management and senior IC roles) is that thinking like this is harmful.
Sure, there are terrible managers out there but 95% of the time, if your manager and you disagree on your performance, they are looking at it from a perspective that you're missing.
I'll give you a few examples:
- "My manager doesn't appreciate good engineering, just rushes me to get features in." - "No, your manager sees that you over-engineer non-critical parts of the system so you take way longer and your code is more complex than need be. He's been trying to help you make more pragmatic decisions but you're dug in on insisting he doesn't understand you, so you can't see that you can do something much better."
- "My manager is upset that I deliver extra features for our business. I think he's a control freak and he doesn't understand how much I do." - "No, your manager sees that you keep doing one off favors for whoever asks, at the expense of slowing down the critical work that the team has committed to. Your manager works very hard to push back on the business and keep your roadmap clear, and you keep sabotaging it for the team."
- "My manager doesn't appreciate how many bugs I fix in our system. He keeps saying something that I don't think high level enough but I just think he's an asshole." - "No, your manager recognizes that if all you do is fix bugs you will never rise in your level, and as someone who's considered a senior engineer, he needs you to step up and help the team figure out why they have so many bugs to begin with, and then work to solve those at root level. Also, your boss has a hard time fighting for a raise for you every year because his boss just says 'oh that guy just fixes bugs, no growth'"
These situations are super common. In each one, the employee is better off trying to understand what the manager is seeing and why they are suggesting something different. But when the employee has their head up their ass and starts from the point of view "everything I am doing is right and my boss just doesn't understand" they are screwing themselves, likely the team, and are way more in the "oblivious underperformer" category than they realize.
But folds like a wet napkin when anybody with any authority challenges him, leaving you with additional responsibilities after having wasted weeks delaying so that in addition to suddenly having twice as much work, you're also a few weeks behind on day one. Not all of us were born yesterday.
You've spent a lot of time in senior roles, huh? Then you ought to know how valuable someone who can fix bugs, especially arcane ones, can be.
> I am kidding
No you weren't, you just don't want to be perceived as an asshole. This is one of the most basic and overused psychological tactics in history. Just say what you have to say and let the chips fall where they may. If you're wrong and the other person has a spine, they'll tell you you're wrong. If you're right and you're actually dealing with adults, they'll recognize it and accept it.
This is very true. It's easy to ship new features; that's creating something from scratch, you get to make up the structure to suit your needs and introduce the tech debt that suits the project. Bugs show up in a constrained design space; to fix them, you have to operate within the architecture of the system that already exists, which can be much more difficult.
On the first, I agree it's valuable in abstract, but not in the example I cited. There's room for the employee to grow and add more value to the team by rising above and figuring out why shit's so buggy to begin with (could be technical, process, human causes, whatever.) The manager is trying to tell them that. When they double down in their mind to "what 's most valuable is the thing I already happen to be doing, my manager is an ass" they are not doing the right thing for themselves or the team.
To be fair, both companies I've worked with have been very conscious about culture and quality management, I could accept that the rate is somewhat lower outside. But doesn't matter, the point is - most people think they are doing great and refuse to hear anything even if it can help them and everyone.
I have that complaint right now. I was asked to build something using technology I don’t understand well. I made that clear. I wasn’t given time to learn it, so I feel like I’m doing a very poor job at it. And it’s all because it’s being rushed.
This is the big one for me.
Previously I had such an under performer on my team. When presented with concrete examples of where he was falling short of expectations he simply would not accept that he wasn't doing a great job.
I and another very experienced and well regarded manager tried to break through to him and help him but all three times it ended with him getting angry and making crazy excuses.
It seemed he simply could not admit that he needed to improve in some key areas and in the end I had to replace him.
"Managing an underperformer who thinks they're doing great" = you really suck at managing but have no idea, and you're missing out on the irony.
This is up there with teachers who cant teach and tell their students "50% will fail the class".
I haven't been able to figure out how to handle it. I really don't want to have to micromanage him, because I feel like that would cut into his confidence. But he's also pretty terrible when it comes to an important aspect of the job.
Here's what I did (and what the article seems to agree with):
1. Be clear about your expectations. Have standardized forms, and clear deadlines the two of you discuss. Also discuss and agree to consequences for not meeting expectations for timeline and accuracy. You WILL have to explain why this is important; to most of these folks who are rockstars, the work is important, not the follow-up.
2. Work through the documentation process, and find the pinch points. How can you help with that (provide resources).
3. If you have set consequences, follow through on them, or change the process to suit the person if they are valuable enough.
In my experience, being bad at ancillary things isn't malicious. It's either not a priority, or it has never been called out. Super high performers won't understand why it matters (especially in the tech sector where 'the work' is all that matters). It's up to you to translate why it's important, and what the impact is for the team. Be open to solutions you hadn't though of.
Good luck.
The issue isn't just logging his time either - he's also not great at taking detailed notes, writing accurate scope of work documents, etc. He's very good with clients, has a lot of knowledge and experience with the tech stack, but is a "cowboy engineer" if that makes sense.
The way I'm thinking about this is that everyone has different strengths and weaknesses, but for this one person, said weaknesses are directly affecting the company bottom line so they are impossible to ignore. :)
That sucks out loud, but sometimes weaknesses outweigh benefits. And it's your job to draw that line.
I am also the kind of person who forgets to write daily logs. But if I set up the web page to open automatically at 4 PM on my computer, then I don't forget, of course. However, in some systems you only need to automatically open some URL, while in other systems it is more like "open the URL, click this link, authenticate, click that link, authenticate again, click another link, and now you finally get to edit the spreadsheet".
How much work it is to edit the time fields? Are reasonable default values provided (either your standard work time, or a copy from yesterday), so that on a typical day you only write "did this and that" and click OK? Or do you need to specify the time using a complicated wizard that sometimes gets it wrong, e.g. you make 10 mouse clicks to choose "9:00" and 10 more mouse clicks to choose "17:00", and then you sometimes get an error message saying "you cannot log 32 hours during one day", so you need to erase the whole record and start again? Do you work for a foreign company that speaks a language you don't understand, but you were told it's okay because the company policy is English everywhere... well, except for their time-logging system, which requires you to always choose from several pull-down menus filled with gibberish?
How detailed are the logs? Is it enough to give "implemented Jira story 1234" as a description for entire 8 hours of work, or do you need to provide a detailed list of steps, with a time interval for each? Do you need to fill out two separate time logs, one internal for your company, and one external for the client?
None of these examples was made up (they are collected from multiple companies though). So, it makes sense to also check whether the software side is sane, and optionally fix it -- maybe give the task to the employee who had problems writing the logs, he will be sufficiently motivated. But sometimes this doesn't help, or for some reason you are not allowed to fix the software... and then it makes sense to hire an assistant.
Agree to do thing, get distracted by far more engaging thing, don't do agreed upon thing.
- What is this individual’s billable rate? - Is the administrative work something that could be done by someone at an hourly rate significantly less than the billable employee? - Would freeing up the billable employees time from administrative work allow them to work more billable hours? - What would the expected loss in billable work completed be if the employee was terminated or left? - Etc.
I’ve done these calculations before, and while as a manager it is a bit irritating to have an employee not do parts of their job, there may be a business case for accommodating it.
I find that people rarely think about how much money they are spending having highly-paid people push internal paperwork around...
It's one of the things that the Air Force expects its leaders to do, and I've always liked that. I've found people to generally be surprisingly willing to discuss topics on both sides of a feedback session.
Usual things to talk about would be expectations of what they'll do at work and all the related tasks, their work performance & what's helping and hindering it, how they fit in to their work-center both professionally and emotionally (do they feel detached, are they getting along with folks?), if there are recommendations from them for the work-center and how to improve the system.
Depending, it can take 20 min or go on for hours. I've found feedback sessions like these to be very useful and productive though, and less awkward than some people assume.
Works out well, but you do need a person to play the role that could be called “babysitter” if you were a pessimistic person, and it takes a friendly work relationship and self recognition of (perfectly normal and common) deficiencies in organizational skills by the engineer.
In our org, everyone is friendly and respects each other for the most part so these things are taken positively rather than negatively.
Yes, if done poorly it can be shaming. Ultimately it comes down to "yes you suck at organization. However you are so good at X that the company will make more money doing it this way than by firing you; that's a win-win."
Specialization isn't just for insects
My work set up an automated system that emails people between 9-10am if they forgot to log their time the day before. You get dinged if and only if it gets to the second reminder at 11. As someone with ADHD I only distinguish two times: now and not now. Having a reminder that means "do it now" took me overnight from terrible timesheet compliance to near perfect.
It's not an automated reminder that happens every day at that time like an alarm clock. That would get tuned out / filtered out very quickly. The key is it's a novel message that I only see if I screwed up by forgetting the day before.
And it's easy to forget because the ADHD brain is like a CPU with only one register, and the register spill circuit for service interrupt / return from interrupt is faulty. In order to impersonate a functioning human being I tie certain things I need to do each day (like filling out my timesheet) to certain other events during the day. But if the routine gets broken or I get interrupted in the midst of doing the thing - the mind state that held what I was supposed to be doing is just gone.
They probably just don't like that aspect of their job and don't think it is that important.
Approach it by saying I know you don't like doing it, but it is important to do. Mention the consequences of not doing it and how you spent hours fixing them.
You might need to micromanage that one part of the job. Sometimes people need reminders on what to do.
Also mention that they a strong engineer otherwise and this is just one thing they need to work on. Don't expect them to be super organized, but they need to do the minimum when it comes to logging time.
There are various solutions to for organization. One I’ve used is taking the beginning of each day to write down what I did the day before. (End of the day failed horribly.) It gets me thoughts in order so I deal with high friction tasks like paperwork.
The issue could also be the perceived difficulty of software used to log hours. My brain hates using ticketing software because it’s a hassle to get everything entered properly. Most software systems I’ve used fight the way my brain works. It forces me to categorize things before I’m ready to categorize them. As a result, those tasks make me anxious, which means I tend to avoid them. If I “just do it”, it takes all of my energy for the day.
This is why I have a system for getting the organization done outside the system before tackling a poor UI.
Sounds like the hypothetical manager in this scenario is underperforming and thinking they're doing great too. Managers need spines.
e: for a bit of context I was an underperformer that thought they were doing well.
Also admittedly this is a kneejerk response to a skim read while I'm on a coffee break so I've probably just focused on the passive parts that used to wind me up from management
Hammering someone who doesn't see a problem is the best way to make a problem. It's not about being passive. It's about identifying the problem, explaining the problem, and coming to a mutual solution if possible.
Or, in other words, treating humans like humans.
"It’s emotionally draining to keep faking success or status that’s not legitimate." I'm saying get this sort of thing out of your playbook entirely. Of course someone's going to think they're doing well if you tell them they are!
If there's nothing that can be done due to the lack of give and take from the employee then your only recourse is to get shot of them, whether through transferring them to some other dept where they'd be better suited or letting them go
What do I do in my situation? I feel like being in despair. I feel like I don't have any other options. Clearly, this situation feels like suicide for my career.
I was recently diagnosed with ASD, bipolar disorder type 2 and depression, for what it's worth.
Once you have a handle on that, move jobs?
I've been labelled an underperformer in past. I switched jobs, doubled my pay and got a stellar perf review at the new place. I've learned that perf doesn't assess your ability, but rather your relationships with peers and managers, and your adherence to the ingroup activities, i.e. some orgs value above else the amount of code you write, some value how loud you're in meetings, some value shipping features or writing feature designs. Poor perf review is a sign that your mental model of the organization is wrong. Once you get it right, it's entirely possible to have stellar perf on paper while doing laughably mediocre work.
That lazy S.O.B. almost never works unpaid overtime, is often unavailable for conference calls at 10 PM, and sometimes leaves the office at 5 PM to spend time with his family!
General Kurt von Hammerstein warned of this almost 90 years ago:
I distinguish four types. There are clever, hardworking, stupid, and lazy officers. Usually two characteristics are combined. Some are clever and hardworking; their place is the General Staff. The next ones are stupid and lazy; they make up 90 percent of every army and are suited to routine duties. Anyone who is both clever and lazy is qualified for the highest leadership duties, because he possesses the mental clarity and strength of nerve necessary for difficult decisions. One must beware of anyone who is both stupid and hardworking; he must not be entrusted with any responsibility because he will always only cause damage.