Managing underperformance is critical to creating success on any project, personal or professional. However, this task can become particularly difficult when the person underperforming is more senior to you, outside of your direct control and supposed to be a leader. Overcoming this issue can be difficult to navigate and if not approached correctly, create further issues. It is likely that at some point you will be faced with this issue and when you do, what should you do?
Place yourself in this example situation, you are a leader on a multidiscipline project where each team has its own leader. During the project, Team A (yours) and Team B (another’s) are required to collaborate. A month in to the project your team feeds back to you that Team B are falling behind due to a lack of decision making from their leader. This underperformance is impacting the overall project and will reflect badly on everyone.
This type of example and poor behaviour is common across many industries and creates feelings of frustration, demotivating and emotional stress. This situation is not exclusive to work either. Imagine you are trying to organise a family party with involvement from other family members who aren’t pulling their weight. The feelings of frustration, demotivation and emotional stress will still be present which is not good – so what should you do?
When dealing with underperformance of someone more senior to you, here are three key points on how I would approach the conversation:
- They are a person, just like you. Their lack of decisiveness may not be a behavioural trait as other external factors could be influencing their behaviour. Before you judge them, have an open mind and display empathy.
- They may not be aware of their behaviour and how it’s affecting the team. Everyone gets busy and it’s easy to lose touch with the feelings of others. Displaying empathy here is critical.
- Speak genuinely and honestly. You are speaking to them as a colleague, not a disgruntled employee looking to undermine them. Speaking in a positive and empathetic but get to the point. Beating around the bush won’t help you resolve the matter faster.
If the issue is not resolved, then the problem should be escalated. However, one situation where this may not be resolved is when the senior underperforming is your boss. In this situation, if the issue cannot be resolved after using the three steps above, I would look for a workaround, such as requesting the responsibility to make decisions in their absence and demonstrate how this would help the situation.
Behaving in this manner shows Emotional Intelligence, shows your team and seniors that you can act as a leader should. This will go a long way to build trust and respect. These will lead to reversing the damaging effects caused to the team
Thank you for reading, JT
