Leadership from my perspective

There will be times when you will have to participate in a leadership intervention, primarily when there are behavioral issues and/or not meeting expectations. This discussion is focused on the issue of not meeting expectations.

Over the years I have been involved in many leadership interventions for a wide range of reasons. Some I got right, some I got wrong. When I got it right, this was the process I followed. When I didn’t follow it, well, we had to go back and address the issue again.

When you recognize a situation where an employee is not meeting expectations, you will need to engage with them to determine why and what intervention will be needed.

Making it safe to discuss. Think about where you have this conversation and the impact location has on the employee’s willingness to engage in the discussion willingly. Preparing includes being in the right mindset to approach what might become a difficult conversation. Time and place are absolutely critical in you getting to the root cause of the issue so you can appropriately provide an intervention process that will have the desired outcome.

First, you will want to clarify their understanding of expectations. Are they clear? This is what I call Clarity of Purpose. They can either repeat their expectations or they cannot. If the message, or purpose, is not clear, clarify and their understanding of those expectations. Then provide another opportunity for success.

If the expectations and purpose are clear, you might have a willingness or knowledge issue. This will be the next step in establishing your process for intervention.

Knowledge issues. Discuss the task requirements with the employee to determine where the knowledge issue exists. Once you identify this, you can provide an intervention that includes training or coaching to bring them where they need to be. Don’t guess what the issue is. A flawed process will produce a flawed outcome, and you will be back at the table again in the future.  

Willingness issues. When you determine the issue to be a willingness issue. You will then have to ascertain the cause of the lack of willingness to meet expectations.

This can take form in many ways. A few examples that will be addressed here are don’t care, don’t see value in what they do, personal issues, and workplace issues. These tend to be common when dealing with the willingness issue. There will be others, so this list is not all inclusive.

Don’t Care and don’t see the value in what they do. They are there for the paycheck or they just go through the motions because they have not connected the task to the overall importance to the team, department or organization.

The first issue is more about buying in. Bringing them to a higher level of productivity is about providing opportunities to lead projects or determine the process for completing them. Ask them what they would do differently if they made the decision. And let me reiterate, this is not a one-time discussion as it might take a while to shift their mindset. Patience and persistence are keys to change.

Keep in mind, there is nothing wrong with working for a paycheck. The discussion might simply revert to meeting expectations. Verify they understand what those are if it comes to this discussion.

Value, or what I call the value proposition. One thing you will want to do is determine why they don’t see value in what they do. You must be inquisitive, not focused on solving something, yet. As stated earlier, make sure you understand the root cause to the issue so you can develop an appropriate intervention.

There are several interventions for value and finding purpose so think about what this looks like in your job. Why do you find value in what you do. I would caution against compensation as a means of finding value as this connects the value to compensation. Not a bad thing, just redirects the value focus from what they do to what they get for doing what they do. Once you uncover why they don’t value what they do, you can better determine an intervention. Ultimately, you want to connect the task to a meaningful impact, to the team, department, or organizational goals.

Previous interventions. If this is something that becomes repetitive, you first must review what the issues were in the past and what interventions were taken. You certainly do not want to repeat something that did not work in the past.

I would recommend acting based on the process outlined above before more formal discipline such as lower evaluations or other negative actions. One other comment on this is to be sure to document the intervention, not as a disciplinary issue but to provide a tool to measure progress. If they get to where they need to be, monitor their performance and engagement. Once you know about the issue, it is easier to provide informal guidance to keep them on track.

The last stop would be a decision to let them go. This is really a cost-benefit proposition. It costs money to hire someone. Low performance costs the company in low production. There are also other impacts on the team to consider. You provide the opportunity to correct the behavior to the expectation then it is up to them to perform.

I certainly welcome your thoughts on this process. This is not intended to be all inclusive in leadership intervention but to provide a few thoughts on things to consider before assuming we know or understand the issue. We need to understand the issue before we can effectively provide the appropriate intervention.