The Bridge to Not Here
Watch for the moment when you are no longer hoping for your team member to succeed.
A leader reached out to me after reading my post about micromanagement. He has a direct report who has repeatedly failed to meet agreed expectations and always seems to have excuses for why this continues. The leader is frustrated with the result and the attitude. The employee is annoyed about being micromanaged. It’s a familiar pattern.
In these situations, before talking about some practical approaches to help improve Clarity and Trust I find it very helpful to ask a probing question:
“Have you already decided that this person does not have a future with your organization?”
Many times there is a significant pause on the other end of the call.
Charity leaders are almost always very reluctant to let anyone go. We value people (and often fear the legal implications of terminating someone). We give another chance, and another. And sometimes it works out. But often it just magnifies the problems.
Leaders need to be attentive for the point when they, in their heart/mind/gut stop sincerely rooting for that individual to improve and start anticipating their departure. It’s a subtle shift, with lots of nuance sometimes, but it’s a critical inflection point that shapes the steps moving forward significantly.
Yes, leaders need to examine their own motives, contributions to the situation, and any biases involved. Yes, we should always be desiring the best for everyone. Yes, a team member failing is to some extent usually a failure of the leader.
Yes, you may get it wrong.
But the difference between rallying alongside someone to help them succeed and beginning to prepare justification for moving them out is important. It’s possible to do some of both, but hard to do both sincerely. Acknowledging, at least to yourself, which way you’re leaning actually enables you to act with greater integrity.
When an employee crosses the bridge from you wanting them to succeed to you preferring that they leave it’s difficult to cross back.
Hang on to 2% hope that a meaningful turnaround might happen, but recognize that your responsibility to your mission and to the rest of the team requires you to take action.
It’s not callous. It’s not mean. It shouldn’t come as a surprise (unless you’ve failed to establish Clarity, which is a different matter).
It is the work of an honest, healthy leader.
If a one on one leadership conversation, or a team training session on Accountability sounds like it would be helpful to you, please Contact me.