Stop Depending Only on HR to Evaluate Performance

Here’s what typically happens when an employee is underperforming…

The leader goes to HR and asks, “What do we do?”

HR tells them they need to coach and develop the employee.

After that, if they’re still not performing, they can come back.

But the leader doesn’t have the strategy/process for dedicated coaching.

They’re so caught up in the day-to-day that the problem doesn’t get addressed.

So performance doesn’t improve.

The employee continues to negatively impact their peers and everything they touch.

Leaders mistakenly think HR is the silver bullet.

That they are supposed to solve their problems instead of taking ownership of why the problem exists in the first place.

I saw a similar situation with a client.

Carl was constantly being interrupted by “quick questions,” his team lacking expectations re: deliverables and using him as their "go-to" (which turned him into the bottleneck).

And that resulted in no time spent on coaching and developing his team.

So the cycle continued with an underperforming employee(s).

And in order to stop the cycle from continuing it required him to:

Create awareness that he was trying to do it all by himself.
Clarify his vision for his team + self personally.
Set clear boundaries for focus work and when he was available to his team.

Restructure his whole team, leveraging the relationships he built and his employee's desire for advancement in the organization.
Allowing him to focus on coaching/developing.
Instead of handing the problem to HR, he took ownership of his part as their leader.

The result…

Not only did that underperforming employee begin performing.

The rest of the team began stepping up to the challenge.

Becoming more engaged.

Working as one to achieve results for the team and organization.

Leadership starts with you first.

Not HR.