The 5 Questions to Unlock Poor Performers and Decide: Up or Out?

How to raise your confidence while improving your employee's impact


How do I handle an underperforming employee?

There is no question I get asked more often.

And it makes sense. Our lowest performing employees:

Worse, that vicious cycle above makes us want to avoid them altogether.

And round and round we go.

But how I handle an underperforming employee isn't the right question.

The first question to ask is, "Why?"

Why is this person underperforming?

The play we'll run depends on the answer to this question.

And the answers run along a spectrum.

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And as we move from left to right on that spectrum, two things are true:

  1. Ownership shifts from us (the manager) to them (the employee)