Managing Low Performers

Tech Manager Handbook: A Series

Everyone’s favorite topic…

So you’ve been hiring and building your team, you have a great interview process, an enthusiastic recruiting partner, and awesome well-calibrated interviewers — what could possibly go wrong? Well, inevitably you will find yourself managing someone who isn’t quite cutting it in their current role/level. It happens to every manager eventually, so let’s get into how to approach it when it does.

It isn’t the most fun part of the job

Managing low performers is probably the most difficult and least fun part of being a manager. Even within a high-functioning team, by definition there will be a “lowest” performer. If you are lucky, this person is still a strong contributor and unquestionably meets the expectations for their role and level, but sometimes that just isn’t the case. Despite how hard we try to objectively define job requirements, there is still a fair amount of subjectivity in how someone’s combined set of abilities, strengths, work ethic, and potential all come together. Trust your instincts when you start to sense that someone is consistently struggling to deliver and start trying to put a finger on what some of the root causes might be (e.g. communication challenges, technical skill gaps, personal issues). Remember that the situation for every employee will be unique and be sure to tailor your approach to the individual. That being said, let’s start discussing some of the general guidelines and tactics that you will want to consider.

Why bother?

“It seems like a lot of work” or “I really don’t like confrontation” are common thoughts that most managers will have when deciding whether to start managing someone’s low performance more closely, so why not just kick the can down the road and see if it fixes itself? Well, for one, because that is part of your job as a manager but there are other (perhaps some that are less obvious) reasons why you should intervene sooner rather than later.

First, if someone isn’t performing well in their job, they deserve to know where their gaps are so they can work to improve them. Sometimes, some concrete well-delivered objective feedback is all it takes to light a fire under someone and get them back on track.

Second, if you’ve noticed it, then the rest of your team has probably also noticed that the employee in question isn’t doing so well. It can be demotivating for strong performers on your team to collaborate with someone who isn’t able to keep up and also frustrating for them if they feel like they are consistently picking up the slack themselves. Not only that, but your team will start to question how well you are doing your job as a manager and may start to lose confidence in you if you do nothing. They may even start to wonder what their weaker colleague’s compensation is relative to theirs and start to wonder how fair that is. Despite how petty some of these concerns may be, it still can negatively impact your overall team culture which may then lead to strong performers leaving for new opportunities. You can’t necessarily control or know how the rest of your team will react to having a low performer on the team, which is why it is best to address it quickly.

Lastly, if part of your team’s job involves working cross-functionally with other teams/disciplines, having a low performer may even start to taint the reputation of your broader team and discipline. This might call into question your hiring abilities and may even limit the longer-term growth and investment in your team.

In most companies (especially larger ones), weak performance can go unnoticed or easily swept under the rug or compensated by the broader team. Usually, organizations don’t really have the right incentive structure or accountability to push managers to deal with their low performers. Hopefully for all of the reasons stated above, the value and urgency in doing so is pretty clear.

What is the goal?

It can be tempting to want to quickly write someone off if they aren’t performing well enough. However, it is important to remember and believe that the ideal outcome of most performance management situations is to be able to help the employee remedy the issues and get back on track to being a strong contributor. Depending on the circumstances, the most positive outcome is often the employee recognizing the role isn’t a good fit and choosing to move on themselves. The point is, stay open minded and don’t go into it with a particular outcome set in stone.

Turn the dial gradually

Make sure you don’t surprise the employee with a significant amount of negative feedback and out-of-the-blue performance management plans. Ideally, you’ve already been providing some less formal feedback in weekly 1:1s but if not, that is a good place to start. You want to escalate the directness of your feedback gradually, by doing so you are first giving the employee the chance to take steps to improve with subtler feedback and suggestions. Sometimes that is all it takes (*dusts off hands*) and you were able to avoid any seemingly serious confrontational discussion altogether. However, if it is clear that more feedback and intervention is required, continue to dial up the level of directness gradually, turning suggestions into explicit direction and backing-up feedback with more specific examples. By doing so gradually you will get to a place where you will be having pretty frank feedback discussions without having caught them off-guard.

Remember that surprises are bad when it comes to both negative and positive feedback. Gradual escalation also helps prevent you from “overshooting” the strength of the message you send. People don’t always enjoy negative or critical feedback and it can really damage their morale (potentially worsening the situation) so you want to escalate only to the point needed in order to address the concerns. The velocity of the escalation should be based on the severity of your concerns as well as how they respond to some of the initial feedback.

Tips for providing feedback: patterns and examples

As a manager you generally have a pulse on the strengths, weaknesses, and behavioral trends of each of your employees. You have a mental picture that you’ve constructed based on what you’ve seen and how that compares to what you’ve observed in others. However, when giving feedback you need to communicate your concerns as clearly and objectively as possible to the individual so it is important to organize your thoughts ahead of time. Before you give any major critical feedback you’ll want to have observed a pattern of behavior so you don’t accidentally overreact to a spurious one-off issue. Patterns could range from a consistent lack of technical depth when problem solving, challenges dealing with large complex problems, a toxic attitude, etc. Sometimes you might even observe multiple concerning patterns within a single individual. To know whether something is part of a pattern or not you should be able to recall and cite multiple unrelated specific examples of the behavior. You should state these examples explicitly when you provide your feedback. It is natural for people to become defensive when being given feedback; it can be easy to argue with something broad and abstract but when backed by specific examples it can illuminate what you mean much more clearly and is harder to argue with.

Solicit feedback from their peers

Consider you could be totally off-base and maybe you’re seeing something that isn’t even there. A good way to sanity check yourself and reinforce any feedback you plan to give is to solicit light-weight feedback from their closest peers and stakeholders. This might provide additional examples for patterns you’ve already observed, highlight other concerns you weren’t even aware of, or convince you that there are no major concerns in the first place.

Be smart about how you frame why you are asking for feedback. You want to avoid casting doubt on the employee or tarnishing their broader reputation, especially if you are able to get things back on track. You can position it as part of an out-of-band exercise you are doing for your broader team (which maybe isn’t such a bad idea anyway) or you can position it as a “first 90-day or 180-day review” depending on how long the person has been on the team. This will help prevent others from raising an eyebrow and potentially forming unjustified doubts about the employee in question. However, if the people you reach out to have already been having some concerns then seeking feedback sends a strong signal to them that you are on top of it without needing to be explicit.

What not to do when giving feedback

Avoid direct comparisons to other people (especially those on your team). It might be a helpful way for you to think about it as a manager but it could create a weird dynamic between them and that person going forward. Also, you don’t have perfect information and the comparison might be flawed. This is why it is important to focus on factual objective absolute statements (as best you can). Occasionally, it might be helpful to use other specific projects as contrasting examples (without singling out specific individuals), but do so sparingly and carefully.

Take a phased approach

With all of the above in mind, let’s walk through the different phases starting from early feedback in regular weekly 1:1s all the way through to performance improvement plans and managing out. The whole thing should last no more than 90 days.

Phase 1: preliminary feedback

Easy to do lightly in your 1:1s without feeling at the level of “performance feedback.” This will let you see how they respond to early feedback. In the best case, they might receive it and put it into practice very well; problem solved! Phase 1 shouldn’t last anymore than 1 month before moving into Phase 2.

Phase 2a: more direct feedback and documentation

At some point, you will know you’ve reached a certain escalation threshold where the feedback will need to take on a new form. This is when you should start documenting your feedback discussions looping in HR (you may also want to loop in your lead at this point). Documentation is incredibly important — HR will expect you to have documented performance concerns and feedback conversations for some time before taking action. Remember, it isn’t enough just to write it down for yourself; you need to be able to show that the feedback was received by the employee. An example would be a brief follow-up email after a 1:1 outlining the performance concerns and next steps to address them with HR and your manager bcc’d. If email seems too formal you can follow-up over Slack instead and save a screenshot that can be shared with HR. I realize this might feel kind of strange or deceptive but it is a key part of the process should you inevitably need to manage them out. From here on, assume that every subsequent phase along the way needs to be documented in one way or another.

Phase 2b: root causes and potential solutions

In these conversations you should be trying to understand what the cause of the performance issue might be. Once you’ve shared the feedback (try to be concise but comprehensive), give the employee plenty of space to speak and observe how they react; you may also need to keep the conversation on track and steer back from tangents. At this stage you should focus on asking questions that can help you diagnose the root cause(s) (you may already have a rough idea that you can use to guide your questions). Perhaps they don’t enjoy the current project, perhaps they don’t believe they have the skills to succeed, perhaps they have something going on in their personal lives. You’ll want a clear picture before proposing solutions. Solutions may vary from changing project focus to increased mentorship to online courses to taking time off, etc. Like Phase 1, Phase 2 shouldn’t last any longer than 1 month.

Phase 3a: the tipping point

Okay, so you’ve spent another month giving and documenting concrete feedback, identifying root causes, and working with the employee on trying potential solutions to get things back on track. At this stage, you need to reflect and decide that either (1) you’re seeing sufficient improvement (not just a small unsustainable amount, but evidence that suggests they will independently build upon it and get fully up to par) or (2) you’ve exhausted available solutions with no meaningful improvement and now need to move to a formal performance improvement plan (PIP) with clear timelines, milestones, and likely outcomes.

Phase 3b: break the ice on alternative outcomes

People typically don’t like failing or admitting defeat, which means the employee might be anchored to pursuing the PIP and trying to succeed. At this point, it is okay to suggest alternative possibilities to them at least to make sure they have considered them. You may want to suggest that they consider looking for other opportunities and even offer them a bit of time off to enable their search. If they are really struggling, it is unlikely that they are satisfied in their current role and may already be looking for a new one. You can share your honest view on the likelihood that they would succeed on a PIP which could make the consequences of failing feel a bit more real and motivate them to take action themselves. Remember, you aren’t trying to convince them to quit — you’re just trying to create the space to consider and discuss alternatives openly to see if it is something they have considered (even underperforming employees in this situation might be uncomfortable talking about considering roles at other companies with their manager and this can break the ice on the topic).

Phase 3c: performance improvement plans

There is typically no fixed structure, format, or timeline for PIPs so you have a lot of flexibility here. Try to keep them brief (1 month) and as objectively measurable as possible. The latter can be very difficult since work output isn’t always black and white. Don’t be overly prescriptive — involve the employee in drafting the PIP to make sure they are bought in. The goal is not to set them up to fail, but articulate what success in the role really looks like and give them a genuine attempt to demonstrate their abilities. It can be helpful to reference their career ladder (assuming one exists) and cite specific performance requirements at their level (this can also help you avoid accidentally setting expectations too high). The PIP should be designed to address the specific areas of concern you have already been discussing. The PIP can be a 1–2 page Google doc that outlines the primary concerns, a project proposal, the key milestones, the timeline, and ultimately what success looks like.

Phase 4: end of the road

There are two outcomes post-PIP: either the employee demonstrates a convincing turnaround and you move back to a Phase 2 or even Phase 1 approach and continue to lightly monitor performance over a longer period of time or the PIP was not successful and the employee is terminated. In the latter case, obviously work closely with your HR partner (who you’ve already looped in and brought along since Phase 2).

Final remarks

This can be stressful; it can feel like it drags on and can become very time consuming. However, it is important to keep in mind that if you are able to do this well the outcome should be positive for everyone. That being said, don’t spend more time on this than you need to — you have the rest of your job to do and it is just as important (if not more) to invest your time growing your strongest employees as well.