Managing poor performance in self-managing teams

Photo by meredith hunter on Unsplash

We all know someone like this. They’re not engaged at work; they do the bare minimum until they reach the end of the day or the end of their job.

Their performance is often poor. They fail to keep up with increasing demands, new technology and processes. The rest of the team has to work around them. Colleagues become resentful.

When people are performance managed in the traditional way, they’re often left miserable, demotivated and even less likely to change. As a result, they’re more likely to be absent with illness. If they begrudgingly stay, they’re often doing little more than bitterly hanging on until the day retirement sets them free.

Poor performance has a huge unmeasured impact on the effectiveness of teams and the bottom line of organisations. A study by W Phelps et. al. (How, When, and Why Bad Apples Spoil the Barrel: Negative Group Members and Dysfunctional Groups) suggests there can be a significant drop in productivity in teams where there is one poor performer. The research identifies that team members start to mimic the bad behaviour, increasing the detrimental effect.

How do you deal with poor performance in self-managing teams?

You still need performance management but not as we know it. It’s about increasing engagement at work by passing responsibility to the individual.

This can be done by providing employees with two key freedoms. The ability to:

1. Shape their role
2. Own their feedback

SHAPE THEIR ROLE

One way for individuals to shape their role is by discussing it with those their work impacts. The Colleague Letter of Understanding (CLOU), used by Morning Star (a food processing company), helps employees define what they will do and who they’ll do it for. This could be other team members or even customers; not just their manager as we see in traditional organisations.

For Morning Star, this can range from activities such as: ‘agreeing the amount of tomatoes I will receive and unload on site’, to ‘proposing and defining capital investment in tomato preparation systems’.

The benefits:

• By making a commitment, people take more ownership over their role and their impact on others; certainly more than when their boss makes it for them
• It’s hard for a person to set a goal and then say they don’t want to achieve it
• The organisation benefits from the expertise of employees; who can see more of the opportunities and are able to change their roles accordingly
• Feedback is from peers rather than management, who are more remote from the day to day challenges of the role

As people take more ownership of their role and how they work with others, it is much harder to let colleagues down — it’s personal.

Cornerstone (a social care charity) have developed The Cornerstone Triangle to help colleagues understand each others responsibilities and discuss where they might need help. The triangle, based around the charity’s values and purpose, includes:

1. Clarity of expectations (what we want you to achieve, the boundaries within which you work)
2. Competence (do you have the right experience, qualifications, tools or training?)
3. Autonomy & trust (the freedom to do what you see fit)

It is this autonomy that takes engagement at work to the next level. This can only happen once organisational purpose is clear, expectations are unambiguous and you have the right tools to do the job. This is where the magic happens: you get organisational agility to cope with our VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous) world and bad apples can turn good.

OWN THEIR FEEDBACK

It’s much easier to take feedback on board if it’s asked for. When it comes out of the blue, people can feel unprepared and defensive. By requesting it, they are in control.

A work agreement, such as a CLOU or Cornerstone Triangle, can be reviewed annually between peers, whenever a disagreement occurs or at the request of those who’ve signed it. As it has been agreed to, it’s easier to discuss what has or hasn’t happened.

• Are the expectations unclear and the agreement needs to be altered?
• Is there a training requirement?
• Is there an external factor that needs consideration?
• Is there a behavioural change that needs support?

Rather than having mandatory annual management appraisals, put control in the hands of the employee by allowing optional monthly requests for feedback from peers. They choose if they want feedback this month and even specify the questions they want to ask. They can choose to discuss the feedback with their peers, if they need to understand more about what has been said, and work on solutions together.

Gini (a software company) focus on giving each other ‘Advice’ which is deliberately separated from appreciation or evaluation. They focus on why they are giving the advice and the importance of being in the right frame of mind to receive it.

AND EVOLVE…

Feedback from peers makes it easier to recognise your real strengths and weaknesses. Employees are encouraged to pass on roles they are weaker at and take on more roles that match their strengths. This evolving nature of work is good for the organisation and good for the soul.

The real power of self-managing teams is that people do more of what they excel at.

By controlling their purpose in an organisation and deciding if and when they get feedback, individuals have increased autonomy. This in turn increases engagement at work and reduces the likelihood of poor performance in the first place.