Help, My Team Isn’t Performing!
When running a business, you go all in right from the start. It’s your baby and you want to give it the best chance of succeeding. Therefore, it’s no wonder that your enthusiasm and motivation are at their highest. You want to have satisfied customers/clients and you work on that day in and day out.
And so, many times you automatically think that the same motivation you have translates to your team. However, the reality is that it is not always the case.
You’ll soon realise that there are two types of people (i.e. workers). And that having both on your team means that it will not be performing as you had hoped it would.
Let’s explore who those are, and how you can create a team of wonderful people that will drive your business forward.
The first type of worker is the unproductive worker (or the laid-back comfort seeker). It is these slackers that can lead to missed deadlines, decreased morale, and ultimately hurt your business.
If we think about why they are so detached from the company they work for, we could say it’s several things. They simply may be unproductive and lack motivation in general. But it could be poor training or even personal issues.
The other type of worker is the high achiever. Often characterised by dedication, persistence, and the ability to consistently produce high-quality work, these workers are the ones you can always count on.
But when having a mixed team of unmotivated and highly motivated people, there’s one problem that frequently arises. Slacking becomes contagious. Why does it happen? Well, the high performers will realise over time that the slackers have it easier. They don’t deliver as expected yet receive the same salary. So, the logical question is why bother?
That leads you, as the business owner, to an undesirable situation in which you have to pick up the slack - working long hours (or impossible hours, as a matter of fact) just to compensate for some of the team members’ inefficiency.
The solution is to get rid of the unproductive workers. Performing below average simply won’t cut it. Remember, you don’t need someone who’s going to have a negative influence on everyone around you. The sooner you remove slackers from your team, the better.
I’m guessing you’re already thinking about how to avoid hiring people who are unfit for your team moving forward. (We, business owners, always look ahead.)
A good hiring system in place will help. To assess whether yours is good enough, here are three aspects to go over.
- Criteria. Your hiring criteria need to change in the sense of becoming stricter. Structure your job ads in a way to discourage comfort seekers from applying. This means you list all the responsibilities and expectations in such a way that any person that’s not driven thinks it’s too much work.
- Ideal candidate personality. Think about the ideal candidate for the position, and be very clear about what kind of person they need to be. Devise a personality quiz that they fill out at the initial stage of applying so that you can sift through the candidates, and have the best odds of selecting the good ones.
- Technical capabilities. The last thing is to include a technical assessment of capabilities in your process. Even though a candidate may leave the best impression at an interview, he/she will be of no use if they don’t know how to perform the day-to-day tasks. So, make sure you check!
Hopefully, this has made you reconsider your whole hiring process. Because, if you’re faced with a team that’s not performing, it’s usually one of the main culprits.
If you’d like to learn more, please take a look at my most recent podcast episode on this exact topic:
Click here for the podcast episode.
Click here to watch the video.
Josh ‘High Performer’ Stone
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