Welcome

Lately, I’ve been hearing the same workday complaints on repeat. And when I look back at my time in corporate it becomes more and more obvious to me that there are two major qualities that will determine how respected and trusted a leader is by their team:

1. Not shying away from difficult conversations and…
2. Holding under-performers accountable

Here’s why these matter so much…

A willingness to have difficult conversations and give feedback that is, let’s just say, less than good, shows that the leader cares enough about the job and career of the person to put themselves in a situation that could be awkward, overly emotional, or ill-received.

Having to tell someone they are doing a poor job, are acting like an a**hole, aren’t pulling their weight, etc. isn’t the stuff that leadership dreams are made of. But it is vital not just to the performance of the person in question, but the team as a whole.

This leads into underperformers chronically underperforming.

Somehow, someway, people ALWAYS know who the weakest link is. I don’t care if your whole team is remote and working completely opposite schedules. THEY ALWAYS KNOW.

Karl from Accounting will make a flippant remark about Morgan to Kristina. A week later you ask Kristina to help with some of Morgan’s work because she’s behind. A few days after that Tony, who knows Kristina from a previous job, mentions to her that he got dumped with a bunch of stuff Morgan couldn’t get to. And so on.

It always comes to light. Trust me.

And this puts additional stress on the team since they have to compensate for the person not pulling their weight.

It also brings up a few poignant questions:

Why should they care so much about their work if someone doing half as much is getting paid the same, etc?

Why is this underperforming tolerated? If I have to meet x, y, z expectations why don’t they?

What the hell is the leader doing???

When a leader lets underperformers slide, over time you’re going to lose the trust and respect of your team. You look weak, fearful and insecure. It sets the tone that there are multiple standards depending on who the person is, shows the playing field isn’t level, and smacks of office politics. Queue the comments on playing favorites, etc.

It’s not a good look.

Most people I worked with that didn’t want to go into leadership cited not wanting to have to talk in front of people in meetings as a main reason.

The fact is, that’s like a trip to Disney World compared to having to have difficult conversations and holding people accountable. It’s not easy, especially in a world that doesn’t think communication training is vitally important.

Add to that the fact that most leaders want to be perceived as nice and friendly and open (the “I’m not just a mom, I’m a COOL mom” vibe) and it becomes the perfect storm to tear down your reputation slowly but surely.

If you’re avoiding dealing with having hard talks and holding poor performers to the standards and expectations of the team, who are you really helping? It’s not the person and it’s not your team. You’re using avoidance to spare your own feelings. And this is the opposite of leadership.

And trust me, it’s not worth it.