The Power of a Poor Performer

Have you ever tried to work with someone who was not engaged in the task at hand? Most of us at some point in time in our lives has had this experience, and we know just how frustrating it can be. For this reason, just about everyone will tell you a poor performer has the ability to ruin an entire team. Hence, it is important for leaders to identify and eliminate poor performance as soon as possible because of the impact one poor performer can have on an entire team. Below are my top four critical items that are impacted by a poor performer.

Morale

Poor performers heavily decrease morale. When others are excited, working-hard, and are engaged, a negative, uninterested co-worker can quickly damage the mood of an entire team. In fact, poor performers can often convert others to follow their ways, and they can completely destroy the team’s satisfaction. In the end, most employees can deal with angry or upset customers, but nearly none of them want to put up with a poor performer.

Work

Poor performers make everyone’s work harder. Though a poor performer may be doing “something”, it rarely makes up for the overall negative impact their poor performance has on the team. Really, working with a poor performer makes everyone else’s jobs infinitely harder, and most everyone would gladly be assigned more work than deal with a poor performer.

Cost

A poor performer can cost an organization a significant amount of money. Besides the obvious costs of having to replace or train a poor performer, poor performers may provide poor customer service damaging customer loyalty and trust, create unsafe work environments leading to more work place injuries and turnover, or may carelessly waste equipment and supplies. In the end poor performers can cripple outcomes and can have a very negative impact on financial performance.

Leadership

Poor performers have the ability to destroy the leadership in an organization. Once a poor performer joins a team, good performers wonder why they are able to “get away” with their behaviors. As time goes on, if not handled appropriately, accountability in the organization will begin to be questioned. And if the poor performer is allowed to continue, good performers’ trust in leadership will be completely lost.

One last thing to consider as leaders is why the poor performance may be occurring. Many times poor performers want attention or are upset about a change or experience at work. Leaders should try to coach, train, communicate with, and guide poor performers to good performance as soon as possible. Many times a simple solution may be available which turns performance around. However, if this does not happen quickly, action should be taken to eliminate poor performance. In the end, good leaders take full responsibility and accountability for poor performers and ask themselves what they can do differently to avoid similar situations in the future.

In today’s competitive workplace, the willingness and ability of top performers to put up with poor performers is dwindling. Now is the time for leaders to become even more focused at identifying and eliminating poor performance. Leaders who are able to do this quickly and effectively will have a great impact on the teams they lead and the outcomes produced.