How Great Leaders Reframe “Under-Performance”

If you lead or work on a team, manage employees, teach students, parent children, or coach or train clients, you’re likely motivated to help them perform at their best.

What techniques do you use for this?

The Effects of Praise vs Criticism

The typical approaches to help others perform at their best are usually known as “the carrot and the stick.”

Carrot Method: Rewards and Praise

The “carrot method” rewards good performance. You offer incentives to your sales team to encourage them to sell more. You reward students with gold stars. You give your kids incentives to do their chores or study for their tests.

Stick Method: Punishment and Criticism

The “stick method” penalizes poor performance. You fire the underperforming employee, or don’t give them the good opportunities. You criticize your child for a poor test result or for not measuring up to standards.

Self-Reinforcing Cycles

These methods tend to create self-reinforcing cycles. The high-performer responds well to praise, rewards, and the good opportunities you give them, and they continue to perform well. The more you reward and praise their efforts, the more their confidence grows and the better they get.

On the flip side, even if you don’t resort to a “punishment” for poor performance, you likely develop a narrative about the person that shapes how you approach them. You may not fire the employee, but you begin to expect less from them. You point out all the things they do wrong. You don’t give them opportunities that help them build confidence.

I came across a clip of Simon Sinek addressing this issue in the context of leadership. Here’s what he says:

Anybody who has ever been in a leadership position is guilty of forming a narrative about someone as an under-performer. “Ugh. They screw up everything.”

And what ends up happening is all we do is think about them and treat them as an under-performer, and all we do is notice the things they get wrong.

And then when give them feedback sessions it’s usually us correcting minor things over and over and over again to the point where we completely destroy their confidence.

And I think it’s essential for leadership teams to check each other. That when someone goes down a path of creating a narrative that someone is an under-performer, as if it’s a character flaw, that we interrupt that and say, “Is that true? What have they gotten right? What are they good at?”

And if you catch people doing things right versus always catching them doing things wrong, that positive reinforcement is so much more powerful than catching them doing things wrong.

A Technique to Improve Motivation and Action

Sinek’s point is applicable not only to leaders in the workplace, but to all parents, coaches, trainers, and teachers — anyone who works with other people and wants to encourage high performance.

It’s well-established that pointing out what someone does well is more effective as a motivation and development tool than constant criticism.

A fact of human behavior and performance is that people will rise or sink to the level of expectation placed on them.

Beyond the Carrot and the Stick: How to Truly Turn Around an Under-Performer

A Body Metaphor

The carrot and stick aren’t the only methods available to you to develop high performance in others.

There’s another approach, which I’ve learned from studying anatomy and biomechanics.

I often think of the body as a “team.” When the team works well, muscles, joints, ligaments, and tendons coordinate to help the body move forward well.

But that doesn’t always happen according to the theories of bio-mechanics. I’ve often joked that my body is like a dysfunctional team, where everyone does everyone else’s job and nobody does their own.

You can say that my “body team” has several “underperformers.”

Unfortunately, no amount of praise will work to help those muscles do their job.

Instead, I must ask:

Why aren’t the right muscles activating?

How can I put my body in a position to allow the muscles to engage better?

Solve the Cause, Rather than the Symptom

The same approach applies to the humans we lead, manage, and coach.

Looking at what an under-performer does well is a good start to reframing your narrative about them. But if you really want to help them, you need to address the cause of their under-performance.

Some questions you can ask:

• Why are they under-performing?
• How can I put them in a position that will encourage better engagement and performance?
• What support do they need?
• How can I better support them to facilitate better performance?

To be sure, this approach requires humility. Like Sinek advocates, it requires shifting the narrative about the under-performer. It also requires the leader to accept some responsibility for the situation.

Beyond offering praise and positive feedback, it’s the job of a leader and coach to understand what their teams, students, or clients need to perform at their best, and to figure out how to put them in a position to succeed.

If your team members aren’t performing to your expectations, it’s worth a look in the mirror to see how you’re showing up.