Just yesterday, I was meeting with a new client, and she said something that completely blew my mind, and I had to bring it to you. So we were meeting in our two and a half hour deep dive for the ops playbook, where we cover every aspect of the business, so that I can then create the playbook customized to the business, really bringing that vision to life. And we were talking about, what is her process when she's running into someone that's just underperforming, and she said, Well, she has an initial conversation to give them feedback and saying, hey, you know these were the expectations and you're not meeting it. I want to know candidly, do you feel like this role is a fit? Is this something that you want to refine and get better at, or does it feel like you're really not on board with that? And at that point, she will offer them a severance. If they say no, I just don't know if it's for me, she'll say, Okay, let's have a clean break. Now, if they say yes, I'm gonna fix this thing. And then they don't, that's when they might move into kind of that PIP performance improvement plan zone. But she has this conversation right away, and that's where I was like, Oh, I gotta bring this to my audience, because I know last week we talked about, what am I avoiding? What this kind of like? I shouldn't have to thing. This client gets it, and that's why she's running a thriving business. She has a brick and mortar with multiple locations, and she has learned that if you do not deal with problems right away, especially employees that are doing the same thing over and over, you are going to hit the same issue again and again, and that's we're going to talk about
today. Welcome to leading small teams, a real talk podcast tackling the ins and outs of leading teams in the modern workplace. I'm Lia Garvin, your host, with a decade of experience driving team operations in companies like Google, Apple and Microsoft, bringing you insider strategies to make you a more confident and effective leader, from delegating to feedback to avoiding micromanaging and more. This podcast gives you the tools to empower your team, scale yourself as a leader and grow your business, whether you're managing a team of one or 100 everyone is welcome to hang out with Real Talk leading small teams.
What I want to anchor this conversation around today is the simple truth that our business will rise to the level of whatever we're going to tolerate, and when we when we think about we're tolerating, this is like, what is the baseline stuff that you need to see in order to have someone be on your team? Because I have a lot of conversations day after day, week after week, where someone says, Hey, I have this team member. I don't know what they do all day. I don't know if they're finishing the work, and I don't like the attitude, and it's costing them so much freaking money because they have to accommodate with other people, or they have to do it themselves. And I'm thinking, why are you letting this go on and on and on. And it's a really important question that I want all of us to ask ourselves, is, what am I willing to tolerate, and not just from like, a kind of emotional standpoint, like, how much money am I willing to lose on an underperforming employee? Now, I'm all about giving folks chances. You know, I talk about the show. We've got to set expectations and give feedback. That's step one. So I'm not saying, like, one time someone does something and it's one strike you're out No way, okay, because people can't read your mind. But I'm saying, if you see the same behavior again and again and again, the question is, like, literally, what are we doing here? If you have a team member and they're supposed to be working 20 hours a week, 40 hours a week, whatever it is, and you feel like they're working five to 10. You like half the amount of time they are, or someone says every week, yeah, I'll get to that. And it never gets done. What are you willing to tolerate? Because that task list that goes from one week to the next to the next. That is money that you're hemorrhaging. And it sure is money you're hemorrhaging. If you have someone that you're paying 40 hours and they're working 15 to 20, right, you're getting that job like, you know it's it's costing you twice the hourly you were expecting. And I know it can feel small at first, like, I don't want to deal with that. I don't have time. But these problems compound. And I've talked about a lot on the show, but I really want to reiterate, not only does it compound to that money and time wasted, it affects your Higher Performers, and your Higher Performers on the team look around and say, like, this is what they're willing to tolerate. I don't want to be a part of that. So first the performers, high performers, they take on the extra work, and they're like, Okay, like, you know, hey, I can do a little extra here and there. And then they start to get disgruntled. They start to build resentment, and then they walk out the door. Now, the low performers, the one you can afford to have, walk out the door, but that high performer, that 10x er, that is going to be devastating, because to get someone to operate at that 10x that cares almost as much as you do at running your business right, that really brings that sense of ownership, losing them in spite of that low performer. What are we doing here? And that is why I get so nervous for you, for my clients, for anybody, in any situation, leading folks when.
They are losing the good person at the expense of the person who's not pulling their weight. Now, I have a special place in my heart for this, like sarcastically, a special frustration around this, because that was my experience in the corporate world, on team after team after team, and on the in the corporate world, all sorts of stuff is tolerated that it probably shouldn't be right because it can be difficult to manage folks out managers are trained on how to give feedback like this. Is why a lot of the work that I do is helping folks get that training in general, so that we don't have the situation. But I was the 10x er on team after team after team where I was making up for folks that were not delivering. I was carrying all this weight, shouldering that burden, looking at my manager like, really, this is going to be okay, because they didn't want to have a hard conversation, and they didn't want to give the hard feedback or give someone like the Hey, are you on board or not? They avoided it over and over and over. And what happened to me as a 10 XR, I left. I changed teams. I went to something better where I could really contribute or was not being held back by folks that weren't pulling their weight. Hey, I left the corporate world in general because I was so freaking sick of it. This is what happens, and it breaks my heart for business owners listening when you have invested a lot of money in a great hire, a lot of time in training them. You have, you're you're seeing someone with fantastic output, and they look over at the low performer like, I just can't be a part of this in that situation that you're tolerating. That's the cost, the ultimate biggest cost to you, not the person that's, you know, working 20 hours for the price of 40, which sucks, and that's expensive, but the real cost is losing that high performer, and you don't want to do that, because you're going to end up with a bunch of five out of 10, and you're gonna have to hire a lot more of those to get that output. Okay, now, again, this doesn't mean we don't give feedback, we don't expectations, we don't do the due diligence of being a good leader. But there is a point when we've got to say, Hey, what is this costing me? And when we see the same issues over and over and over, we're actually demonstrating we're not doing anything about it. We are demonstrating that we are willing to tolerate a really low level of performance. And I think that's where it's it is a moment to reflect and think about. Is this uncomfortable conversation avoiding it worth it for all of the other impacts that I'm letting slide
it's a question
is potentially having friction or losing this team member who I feel like, well, it's better than nobody. Is that? Is that really true when you could actually free up that spot for someone that's pulling their
weight? Is it worth potentially compromising the relationship with someone that I knew personally before, and now they're my employee, and they're really under delivering? I know that's going to be an awkward conversation, and I know we may not be able to recover from that. I don't know you. It's up to you, right? You're you're running this business, you're making that call. But these are the things that start to degrade at your ability to scale. And when I go into a business, and I look at how each of the team members are performing, and I start meeting with folks, and I identify, you know, there's a flag here, I can tell within one or two conversations with team members where someone is bought in and where someone is not, and when I surface that usually, you know that's the case, right? It's usually not a surprise to you when I'm like, I think this person's a little bit on the outs, and you say, Yeah, I know. But like, but this that the other, that response, that's what you're willing to tolerate. It's up to you,
but if you want to reach you know whatever goals that you have, if you want to bring that vision to life, you've got to do what that new client of mine did, and have that conversation right away. And if you don't know what to say in that conversation, that's where people bring me in to really work out. Okay, what do we want to say? What expectations can we set? What's realistic here. How do we give that person support? That's what I map out through systems. But there is a piece that you've got to own, which is, Hey, you're the boss. You've got to communicate that. And the The truth is, we really, really honest. The folks that are bought in, they can hear it. They actually aren't bothered by the hard conversation. They're like, okay, yeah, like, let me fix this. It's the people that really aren't going to get your business to the next level anyway. Those are the people that get mad, those are the people that get defensive. Those are the people that might rage quit. And in that sense, does it really matter?
Because if you are, if you're wrestling with well, you know, their livelihoods at stake, and this, I don't want to this, that's the responsibility that they need to have to taking the feedback. You're not firing someone on the spot. You're giving someone feedback that something they're not doing is not working. You're setting expectations on, hey, this is what I expect. Feedback. Can we? Are we?
Willing to meet that. That's where they decide if they're going to keep this livelihood or not. You see what I mean? So it's not mean, it's not it's not authoritarian. It's not like ultimatums. It's saying, Hey, you're here. You know, we want to have a strong team. These are the expectations. What do you think? And if they say, No, I can't meet that, then it's okay to part ways.
It's okay. And I know this is scary, I know it may sound easier said than done, so again, that's what I'm here for. Send me an email hello@liaver.com we can plan this whole thing out for you, but you've got to realize that the every day you let it go by is costing you money. Every day that person's not working a full day, they're not getting their work done. They're the deliverables are moving one week to the next. Things are late. They had a weird conversation with clients. Someone complained about them. All of that is more expensive than whatever you want to invest to fixing this problem right? Because that starts to compound, and that starts to chip away at your reputation, as well as a business, and that stuff is really hard to recover.
So I want to be clear, like these, it feels hard. It feels like running these are not
it's emotionally complex, but there's actually simple fixes to it, and that's what I can support you in. And what we've talked on the show, this is going to get you a really far away there if you are comfortable having that conversation. Because if you just needed, like, Oh yeah, yeah, a wake up call. Good. Now run with it.
But what I want you to think about is that client that has those conversation right away. She always has people on her team that want to be there and know what they've got to do to deliver wouldn't that be a better place to be? Yeah, right.
And so how do we bring the spirit of that to whatever you are doing to the team that you have right now. This again, it's not coming in guns blazing, All right, everybody. We're going to fix this. No, it's saying, hey, we want to have a high performing team. We're in q2 we're heading towards the next part of the year. Let's all talk about how to be our best. That's an expectation setting conversation. You see people meeting that they're good to go see people not really. It's a feedback conversation, saying, Okay, we established the goals. Here's some of the gaps. Let's talk about it. Now you have that moment where you're going to see, are they bought in or not? That's that moment when you decide, am I going to tolerate the lack of that buy in or not? You see what I'm saying. It doesn't it's it can be done with so much empathy and compassion, and that is the way that we relate to people, right? We we don't get we don't have, like, no boundaries. Emotionally, energetically, we're like, someone could just dump on us, but we're not cold and we're not harsh, and we're not like, you know, you're in or out. We we can have a balance of that, and I strongly believe that. And it's those people right. Any leader you study in history anywhere, it was finding that blend and that balance of empathy and compassion and directness and candor that is the golden sweet spot. And that's what we figure out for you, is, how do you find that for yourself, so that you don't feel like, Oh, my God, I'm just railroaded by whatever you know, my team member is saying, and I I can't really say this and that, and then I get to this point where I'm like, okay, they're out of here, but they never heard the feedback. Because that's where it feels unfair. I would guess that part of the reason you're hesitating is because, you know, it's not that fair, because you didn't really give them the feedback. Now what if you gave them the feedback? Now you can kind of clear your conscience of that, and the decision is on them. That's what we want it to be, because that's where you are, being an empathetic and a compassionate and really like highly, highly effective leader, right? When you're saying, Hey, we've made all of it clear. Now you choose. I'm not deciding I don't like this person, right? Where that feels like, well, I don't want to be that way. Or I just decided one day this doesn't work for me, where you might get some wrongful termination conversation coming up, but you're saying, This is what we've got to rise to. This is what I'm willing to tolerate. Up here. Are you going to meet me there? Yes, good. We're great. If we're not, it's on them that reframe, I think, is going to help you feel a little more confident about going to that conversation because you didn't just like pull the rug out. Okay, what are you willing to tolerate? This is going to this is a question I want you to ask yourself every day, every week, at least when you start to feel frustrated, frustrated, what am I tolerating? Is this? What I decided to do last week was, like, I didn't sign up for this. We said, like, Yeah, you did, okay. So now that you're like, Okay, I did sign up for this, what am I willing to tolerate? And then you have the conversation about that. And if you need support, you know where to go see you next time.
Thanks for tuning in, and I hope this podcast makes leading your team feel just a little bit easier. If you liked this episode, check out my most popular tool for staying in the know of what your team is working on without having to micromanage. At Lia garvin.com/snippets,
and if you're looking for more support for yourself as a leader or for the team you're managing, don't hesitate to reach out at Lia Garvin, calm. See you next time you.