There's Never a Good Time

There will never be a good time to hold a problem employee accountable. Not next quarter, not after the reorg, not once things calm down.

But that's not usually why we wait.

In this episode, Kim tells the story of an employee she knew was a problem, documented as a problem, and still did not confront. The reason wasn't cowardice. It was evidence. She had never once seen accountability actually work in that organization, and she drew the rational conclusion.

She also corrects the ending she's been telling for years. The situation eventually resolved, but not through process, and not because of anything she did. It resolved because the employee finally upset the right person, and then the organization did what organizations do: moved the employee somewhere else and called it handled.

What you'll get: why hesitation is usually a design problem rather than a character problem, how to tell the difference between waiting and building a record, why documentation is a test of your own judgment and not just ammunition, and the three moves that leave you ready when the arbitrary moment arrives.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:42

Welcome back to another episode of Leadership After Five, where leadership gets real. I'm Kim. And if you're joining for the first time, thank you for being here. Out of all the podcasts around leadership, you chose mine to tune into. So I'm so grateful that you're here. I'm so happy that you're here. And if you would like to reach out to me, you can do so by sending me an email at Kim at the KPAdvisoregroup.com. For those of you who have been here since the start, thank you for being here. Thank you for sticking with me on this very wild leadership ride. I am excited about today, and I hope you are too. This topic today is something that's obviously near and dear to my heart. In fact, all the topics that I talk about is stuff that I've experienced firsthand. And this one is around accountability. There will never be a good time to hold a problem employee accountable. I'm going to say that again because I wanted to land before I say anything else. There will never be a good time to hold a problem employee accountable. Not next quarter, not after the re-org, not once things calm down. There is no version of the calendar where the moment arrives and you think, oh wow, this is clean, this is easy, everyone is going to receive this well. But that's not actually why most of us wait. And that's what I want to talk about today. We are going to be talking about accountability and specifically the gap between knowing you have a problem employee and actually doing something about it. Because almost every leader I've ever worked with can identify the person, very few of them act on it in a reasonable timeframe. And the conventional explanation is that leaders are conflict avoidant, right? You hear that, you hear people say that, that we're too nice, that we don't have the stomach for it. And I actually don't think that's true. I think something else is going on, and I think it's structural. Let me start with the definition because I want us working from the same place. A problem employee is whoever your organization says it is. For some organization, it's the person consistently acting contrary to the unwritten rules. The person whose behavior is quietly teaching everyone else what's actually tolerated here. And I'd argue that should be the standard everywhere, but it isn't. For other organizations, it's simply the person not meeting their numbers. Whatever the definition is for where you work, use that one as you listen today. Now here's the part I left out for most of my career when I told this story. I had an employee who was a genuine problem, causing real issues for staff, real issues for stakeholders. I had documentation, I had agreement from people around me that this was escalating. It was literally affecting our reputational risk, and it was affecting how it felt to work on my team. And I did not hold that employee accountable. I tried to have conversations, but to be honest, I skated around the issue. I said everything except the thing that actually needed to be said. For a long time, I described that as fear. And that's true as far as it goes, but it's incomplete. And the incomplete version lets me off the hook. Here's the fuller version. Not once in that organization at that time, I could point to a single instance where a leader had held someone genuinely accountable and had it go the distance. I had seen people get talked to, I had seen people get moved. I had never seen the thing actually finish. So when I hesitated, I wasn't being cowardly. I was being empirical. I was looking at the available evidence and drawing a rational conclusion. This does not work here. And I want you to sit with how dangerous that is. Because if nobody has a working example, then every single manager in that building is independently arriving at the same conclusion. Not because they're weak, but because they're paying attention. That is a design problem. The organization had produced a pattern where accountability was theoretically expected and practically impossible. And then it wondered why nobody did it. So back to my employee. So they needed time off. Totally legitimate, full empathy, no question about it. But that is exactly the thing about accountability that nobody warns you about. People's lives keep happening. The employee whose performance you need to address is also a person who is going to have a family emergency, a health scare, a divorce, or even a new baby. The window you are waiting for does not exist because the window is always occupied by something real. So they took their leave, and when they came back, the issue was still there. Because the issue was never about timing, the issue was about behavior, and behavior doesn't resolve itself during bereavement. But now it was harder. Now, if I acted, there was a reasonable chance it would look like retaliation. And I knew that going in. But I was feeling completely ballsy that day, and I decided to move forward anyway. And I want to be honest about how that went because I think we do each other a disservice when we only tell the stories that end well. My leadership got soft. The employees' personal circumstances weighed on them, and the answer became let's wait, let's give it some time. So my leadership was not supportive. That effort did not go anywhere. Now, here's the part I used to rush past, and for a long time I described it as eventually I was successful. But I think today I want to correct that on the record because it isn't true. Here's what actually happened. That employee kept doing what they were doing, and eventually they struck one too many nerves with the wrong person. Not a colleague, not a direct report, not a stakeholder who'd been quietly absorbing the damage for multiple years, but the right stakeholder. Someone with enough standing that when they were unhappy, the organization moved. And it moved fast. Suddenly, there was appetite. Suddenly, there was urgency. Suddenly, the same leadership that had told me to wait was pursuing the removal from that particular position. So they were moved and shuffled to another part of the organization. Not addressed, not documented, not held accountable in any way that would follow them or change anything, just relocated and to be made someone else's problem. So essentially, that person was never dealt with accordingly. I call that a win for years, but if I were to really sort of unpack it, it was not a win. It was a resolution I had nothing to do with. Things do eventually get handled. They just get handled arbitrarily on a timeline nobody can predict by whoever happens to have leverage that month. And here's the cost. Everyone watching learned the lesson. Not the one leadership thought it was teaching, though. They learned that your protection has nothing to do with your conduct and everything to do with who you have not yet upset. I'm going to say that again. The folks in the organization learned that their protection had nothing to do with their conduct, but everything to do with who they have not yet upset. They learned that raising something through the proper channel is slower and less effective than getting it in front of the right person. And they learned that if you're a problem, you won't be corrected. You'll just be relocated. So, no, I was not successful. The system produced an outcome that resembles success, and I let myself take credit for it. And that's part of how this stuff stays broken. Let me address the objection because I skipped it for years, and I think it cost me something. The most legitimate reason a leader hesitates is not cowardice. It's the quiet possibility that they might be wrong about the person. Maybe you're reading them uncharitably. Maybe there's context you don't you don't have. Maybe they're the thing you're calling a pattern is three bad months during a hard year. Maybe you just don't like them very much and you've been building a case in your head instead of in the record. That doubt is healthy. It is the difference between a leader and a bully. You should feel it. And here's what I want you to do with it. Stop treating it as a reason to wait and start treating it as a reason to document. Because documentation is not just ammunition. Documentation is a test. When you write down what actually happened with dates, with specifics, with what you observe rather than how you felt, one of two things becomes true. Either the pattern holds up in writing or it evaporates. Both of those are good outcomes. If it holds up, you now have what you need. If it evaporates, you just avoided real damage to someone based on a feeling. The leaders who scare me are not the ones who hesitate. They're the ones who never test their own read. So I open by saying, don't delay. And I'm about to tell you that building a record takes time. Those sound like they're in conflict. Well, they're not. And the distinction is the most practical thing in this episode. Documentation starts now. The conversation does not wait for a comfortable moment. Those are two different clocks. The delay that ruins you is not the time it takes to build a legitimate record. It's the six months you spend knowing something is wrong and writing nothing down. That's the delay that makes you powerless later. Because when the big moment finally forces your hand, you're standing there with the feeling and quite frankly, no file. Start the record the day you notice. Then when the moment comes, and trust me when I say it will come, you're not scrambling, but rather you're ready. So here's what to actually do. The first step, validate the finding. Again, you cannot act on vibe alone. What specifically are they doing or not doing? Behavior, not personality. Observable, not interpreted, dated. If you don't have that today, start building it. Three months, six months, however long the honest record takes. This is not a gotcha exercise. You are testing whether your read is real. Number two, talk to your leadership before you need them. Not to ask permission, but to find out what you're working with. Tell them what you're seeing and ask directly what support looks like if this escalates. Their answer tells you everything. If they're vague now, they will be absent later. And you need to know that before you're in the room with the employee, not after. This is also quietly how you start fixing the design problem I described at the top of the episode. Every time a leader asks the question out loud, the organization has to answer it. Three, decide your trigger and your action in advance, in writing for yourself. This is one I used to foam in, and it's the one that matters the most. Before you're in it, write down two things. What is the specific behavior that means I move? And what exactly do I do when it happens? Because if you haven't pre-decided, you will relitigate the entire decision every single time. The employee will have a hard week and you'll think, oh, not now. Or there'll be a big deadline, and you'll think, again, not now. And don't forget my example, they'll have a personal crisis, a real one. And you'll think, oh yeah, definitely not now. Predeciding is how you keep your own empathy from being used against your judgment. You can be fully compassionate about someone's circumstances and still execute the decision you made when you were thinking clearly. Those are not in conflict. So I told you what happened to my employee. They got moved, and I want to come back to that because I have watched it happen more times than I can count. And my story is not the exception, it's the default. An employee isn't held accountable. Instead, they get moved. A new division, a new section, a new vertical, and the hope is stated out loud as a developmental opportunity, a fresh start, a better fit. And to be fair, sometimes that's real. Usually it isn't. Usually the actual calculation is as long as it is not my problem anymore, I'm fine. But we are one organization, are we not? When you shuffle a problem instead of resolving it, you haven't solved anything. You've transferred a cost to a colleague who now has less information than you did, and you've taught everyone watching exactly what the unwritten rules are around here. And yes, I understand why people do it. The administrative burden of a genuine accountability process is a nightmare. I mean, I'm talking seven hours spent in an eight-hour day on stuff like that. If you're not disciplined, it will eat your entire week. Documentation, HR, follow-ups, and more documentation. That's the process. But you do it because you care about the organization and because the people doing good work around that person are watching to see whether it matters. Here's where I'll leave you. Holding someone accountable is not about how it makes you feel. Yes, your discomfort is real and it is not the deciding variable. Ask yourself what your intentions are. For me, at the time, it was simple. My other employees were having a genuinely terrible experience. Stakeholders were losing confidence in us. We were getting less work and less trust because of one person we had put in a position to represent us. That's what was at stake, not my comfort. So do the right thing. When you have the opportunity, do the right thing because it only gets harder. And if you're in an organization where you've never seen accountability actually work, hear me carefully. I wasn't one of those. I waited and then I acted and then I watched the whole thing get resolved by someone else for entirely different reasons. And I called it a win because I needed it to be one. I never got the working example. Nobody handed me proof that it could be done here. Which means the only thing left is to be it. Not because it's noble, because somebody in your building is doing the same exact math I did, looking around for evidence that it's possible and finding nothing. Be the working example. Hey, if this episode resonated with you, please reach out to me. I would love to hear your thoughts on it. Tim at the KPAdvisoregroup.com. Thanks again for listening and tuning into this episode. I'll see you again in the next episode. Take care.