One of my favourite speakers is Brian Tracy, I met him as he taught his famous course High
Performance Leadership. I heard him say: “The manager that keeps an incompetent employee is
incompetent”. Since that time, I am eager to find who can be productive on my team and who is not.
You may have an employee that served the company many years, but he/she has reached their
performance ceiling, there is nothing you could do to improve their performance. You kindly have
arranged for professional development but it did not work, the new role is not for their personality.
Now the company has to move on; you have a choice either to keep them as a liability to say
goodbye gracefully, what would you do? It sounds harsh and disloyal, but if they company goes bust,
we all loss including the highest performing staff, how good is that?
In my view the solution is to design and suitable professional development plan tied to a timeframe
and list of key success factors and monitor the progress, if there is no hope, it is time to “Let it go, let
go, can’t hold it back any more, let it go, let it go, turn away and slam the door” as the Disney song of
Frozen goes. Off course, I would recommend finding other suitable positions internally, or providing
extensive help to find an opportunity externally. Think of it as when the child inside his/her mother
for 40 weeks, once the time comes of the delivery, the baby will have to leave despite the screams,
the sweat and the blood. My wife in the delivery ward usually holds my hands very tight and looks
me straight in the eyes with anger and says: You did this to me! Then tomorrow is another beautiful
day.
My advice to managers is, by all means, be kind, be heartful but also be business oriented and take
tough decisions in favour of the business.
