Your Most Important Stakeholders – When Improving Your Worst Employee
When you have a problematic team member or people problems in your team, it is really easy to just focus on that individual.
Your worst team member is causing damage to teamwork and to team morale, motivation and performance. The damage might be slight all the way through to it being BIG, noticeable and painful.
They are a problem to be solved.
Managers who focus just on the individual MAKE A BIG MISTAKE.
Your worst team member or problem individual is your 4th most important “stakeholder” in this situation. NOT THE 1st!
Your worst team member is a brilliant ADVERT to your team and your boss. The standards and behaviour of your worst team member tell everyone else what standards and behaviour are acceptable to you. The message your worst team member sends is POWERFUL and CONSTANT.
The question you need to ask yourself:
“Are you happy with the message they are sending?”
Team Performance = Your Performance
Managers create their BIGGEST IMPACT on the business through how well they get their team performing. As a result, manager’s personal performance is directly and closely tied to their team’s performance.
To improve your job security, build more influence, create more impact, get promoted, and get paid more – as a manager – you need to INCREASE TEAM PERFORMANCE.
Therefore any action you take as a manager should be viewed through the “team performance lens” before taking it.
Taking Action with Your Worst Team Member
To increase team performance as a manager, you must take action with your worst team member. I don’t think that you have a choice.
In my experience, taking positive constructive action with your worst team member nearly always increases team performance by much more than one person’s contribution.
You might have already guessed. Your rest of your team is YOUR MOST IMPORTANT STAKEHOLDER in any action you take with our worst team member.
Your Stakeholders in order of importance
The most important are first, to your least important
- Your team
- Your boss and all more senior managers and leaders
- HR
- Finally, the problem individual or your worst team member
When you take action to improve your worst team member, always keep all these stakeholder in mind and prioritise your time and effort appropriately as a result.
i.e. work to keep you team happy, motivated and performing. Keep your boss informed, involved and 100% on your side.
If you have any questions, please get in touch.
Jess
To learn a lot more about how best to improve your worst team member, to improve them quickly and to be a lot more certain of getting improvement without removing them from your team, I invite you to join our FREE webinar “Improve Your Worst Employee & Regain Control Proactivity & Confidence”. Click here to register for this FREE webinar.
