An Effective Way To Manage Poorly Performing Employees

Employee performance often makes or breaks your organization, especially in the case those employees with significant responsibility.  Unfortunately, we don’t always end up with employees capable of performing as well as we’d prefer.  When such an incident arises, it becomes the management’s responsibility to deal with the poorly performing employee.  While there are many management tactics for dealing with inadequate performance, the one made famous the by the American President Lincoln may be among the best.

As outlined in Donald T. Phillip’s book “Lincoln on Leadership,” Lincoln was confronted with the task of finding a General for the Union Army that could both build and successfully fight with it.  Unfortunately, most Generals he appointed would prove to fail on the latter of Lincoln’s requirements.  Through the use of a precise management technique that relies heavily on leadership and tact, the President was able to rapidly weed out ineffective Generals until he found one that performed as per his requirements: General Grant.  Here’s the strategy Lincoln employed to manage and remove an inadequately performing general:

Successful Management Requires Trust

Managing a team successfully requires more than technical competence, as anyone who’s ever had a bad manager can tell you. Equally important is leadership and open communication (among other things). One often overlooked characteristic critical to these two former qualities is trust. By building trust with those you manage, you can elevate your potential for success and get more out of your employees. This will be first in a series of posts on the role of trust in management, the benefits it provides, and methods you can employ to build this critical quality.   Today I’ll discuss what trust is and why you, as a manager, should strive to build it with your team.

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