How Do You Manage Low Performers?
Explore how to effectively manage low performers by identifying root causes, acting promptly, and offering support with empathy. Understand how to maintain team health while helping individuals grow or transition roles, ensuring respectful and thoughtful people management.
When you’re managing a team, you’ll inevitably come across low performers. Every member has their strengths and weaknesses, and it’s your job as a manager to help them bring out their strengths and work on their weaknesses. A subpar performance from any team member can come from a variety of reasons. You should be able to demonstrate to the interviewer that you’re well-equipped to identify the problem and know how to deal with it.
What the interviewer is looking for
- How you identify low performers.
- The urgency with which you act on your findings since their performance impacts the whole team.
- Whether you’re dealing with it respectfully and are able to empathize with the low performer or not. Your confrontation with them shouldn’t come off as a complaint but as an offer to help. Be firm, but be kind.
- That you’re being meticulous in investigating the performance of this individual and not simply using a one-off,