Managing Low Performers
Learn how to answer interview questions related to managing low performers.
We'll cover the following
- Typical questions
- Have you ever managed an employee who is not meeting performance expectations at their level?
- Have you ever managed an employee who is not motivated enough?
- Have you ever managed an employee who is not a good fit for a team?
- Did you ever have to manage someone out because of low-performance reasons?
- Did you have to manage someone out because of major misconduct or a major violation?
- Red flags
Performance management is one of the most important responsibilities of an EM . Managers are responsible for their team members' growth by providing them with opportunities, coaching them, ensuring they are set up for success, and helping them if they are not meeting expectations. Managers proactively look for growth areas and work with their team members to develop a growth plan.
During people management interviews, the interviewer will spend a significant amount of time learning how the candidate manages low performers.
Typical questions
Typical questions asked about supporting low performers in interviews include:
Do you have any low performers in your team? What did you do to help them?
Tell us about a situation where you had to manage a low-performing team member.
Not a team fit
There could be various reasons a team member is not meeting expectations. For example, the job role is not a good fit, and the technology is unsuitable for them. It may be because of a mismatch between a team member's background and role. Given the situation, the manager will play a role in identifying and addressing the issue. In this situation, the manager should change the setup for the employee, like moving them to a different project or even helping them move to another team.
Personal reasons
Secondly, there can be personal reasons such as family and health issues due to which a team member is underperforming. This can be a sensitive situation, and a manager needs to be very careful in communicating with the team member in this scenario. The manager should only dig for the details that are necessary to handle the situation. It is fine if the team member willingly shares personal reasons, but a manager should not force it out of them. The underlying reason can be personal, like family issues, health issues, or other short-term situations. In that case, no action is needed if the team can absorb the lower productivity. Engaging an HR partner to discuss the situation and possible options for long-term situations is highly recommended. Normally, the team member is supported by providing a leave of absence or lowering the expectations for some time.
Lack of motivation
Sometimes, the employee is not motivated enough or interested in their tasks. The manager's job is to find the reasons behind this attitude. These can be anything, such as the employee being unable to see growth potential in their current position or finding their current project uninteresting, not challenging enough, too ambiguous, or maybe too complicated. Interest in the type of work is relative. For example, some engineers don't want to debug production issues, whereas others might be passionate about them.
Overburdened
Too many projects/tasks might be assigned to team members, and they might not be able to make good progress on all of them. Sometimes team members are over-ambitious and sign up for much more work than they can deliver. The manager should always be vigilant about the amount of work they assign a resource and keep an eye on their burning out limit.
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