This week I’m thinking a lot about underperforming employees and what we can do about them. If you are their leader, their performance is your responsibility. If they aren’t performing well or up to standard, check in with yourself and ask what you could be doing to help the situation. As a colleague of an underperforming employee, you can also take the lead and coach others (how awesome would this look on your performance review?).

This week’s easily digestible tidbit is:

The very first step in this process is: seek to understand. The feedback giver is usually overlooking something, shortchanging something, or misunderstanding something. You must understand why they aren’t performing well in order to try and improve the situation. You can’t fix something if you don’t know why it’s broken. The “seek to understand” part is usually skipped. Often, we go straight to “that’s wrong” and we pass judgement then offer up feedback that is vague and unhelpful.

How many times have you gotten poor feedback? Sometimes it’s flat out wrong, sometimes it’s right, but only according to the wrong people, sometimes it’s out of context, sometimes it’s only specific to the giver’s standards, or it’s not timely or it’s unhelpful. Have you ever gotten the “be better at X” without any tips on how to be better at X?