When an employee isn’t meeting your expectations, it’s easy to assume they’re failing because they don’t want to do what you ask of them.
But that’s not always the case.
For example, I was advising a Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) recently who told me that they had an employee who was eager to do the work that was assigned but simply missed the mark on a regular basis. The employee would try and try but would consistently fail to deliver on the CMO’s expectations.
We explored whether the employee knew what was expected of them and confirmed that indeed, the expectations were clear. We also looked at whether the employee had the necessary resources (time, materials, etc.). Again, we confirmed that the employee had access to the necessary resources to get their job done.
Unfortunately, with awareness and understanding of the goal and the resources necessary to achieve it, this employee was still failing to deliver on expectations.
This employee clearly had the will to do the work. They put in a ton of hours, tried incredibly hard to succeed, and still weren’t meeting expectations.
That’s when I shared with this CMO that what they were dealing with was a gap between will and skill.
The employee in question was very junior in their career, did not have prior experience successfully doing the kind of work required of them, and the CMO didn’t have a robust technical training program in place.
I shared with this CMO was that there were really three options in a situation like this:
The CMO could continue picking up the slack and doing the things that this employee was supposed to be doing (not ideal)
The CMO could terminate this employee because they have a consistent history of missing expectations
The CMO could lean in and create the training and coaching support that this employee needs in order to begin meeting (and hopefully exceeding) expectations
All three of these pathways are viable decision paths. They all have different implications for the business, the employee, and the leader.
It’s much harder to teach someone to want to do the work and be successful. Teaching the technical aspects of a role (within reason) is often much easier to do than is teaching someone to want to be successful.
When faced with a skill gap instead of a will gap is, how fast can we create the training and coaching program necessary to support this employee? Next, I ask, does the business have the time and financial runway to enact that training and coach this employee up to sufficient performance?
It’s easy for a leader to say “No. We should just terminate the employee and hire someone else.” And that’s certainly an option. But the additional questions you need to wrestle with around this decision are:
Have we followed the appropriate HR documentation processes in order to terminate this employee without legal risk?
What will it cost us to terminate and then rehire for this role?
What is the opportunity cost of not having someone in this role for a period of time?
If the reason this current employee wasn’t successful is because they weren’t trained and didn’t have coaching support, how will our next hire be successful if we don’t change ourselves first?