How to deal with underperformers – without the awkward conversations

The fastest way to drive away a high performing employee is to tolerate an underperforming one.

3… 2…1… go. Have you ever done a countdown with your team?

It’s a familiar story, we often coach clients where the people that they work with are doing just enough to meet their Key Performance Indicators (not shooting the lights out but just enough).

At NEP lately, we’ve been up to our armpits in culture work. So, we’ve been doing a lot of thinking about why culture is always a hot topic in business. Of course, we believe it should be.

You’ve worked hard to achieve a leadership role in your business or team. You are well respected and feel that your leadership style is really connecting to those who surround you. You have energy and passion for what you are doing. So, what is holding you back?

In business, there are small decisions and big ones. The key is identifying which is which. A common challenge we see is when leaders cannot separate themselves from the smaller decisions to have enough headspace for the big ones.

Technically amazing. Not so good with people? We used to get told a lot that it was the professional services industry that ran into trouble with leadership because they had technically amazing people who lacked any leadership skills once they became managers of people.

Barely a workshop goes by where this issue doesn’t come up in discussion in some way shape or form. It’s the situation where people get really stressed by other people sending emails at all hours and feeling as though they have to respond. So here’s our take on the situation and, well no surprises, let’s […]

When I coach leaders one of the big focuses we often have to is to ensure that his or her team is well placed to achieve their goals. So naturally the first thing we need to discuss is what the goals are.