Stop Rescuing Underperformers: How to Make Consequences Stick

Episode #411 Stop Rescuing Underperformers: How to Make Consequences Stick

There’s a very common pattern that many leaders can’t escape from.

Someone isn’t delivering. Everyone can see it. But the consequences never seem to be sufficient to get them to change their behaviour

So you do what every diligent, corporate-minded leader does. You cover the gap, roll your sleeves up, and get the job done.

But when you do that, you guarantee that nothing will ever change. That person who is underperforming will always underperform. You’ve shown them that you’re quite happy to do their job for them.

This week I sat down with two No Bullsh!t Leaders from our community who are living this exact problem, from two very different angles.

Leon’s a seasoned leader in cybersecurity, trying to drive accountability upwards into the most senior people who are protected by their relationships at the top. In his words, they’re “gold medallists in the corporate Teflon Olympics“. Nothing ever sticks.

Sharon’s a director in design and construction, and her frustration is outweighing her patience. Expectations are clear, support is always available… but she’s constantly finding issues instead of being told about them, and it’s becoming very tempting to just do the work herself.

Two different problems. The same root cause underneath: a lack of meaningful consequences.

Leon: the corporate koala problem

We’ve got a name for the people Leon is dealing with: corporate koalas. They’re a protected species… politically, they are well looked after. But it doesn’t mean they can do the job they’re being paid to do.

When the koala sits in your peer group, or above you, you can’t performance manage them. So most good leaders do the natural thing: they overfunction. They pick up accountabilities that belong in the other team, and they work feverishly to protect the outcome.

Don’t. You’re on a hiding to nothing.

If it goes well, the koala will be first in line to take the credit. If it goes badly? “I had it all under control until Leon interfered.” 

You cannot win that game. And because nobody ever sees the over-and-above work you’re doing, the only story being told upstairs is theirs. For many of these people, the only skill they have is managing up!

So the first move is about what you don’t do. Stop rescuing them. Until the failure in the delivery chain becomes visible, nothing will change.

The second move is escalation, and some methods of escalation are more effective than others.

Start with a soft escalation. At the end of a one-on-one with your boss, once the real business is done, just say in passing: “I just want you to know I’m having trouble getting Marty to deliver. I don’t need you to intervene yet: I think I’ve got it covered. But, just in case it becomes a bigger issue down the track, I wanted you to have a heads up.“

You’ve planted the flag without asking for anything. Although, let’s face it, most bosses can’t help themselves, so expect a little intervention anyway!

If you eventually have to escalate formally, there’s one important rule: never escalate without the knowledge of the person you’re escalating about. 

If you do it behind their back, you’ll kill any semblance of trust that might have remained, and you’ll risk creating a political firestorm you can’t win… remember, they do politics for a living. You don’t.

Be open, and let them know before you escalate. Something like this is direct, honest, and manageable:

“This is starting to affect my ability to deliver. I know our bosses have different priorities, but my team can’t be successful unless you deliver on the commitments you’ve made to us. I’ve been pretty patient, but something has to give. I’m going to take it to my boss to see if she can break the logjam. It would be great if you come with me, so that we can each explain our perspectives.”

Here’s the thing. Maybe 60 or 70% of the time, when faced with that prospect, they’ll capitulate: “Mate, no need to escalate. Just give me another week, and I’ll get it sorted.” 

Sometimes they’ll tell you to go and do your worst. But it’s one of the few techniques I’ve seen shift a recalcitrant peer who makes all the right noises, but doesn’t produce the outcomes.

Sharon: they watch your feet, not your lips

Sharon’s problem looks very different, because it’s a problem with her own team… but it has the same root cause as Leon’s: the consequences aren’t landing.

Some team members have worked for her for years. That matters, because of something lawyers call “course of conduct”: it means you’ve set up a pattern of behaviour that supersedes any written or verbal agreement you might have in place..

It doesn’t matter what comes out of your mouth… your people know exactly how you’ll act, what you’ll tolerate, and what will happen when they don’t do their jobs. 

In Sharon’s case, they know precisely what happens: Sharon swoops in and gets the job done. 

So why would anyone bother to lift their performance? If they don’t feel like doing their jobs, they know Sharon will!

People don’t watch your lips; they watch your feet.

The same dynamic explains why she’s being surprised by problems, instead of hearing about them early: there are no consequences for sitting on problems until they can’t be hidden any longer. 

Think about companies that have blown up spectacularly (Theranos is a classic), where bad news was treated as disloyalty. People who raised valid problems with the best intent were penalised… often sacked! 

Theranos employees learned not to bring bad news, because they saw top leadership shooting the messenger. So the problems stayed buried until the whole house of cards came down.

In Sharon’s case, the client and brand damage lands on her, not on the team. When you absorb all the pain yourself, there’s zero incentive for anyone else to change.

So I asked her an important question. The one or two people who clearly, consistently, and wilfully aren’t doing their jobs… why are they still there?

Her answer was one I hear frequently: the labour market is really tight, so it’s a case of “better the devil you know”.

Years ago, a leader in one of our Leadership Beyond the Theory (LBT) cohorts gave me a line that hit me like a pie in the face: an empty house is better than a bad tenant.

While you hold onto your worst performer, everyone else looks across and thinks, 

“Oh, I get it… that’s the standard, is it?! If he can perform like that, and still have a job here, the boss obviously thinks he’s doing OK. So, even if I only work at 40% of my capacity, I’ll still be hitting the ball out of the park, compared to that guy.” 

Your whole team slumps to the lowest common denominator. That’s the real cost, and it’s much bigger than one salary.

When you do exit someone, of course you should do it with dignity and respect… every person deserves at least that. But don’t miss the opportunity to reinforce a critical message about standards.

Say to the team: “Marty’s no longer with us, and we wish him all the best for his next chapter. Now, in completely unrelated news: let me restate the standard we’re setting here, and why it matters.”

You never have to say a word about why Marty went. People know how to connect the dots.

But watch what happens. People come out of the woodwork to support the new way of doing things, because they know you’re finally serious about setting a higher standard of performance. 

In my experience, the lift you get from the people who stay massively outweighs the loss of the underperformer, whom you freed up to be successful in another business. You get a net positive in productivity, even though you have one less FTE.

Two leaders; two completely different situations; one underlying root cause.

Accountability only works when a single person owns the outcome, and feels the weight of it. Every time you rescue someone (whether it’s a protected peer, or your own team member), you take the accountability onto yourself, and let them off the hook.

So, even though you can’t stand back and watch an unmitigated disaster unfold, for the most part you should let the failures become visible. Escalate in the open, not behind closed doors. And when it comes down to it, you need to make the tough call that you should have an empty house, rather than a bad tenant.

Rescuing a task that’s off-track feels like leadership: getting the job done! But it’s the opposite. Every time you swoop in, you reinforce that underperformance is tolerated, and mediocrity is acceptable. 

This is the kind of thing we work through every week inside Leadership Beyond the Theory: real leaders, real situations, real answers that help them move forward. Head to leadershipbeyondthetheory.com to learn more about our 9-week program.