If the same employee problems keep coming up in conversations with my clients, the problem usually isn’t the employee.

It’s the leader.

As Dr. Henry Cloud says, “As a leader, you are always going to get a combination of two things: what you create and what you allow.”

Chronic issues have to be dealt with. But this can feel difficult or uncomfortable. So, the most common tendency is to avoid addressing it directly, clearly, and consistently.

The secondary tendency, possibly more destructive, is to attempt to appease it.

It might seem surprising, but it is not uncommon for employers to attempt to “fix” a behavior or performance issue through raises, promotions, or various privileges. This might be due to feeling guilty, fear of losing an employee, or a sense of loyalty to the relationship.

Neither avoidance nor appeasement will work. It’s a long, slow, expensive, and painful process if you choose to learn that the hard way.

The Two Things You Need to Pay Attention To

When employee problems become chronic, they’ll show up in one or both of these two places:

Behavior: Behavior is observable and measurable and therefore, we can describe it objectively. When addressing issues with employees, describe exactly what it is that they are doing that is creating a problem.

Issues like “attitude” and “morale” are vague and often speculative. It’s not that they don’t exist. But we can’t prove they exist. Additionally, they leave room for our own errors in interpretation.

Behaviors look like:

• Consistently showing up to work late
• Refusing to comply with a policy
• Turning work in late
• Not responding to emails
• Not participating in meetings
• Speaking over others

Performance Outcomes: These are the specific results that someone was supposed to accomplish. The most frequent issue here is that they’ve never been defined. Usually, the work or effort has been defined – but not the outcomes or desired results.

As a result, someone can appear to be working hard. They might, in fact, be working hard. But they aren’t accomplishing what they needed to accomplish.

Outcomes are specific and measurable. They don’t tell an employee how to do a job – but they are clear about the results you want to see. They take a little bit of thought but once designed well – they are powerful management tools.

Outcomes can look like:

• Heavy civil ops director – Maintain average fleet/equipment availability above 90% and reduce unplanned equipment downtime by 25% over the next 12 months.
• Structural project manager – Deliver all assigned structural projects within ±3% of budget and within 10 working days of the committed completion date while meeting all code and inspection requirements.
• Front medical desk – Answer at least 90% of inbound calls within 3 rings, keep no-show rate under 8%, and maintain average in-office patient wait time under 15 minutes.
• Clinical director for ER – Keep median door-to-provider time at or below 30 minutes and left-without-being-seen rate under 2% on a rolling quarterly basis.
• Mechanical engineer – Reduce component test failure rate by 30% over the next two product cycles while keeping redesign-related cost increases under 5% of the current unit cost.

You can see how outcomes are very objective. Once in place, they make it easy for the employee and the employer to quickly see if performance is on track.

Create a “Y in the Road” Decision

In almost all cases, you can quickly and decisively correct chronic employee problems by creating a “Y in the road.” Essentially, you offer them two (sometimes three) options. You do this by sitting down with the employee and naming the problem specifically and the need for a ‘reset’ in the relationship. Sometimes people call this ‘recontracting’ or ‘rehiring.’

Then you offer your options (or forks in the road):

Option A: We will need you to consistently make these specific (1 or 2) behavioral and/or (1-2) performance changes. We expect this change to be immediately apparent and will be monitoring closely for 90 days.

Option B: If you aren’t willing or able to make those changes, here are minimum expectations in terms of behavior and performance, and we’ll make adjustments to both position and compensation to reflect these lower expectations.

Option C: If neither of those options works for you, then we need to acknowledge that we aren’t a fit for each other.

The unfortunate truth: In my experience, perhaps 10% will step up. Perhaps 10% will step down, and about 80% will decide (sometimes with your help) that your expectations are not a fit for them.

That clarity is far better than months or years of unresolved problems.

Your Role as the Leader

Most chronic employee problems are unable to exist in environments with clear behavioral and performance expectations. Creating and maintaining that clarity is the responsibility of the leader.

If those problems exist, then you need to create a “Y in the Road” decision. Which is bringing that clarity in and offering only 2 or 3 options – some form of “Step up, Step down, or Step out.”

Chronic problems are hard. And the problems don’t go away.

Creating the “Y in the Road” is hard. But things get better.

Choose your hard. (See what I did there?)

Take good care,

Christian