For Leaders: 3 Signs and Tips to Help Underperforming Teams
- Adilla
- Jun 20
- 5 min read
Updated: Jul 11
Underperformance is a word that a lot of leaders and managers don’t want to hear. A fear that will be hard to deal with if not addressed quickly. Underperformance isn’t just about missing deadlines or the lower quality of work; it could even be their behaviour or how they communicate with their team.
So, how can we pinpoint it further before it gets worse?
Table Of Contents
How Do I Know My Team is Underperforming?
As a manager, it’s natural to feel concerned and start asking questions when your team are missing deadlines or delaying their work. You also want to give them a fair chance to show up fully and perform at work. At one point, you might even assume that personal issues are affecting their focus and causing poor job performance. However, this might not be the case at all.
Before jumping to conclusions, watch for these signs that could show that your team is underperforming:
Sign 1: Deadline Delays and Inconsistent Work
One of the early signs of underperformance is work delays and inconsistent work quality. While submitting late or delays shouldn’t be a big issue, if their work isn’t up to standard, it raises a few flags. Or even recurring mistakes that could hinder their submission time.
Mistakes should be a learning opportunity for your team, where they can improve. However, if they constantly overlook mistakes or minor details that could impact their work quality, this will affect your overall project.
Sign 2: Lack of Engagement and Proactivity
If your team generally do not need direction or to be told what to do, this can be concerning when they no longer initiate or are proactive in their work. Look at whether your team have too much on their plate or if something else is hindering their progress.
Thus, if your teams are typically enthusiastic and engaging, it will be a concern if they no longer have the same energy as they usually would. Observe them during team discussions. Are they distracted, or do they have low energy?
Sign 3: Miscommunication And Misalignment
As a manager, if you find yourself taking on tasks that are usually handled by your team members, reflect on your motivations. Are you doing this to ensure the project deadline is met? Or have you unintentionally started to rely on yourself to compensate for their lack of effort?
Neither of these answers bodes well for your team’s expected performance. See if the tasks that are distributed are misaligned. Also, check whether there is miscommunication between your team and if the channels of communication have not been clear and aligned.
3 Strategies to Help Underperforming Teams
1. Pinpoint and Tackle Issues Quickly
While there are several reasons why underperformance happens, when you see a drop in team productivity, quickly check in with them. This is where you can attest whether the issue is personal or if the task is too daunting for them.
Or if it's too early to tell, you can keep track of their patterns and factors of why their performance is dropping. Then, with ‘evidence’, you can bring it up to your team and discuss why they are struggling to fulfil their tasks.
2. Set Up Performance Improvement Plan
If you want to prevent underperformance from happening, preparing an improvement plan beforehand could assist you. In your plan, list out clear objectives of what needs to be done with a timeframe and expectations of how long a specific task should take.
When a task is too difficult for your team, prepare the resources and training that can be suggested to help them with the task, rather than having you take over the task. This will prevent your team from relying on you to finish their tasks.
Other than that, it is expected that when there is a drop in progress, you will monitor and provide feedback when needed. However, if there is no improvement, let your team know the consequences of when they fail to meet the outlined objectives and standards.
3. Understand Your Team’s Motivation and Goals
If the previous methods are not working well, your team might just be demotivated or lack the personal goals that match their current tasks. Have a one-on-one meeting to talk about their personal goals and how you can implement them in their current tasks. This will keep your team motivated and even produce a result that is unique and competitive in the market.
How TESSR Project Management Tools Can Help You Track Real-time Performance
If keeping track of your team performance is difficult and it might slip through the cracks of your busy schedule, consider using project management software to help solve this issue. For example, our TESSR Woohoo is a module that calculates a weighted completion percentage of projects.
What it does is it measures the progress of a project depending on the importance of the tasks. Thus, you would gain a better understanding of the overall progress of a project while prioritising the more important tasks.
Conclusion
Poor job performance becomes difficult to manage when too many issues get slipped under the radar. By having a more regular check-in session with your team, you could prevent it from affecting the progress of a project.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Would redistributing tasks work better if I find a team member is struggling with a task or taking longer than the set timeframe I’ve placed?
While there is nothing wrong with reallocating tasks, it is better if you can give the resources or a team member who can assist them in tackling the tasks. Moving the task to someone else could give a message to your team member that they are unreliable.
Would mental health be a potential reason for poor job performance at work?
It could be. While there are many factors to consider before jumping into mental health reasons, it doesn’t hurt to ask how your team are mentally doing before they struggle.
As an employee, I don’t want to accidentally underperform at work. Is there a way I can prevent this before my leader confronts me?
If you have issues that could potentially affect your work performance, let your team leader know right away. They could assist you in helping you manage your work or even shift around your tasks to better fit your current situation.
Author Bio
With a background in Arts English, Adilla has been a casual writer for various hobbies like parodies of animated shows and plots for board games. She loves to read anything and everything from fantasy stories to articles on tips and tricks. Now an advocate for mental health and effective project management for the creative industry. Currently, Adilla resides in Malaysia and is a creative writer at TESSR. To know more about her, check out her LinkedIn.
Comentários