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Word count: 473 Jonathan Wild, notorious English criminal (1682-1725) picked the pocket of the priest who administered the last rites on the gallows at Tyburn. The unrepentant felon triumphantly waved his trophy, a corkscrew, just before he was dropped to his death. There is a leadership lesson in this. And its a lesson many leaders miss. When youre leading a group of people of whatever size to get results, understand that roughly about 20 percent of the people will be against you. The 20 percent wont do or at least wont want to do what you require and thus may perform poorly on the job. One of the most persistent and difficult challenges of leadership is dealing with poor performers. Aside from job-related problems they engender, they also squander time and resources. Forty percent of my time, a CEO told me, is devoted to dealing with ten percent of my employees. Mind you, Im not talking about poor performance tied to skill issues. People who are not measuring up because they lack skills and knowledge to do well usually need a different intervention than people who have will issues. You might make a rough equivalence between the people performing poorly on the job because of will issues with the Jonathan Wilds of the world. After all, as an upright citizen, Wild was a poor performer. But as a pickpocket, he was adroit. Putting aside the specific kinds of interventions you might undertake, the important thing is your perspective. In dealing with them, you absolutely must not underestimate the skills, talents, and proficiency they bring to poor performance. They can pick your pocket and you wont even know it. You have three choices when dealing with them. You can choose to live with them as they are. You can choose to rid yourself of them. Or you can choose to intervene to try and change them. Theres no fourth choice. Or maybe I should say theres no first choice either. The first choice may be no choice at all. You probably cant leave them alone. Poor performers are usually not content to be one-man-bands. They love company. They need to recruit others onto their poor-performance teams or at least keep them from joining your team. In this capacity, theyre smart, adaptive, innovative, and good leaders. Your underestimating them gives them an advantage against you. There are many ways to deal with poor performers. (Articles on my web site detail a few.) The point is that in your dealings, keep in mind you could be up against some Jonathan Wilds, those people who may be performing poorly on the job but who perform excellently in their parallel, and maybe to them more important, job -- which is being against you. 2006 The Filson Leadership Group, Inc. All rights reserved. |
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