A month ago, every morning at 5 AM, I found myself consumed by worry. As the head of a newly created digital experience strategy team, I inherited two team members to help build our capabilities. Three weeks in, I realized they both had significant gaps in skill, experience, and motivation necessary to produce the high-quality output I envision.
My team needs to listen intently, bring digital expertise, and ultimately prove our value to senior business partners within the next 3-4 months. However, my new team members were struggling with their delegated responsibilities and required very detailed instructions from me to progress to the next draft.
I am writing about this as I think many managers face similar challenges when dealing with skill gaps and motivation issues within your teams. Navigating this dilemma requires balancing the need for high-quality output with the development and morale of your team. Here are three potential options I considered that you can consider too, along with their pros and cons.
Option 1: Go Along to Get Along
Sometimes, accepting the current skill and output levels of your team members can seem like the easiest path. This approach allows for maintaining harmony and avoiding immediate conflicts.
Pros:
- Maintaining Harmony: Accepting the current skill and output levels of your team members can foster a harmonious work environment. This avoids potential conflicts and stress that might arise from pushing them beyond their current capabilities.
- Time Efficiency: By compensating for their shortcomings through your own final edits, you can ensure the quality of the output without waiting for multiple drafts and revisions from your team members.
- Team Morale: Allowing team members to contribute within their comfort zones might boost their morale and job satisfaction, even if it means they aren’t operating at the highest possible level.
Cons:
- Personal Burden: This approach places a significant burden on you, as you’ll need to continually step in to ensure the final output meets the required standards. This can lead to burnout and reduce your ability to focus on strategic tasks.
- Limited Growth: Team members may become complacent and miss opportunities for growth and development if they aren’t challenged to improve their skills.
- Short-term Solution: While this might work in the immediate term, it isn’t sustainable in the long run. Your team needs to develop independently to truly succeed.
Option 2: Provide Detailed Instructions and Ask for More Drafts
Providing detailed instructions and requiring multiple drafts is another approach. This method involves more hands-on management but can lead to skill development over time.
Pros:
- Skill Development: By providing detailed instructions and requiring multiple drafts, you can help your team members develop their skills and improve their output quality over time.
- Shared Responsibility: This approach distributes the workload more evenly, as team members are actively involved in the creation and revision process.
- Long-term Benefits: Investing time in training and feedback now can pay off in the future as your team members become more capable and self-sufficient.
Cons:
- Time-consuming: This method requires a significant amount of your leadership time, which might detract from other important responsibilities.
- Potential Frustration: Team members might feel micromanaged and frustrated by the constant feedback and revisions, potentially impacting their morale and motivation.
- Uncertain Results: There’s no guarantee that your team members will improve to the level required, and the process could take longer than the timeframe you have to prove your team’s value.
Option 3: Exit Team Members Due to Bad Fit
The final option is to exit team members who are not a good fit. This is a tough decision and involves a lengthy process but can lead to long-term benefits.
Pros:
- Fresh Start: Removing team members who are not a good fit allows you to bring in new talent that better matches the skill and motivation levels needed for your team’s success.
- Clear Expectations: This action sets a precedent for the standards and expectations within your team, potentially motivating remaining and future team members to perform at a higher level.
- Long-term Alignment: Over time, having the right people in the right roles will lead to a more effective and cohesive team.
Cons:
- Lengthy Process: Exiting team members, especially in corporate America, involves a lengthy process of verbal and written warnings, which can be time-consuming and stressful.
- Impact on Team Morale: Letting team members go can negatively impact the morale of the remaining team, creating an environment of uncertainty and fear.
- Short-term Disruption: The process of finding and onboarding new team members can disrupt your workflow and delay achieving your goals.
What Did I End Up Doing
After much back and forth with my boss and HR, I opted for Option 3. While moving them out of the team was painful, it was the right thing to do for them and for me. Managing them was not bringing out the best in me nor them. The overall work was then also taking longer to finish. Luckily since one was not formally on my team and the other was only with me for a short time, HR was finally able to recommend to do a reversal and not requiring me to do any PIP – performance improvement plans. This saved me time and much more anguish.
Ultimately, leadership is about finding the right balance between nurturing your team’s development and ensuring high-quality output. It’s been a month since I let go of my team. I couldn’t be happier and luckier another team had openings that were better fit for them as well. I almost didn’t do it as option 3 originally was going to be super time consuming and my boss wanted me to also reconsider. I am glad I followed through with it annd trusted my judgement. It all worked out much more swiftly.
Overall my advice is trust your gut as a leader. If your inherited team is not bringing out the best in you as a leader and they do not seem like good fit, it is better to bite the bullet and sever the cord early so both side can move on. It may not be easy in the short run and may even cause you to sacrifice some political capital as not being the “nice” leader, but it’s worth it in the right circumstance.
Your comments: What would you have done in this situation ?
Best wishes
Lei