Session summary

There will come a time when every engineering leader will be faced with engineers who are underperforming in their roles. And this is always tough for the underperforming person but also you as a manager. Underperformance, if not addressed correctly, can have tangible consequences both for an individual and your team. So how do you tackle these situations with integrity and ensure that you’re doing all you can to help people succeed? In this session, we’ll help you set out a plan of action to manage underperformance effectively, looking at how to set expectations, drive performance, and deal with any aftershocks.

Homework and takeaways from the module

You learned that:

• Performance management is really hard work, and supporting your team through their development is an ongoing process that will continually evolve.
• To identify that a performance issue exists, you first need to define what good performance means, given how much that can vary depending upon your perspective.
• Ensuring alignment of a manager’s perception and an individual’s perception with early and regular communication is essential when evaluating performance.
• As a manager, you should hold yourself accountable for supporting your employee through the process
• Even when someone is not meeting expectations, it is vital to treat them with dignity and respect. Consistently demonstrate compassion and humanity in the unfortunate instances where we have to fire someone.

You discussed:

How to successfully define expectations and ensure that you are setting your team up for success.

You should be able to:

• Articulate the characteristics of what a successful engineering team means to you
• Translate these characteristics into clear expectations that you share with your team
• Align your values with your actions, and support your team when they are not meeting the expectations that you set
• Effectively have these hard conversations with integrity and professionalism in the unfortunate instances where you have to fire someone

Your homework

Setting expectations is an ongoing process that is constantly evolving and it’s the very first step you need to take to manage performance with empathy and clarity. So this group exercise will help you carry on successfully defining expectations and ensuring that you are setting your team up for success.

Looking at the six characteristics you noted down during your individual thinking - for each characteristic, think about and note down:

• How can you make sure that you set that expectation with your team?
• What does success look like? How do you know they are meeting this expectation?
• What things can you do to monitor your team’s progress?
• How can you support them when they are not meeting the expectations that you set?

Reflecting on what you just learnt, do you think you clearly articulated what those expectations are to your team? This might be a great opportunity to communicate them to your team!