76 | Strategies for Managing Underperforming Team Members with Justin Deese

Welcome to the Freedom Blueprint podcast. I'm excited to be hanging out with you today. And listen, we're going to dive into a crucial topic for any and all leaders. But before we do that, I was doing some work this morning and I was thinking about the mission of the podcast. And it's been a minute since I've since I've said what it is. So I'm going to take the opportunity and just kind of give my mission statement.

For those of you that are new to checking out the podcast, thank you for coming and hanging out. This might give you a little bit of insight to why this thing even exists. And if you're a repeat listener, thank you for your support. Appreciate all the positive feedback and listen, five star views are great and we love them. So mission statement, this show on this show, we focus on empowering leaders and the home service industry through discussions on leadership growth.

overcoming challenges and fostering a positive mindset. So again, it's just been a minute since I've since I've shared that and I thought about this morning. I just want to share this because it's been a minute. so real quick, before we get into today's topic, I want to say this. I have a new ebook that just came out and it is called pipe dreams to payday. And if you'd like to get a copy, there's two different ways to get it.

Just tells a little bit about the journey, my journey as far as, you know, buying businesses, selling businesses, and really just kind of how to avoid some of the speed bumps whenever you do get ready to either acquire or sell. But realistically, a business is an asset. So no matter where you are in your journey, you should always be prepping your business for either the next generation or selling or something because a business is an asset. That's it. It's an asset. So don't

Don't let it don't let it tell you different. That's not the case. So all right, let's jump in today's topic. So today what I wanted to talk about is how to help underperforming team members and I know that nobody listening has ever had underperforming team members. That's me pausing for laughter. What right? We've all had it. We've all had team members that that just

that just didn't do as well as we thought or wanted or whatever the case may be. So I just thought about maybe a couple of tips to help in order to just really make sure that you're doing all you can do to help under performers. The truth is there's only so much as a leader you can do anyways, but I think it's really crucial to make sure that you are checking in with yourself, that you are doing all that you can do, right? You can't do it for them.

But you definitely can set the stage and build the environment in order for them to to really succeed and and and be a be an amazing team member because really if they're an amazing team member, it's a win win. It wins for them. They like what they do and it's a win for you because they're making money and they're making customers happy and they're keeping your culture in a good spot. So there's there's so many wins, but let's go into just a couple of these things real quick. So the first thing.

is you start by hiring strong people. Now I know that that is super easy to say, and that's not always the easiest thing to do. And, know, I, and I know that I've had this experience where, I've hired somebody and brought somebody on the team and thought, man, superstar superstar written all over. It's gonna be great. And, by day three, you're like, who is this person that showed up? And this is definitely not the

the person that I interviewed or thought that they were going to be. Right. And, and I think that the onboarding process is something that a lot of times is missed. And it's one of the most crucial. It's, really allows you to set the stage for team members to let them know expectations and all of that kind of good stuff. So one thing is I would tell you to avoid the one interview hires.

And I know we've all done it. We've all done it. I'm not excluding myself from that group. We've all done it. But it's a terrible thing to do. Even if somebody is leaving to go to another interview and you feel like you gotta scoop them up before they go work somewhere else. The term higher, slow, fire, fast is really a good one to live by.

Not that any of us ever want to fire anybody, but we'll get into that in a minute. you know, so some of the tools that you can use when you're when you're doing the interview is one have them interview with multiple team members. Like if if if they're going to work for a department, let's say the HVAC service department, right? Make sure that service manager is part of that process. Can you imagine having somebody on your team that you didn't even get a chance to interview? And now you feel like you're stuck with them. And you know, there's a little bit of that that rub that happens.

So make sure that you've got your leadership involved in the hiring process. Doesn't even matter what position. I think you always need to have them involved because you're on the same team. And the truth is, you as the main leader or the owner of the business, as you go through the interview process with a team member, they're going to tell you different things than they would tell your team members. What they see as their peers. I know that

We do, we still a lot of group interviews and open, we called them open houses and we'd invite everybody in. was a big party. It was, it was a lot of fun. Um, and man, when we, when we all got done with these meetings, we would sit down and we would debrief, um, all the, all the candidates and who was there. Um, and it's amazing sometimes the information that some of the team members would get from people that I would have never gotten out of them. So just leverage that, right?

Another thing is you can do things like personality test. I know for us, we did a lot of disk analysis. Disk is a great, great way to kind of uncover. I always say personality test and I jokingly will tell people like, hey, I hope you don't fail it. But really what happens is the disk analysis and there's tons of them like that. That's just the one we used. We'll give you a lot of insight to how someone will

respond to different things, right? There's a lot of times when you take it, people go, ooh, I didn't even know that about myself or I'd never even noticed that it's, it's just a good tool, but it's not the only tool, but it is a good tool in your toolbox to use so that you get, you know, a clear understanding of what, how this person is going to act in certain situations. Now there, you, you can,

answer it how you feel like it needs to be answered. And people that are really good, like my wife is really good with the disc analysis. People that try to finagle it, there is a pattern and I have no idea what it is. So I'm not even going to get into it besides to say, if you're good with it and you understand it, there's a pattern that'll show up if they're not truthful. Again, I don't know what it is and...

If you use DISC and whoever facilitates that, they should know what that looks like. There's a lot of great resources out there. And again, DISC is not the only one. I think there's Briggs and Meyer and there's the ideogram. There's a lot of different ones that are really good out there. But there's the first thing is really start by hiring strong people. And again, easier said than done, but it's really more about making sure that you have an onboarding hiring process that you're following because really you want to give people the opportunity.

One, to be comfortable, right? Because when they come into an interview, it's like this very rigid thing. And as a leader, your job is to kind of break that down a little bit and get them to be comfortable so that you can really see who they are.

And then the other thing is just making sure that the rest of your team is involved in the process so that they can give you any kind of yellow flags or red flags that they see because everybody on the team is going to see things a little bit different. there's the first thing is just really start by hiring strong people. The next thing is once you have people on the team, you want to make sure that there is clear goals and objectives. I know that we all

Again, none of this is going to be new information. This is this, this is all things that we all know, doing and knowing two different things, but we've got to have clear goals and objections for everybody on the team. Each person that works on your team. When Friday hits the door, like when Friday comes and they're hitting the door, they should know without a shadow of a doubt if they kicked butt or they didn't kick butt that week.

And it needs to be that clear. Like you've got, you've got to make sure that you have a clear set of standards or KPIs or goals or whatever you want to call them that, that, that team member or every team member knows if they want or not. Like, just think about it. I know for me, back when I used to do a lot of the interviewing, I remember talking to people and people would come in and they'd say, yeah, I worked so and so for five years.

And they let me go and I just didn't know why. And I always thought like, how terrible, like this person dedicated five years and no one, no one even so much as gave them a heads up on what was going on or cause obviously they're struggling. Nobody has ever, nobody's ever taken a team and been like, man, this person is such a superstar. I've got to get them off my team immediately. This doesn't happen. Right. so, so making sure that you have clear.

objectives and goals for every single one of your team members, right?

Another thing that kind of goes with that too is making sure that they have what they need to win. Right? Do they have the tools? Do they have the training? Do they have whatever it is they need in order to hit these goals and objectives?

Another thing is going to be celebrate the wins. Celebrate the wins. I can remember early on in my career, hearing someone say praise and public, correct and private. And it was like a ton of bricks when I heard that I was like, wow, well, that makes a lot of sense because I don't want to yell at somebody and embarrass them. But man, praising in public anyways, for me, it was like a, it was one of those things that was a

It was a pretty cool aha moment to, to hear that for the first time. You know, was, I was young. that's not been a part of anything in leadership I'd ever heard. I grew up playing sports, so there was no, there was no correct in private. was, you got corrected in front of however many people were at the game, however packed the stands were. That's how many people you got corrected in front of. And, as much as sports and business play a really,

cool alignment with each other and there's a lot of parallels to it. That part of the leadership is really not, not, not one of them, but again, make sure that you're celebrating wins. Don't, don't be the kind of leader that the only time your team hears from you is when there's a problem. God, can you imagine that? Like if the only time someone ever said anything to you, it was negative. And I think of the, I think of the movie office space.

depending on what age you are, you may have not heard of that before. Office Space, not the TV show, but the movie that came out was such a good movie. And the guy would always, his boss would always come to him and like, you gotta do your TPS reports and the TPS report's not right. You just don't wanna be that, don't be that company that the only time they hear from leadership is when there's a problem. That's a crappy way.

It's just a crappy way to do business and nobody wants to work for that team, right?

Next on the list here is going to be making sure that you're checking in on a regular basis. Kind of what I went back to earlier about the don't only communicate when people with people when there's a problem, you've got to set up. We call them one to ones. I think a lot of people in business in the business world call them one to one. Doesn't really matter what you call them, but you've got to do regular check ins. And what I mean by that is not you walk in the office.

and you see somebody you're like, yo, what's up, man? You good? Weekend good? Family good? All right, great. Right, that's not checking in, right? So creating an environment where you're actually sitting down with a team member and giving them the space that quite frankly they deserve and sitting down and asking them what's going on. Right? It's a really good way if you have somebody who is an underperforming team member.

and you're sitting down with them on a regular basis, whatever the, whatever the issue is, that's, that's at hand, whatever the issue is, there's, there's going to be two things, right? It's going to be ability or it's going to come down to willingness for the most part. And so if you're sitting down with a team member and you've had six one-to-ones or four one-to-ones and you're talking about the same thing over and over again, and it's the same thing coming up.

It's going to be ability or willingness. And at the end of the day, if it's ability, then chances are that's a training opportunity and that's really going to fall heavy on leadership because even if training doesn't fix it, if they're not the right person for that job, again, that's a leadership thing they have to fix. If it's a willingness issue, let's be honest, there is nothing you can do to fix willingness. That is 100 % on that team member. So the point of this,

is that if you have underperforming team members, these are just three little steps that you can do to help them in a corrective action. But really what you're doing is you're just giving them this awareness of what it is that they've got going on, where are they falling short? But you can't tell someone where they're falling short unless you have clear objections, right? And then when you have clear objections and goals and you're sitting down and reviewing them on a regular basis, now you have a two-way communication.

So if somebody is not hitting their, let's say, their average ticket number or whatever's important to you. If every meeting you're going over the same thing, eventually what's going to happen is you as the leader are going to say, look, you know, this is, this is the company standard. Everyone else in the company is willing or is able to do this with the exception of you. If there's nothing I can do to help you, is this really a good fit to be on this team? Put the ball in their court.

I can tell you from personal experience, I have had, I have had a number of people that have voluntarily left a company because we were doing one-to-ones and we just got to the point where you can't argue it. Like it's, it's, and it's not an argument, right? It's not an argument. It's, Hey, here's the line. The average ticket is X. You're not even close. We've talked about it. I've given you additional training. I've done ride-alongs. I've done everything I can do.

What is there left that I can do in order to help?

Nobody comes to work to not be good. Nope. Nobody comes to suck. That's just, that's just how it is. Right. so just remember that as you're, as you're going through this process with your, with your team member, and as you're thinking about, okay, I have underperforming team members that I really want to help. These are really going to be the steps in order to, in order to get them to where you want to, where you need them to be. Right. Listen, recruiting has changed a lot. Like think about in the past.

I'm going to say decade, well, I'm going to say decade. Five years has changed too, but in the last decade, good team members are going to spend as much time interviewing you and your company as you do them. In some cases, the team member ends up interviewing the company more because they're checking out their online reviews. Listen, good team members don't want to go work for a company that has crappy reviews. They just don't. So

So the days of a privilege to be on this team, it's a privilege, like, gosh, I can vividly remember that kind of being the tone. when you're, when you're interviewing us like, well, tell me what you're going to do for me and my company. And that's, that is so not even how, the world works anymore. And it's, it's really has to be a win-win between the two. And, and you know, the, again, the time of it being a privilege to work here, that's just really not even a thing anymore.

It's got to be a win-win and you have to give them some of these clear objections, some of these clear goals, so they feel good about what they're doing. They feel good about the win in order to be on the team and then they'll stay. So to wrap all that up, hire right and manage efficiently. That's going to be one. The second is going to be clear goals that drive performance.

That's it. And then you're going to do regular check ins and by doing regular check ins, this is going to allow you the ability to really take this thing and be able to build trust, build trust in the in the the team member. So there you go. There there's three quick high level points on how to help underperforming team members. I hope that was super helpful. As always, if you have any questions.

My email is in the show notes. Don't hesitate to shoot me an email. May take me a little bit to get back to you, but I promise you I will get back and answer. I answer every question that comes in. So listen, thank you for joining today and listen, make sure you subscribe so that when new episodes and content is released, man, you're the first to know, man. You're in the know. Listen, until next time, keep those trust goals and watching your business.

Thank you for joining me today and hanging out on Freedom Blueprint podcast. Listen, make sure to subscribe. So anytime new content drops, you're the first to know, then you're in the know. But listen, until next time, keep setting those trust goals and watch your business and leadership transform. This is Justin Deese signing off from the Freedom Blueprint podcast. Stay motivated, elevate your team, and as always, keep crushing it.