What do you do when you have an employee who you believe is potentially a real asset to the business, but who is clearly under performing, and even showing signs of apathy or laziness? Well, you can take them through the disciplinary procedures, and ultimately sack them, or you can persevere, and try to get them to realise their potential.

The second of these two options is clearly the better one, but for many the time and effort it can require to change their ways can be too much, and so in the end they become another victim of taking the easiest route.

I was recently working with one of my clients who has just this issue. They have a young employee just below management level, and whilst he clearly has many of the ideal aspects they need, he is simply lazy, and does things to the barest minimum, just to get by. Part of the problem lies with the line manager who has not made it clear where his responsibilities lie, and also that the line manager is too quick to take things off the young persons hands (because it is easier and quicker to do so). Unfortunately this gives out all the wrong signals, and it just encourages laziness, and re-inforces that that type of behaviour is acceptable.

To be fair to the line manager, he is trying very hard to improve this person’s performance levels, but so far has met with stubborn resistance.

So we have decided to change things, both in terms of where people sit physically (so it is harder to pass work over to the line manager) and also to work out a bonus system which should encourage him to take on more responsibility. If he hits his targets, it will significantly improve his monthly income, and it will therefore be beneficial to him, his line manager and to the business as a whole.

While coaching one of my clients recently, I was reminded of the importance of managing your team, and not simply letting them get on with things. This particular client has done extremely well, and has moved things on significantly, in fact so much so that she now has a General Manager in place, and feels very strongly that the business can largely run without her. Getting to this stage is the aim of most business owners, but just because the business runs without them, doesn’t mean that they should take their hands off the steering wheel completely.

The thing is unless you have taken the view that you really want nothing to do with the business at all, it is essential that as Managing Director (which most business owners are) you must continue to do just that i.e. manage and direct.

In this particular instance there were already a few warning signals appearing, whereby despite there being clear actions for the General Manager to have carried out, none of them had been taken forward, and my suspicions were that this was because no-one was being held accountable.

When I asked the business owner if the actions had been completed she was unsure whether they had been or not, and in the end I had to ask the question of others to see what had and had not been done.

Providing the owner changes their ways and starts to hold regular meetings checking what has been completed in terms of actions agreed, then no harm will be done, and they will move forward efficiently, and at the pace set by the owner. However, if this situation is allowed to continue so that it becomes the norm, standards could quickly start to slip, sales targets could be missed, and it will be harder to get control back in place.