Leadership: The Draggers Are Sinking Your Ship

---

Everyone has had experiences working with poor performers. We all hate colleagues that are annoying, troublesome, selfish, lazy, politics creating or ineffective. As much as everyone knows that senior management should get rid of them, they often stay in an organization like parasites.

Many poor managers are simply lazy to deal with poor performers. They know that it is an issue but they usually look for excuses to justify why certain thing should stay the way it is. Even worse, they may deliberately recommend these poor performers to other teams so that they can leave the problem for other team leaders to deal with.

My first people leadership role

More than 10 years ago, I became one of the youngest persons to be promoted to a Director in American Express. It was a huge career accomplishment for me since it was my first real management level job. I was both excited and nervous because I knew I would be judged on a whole new level. In addition, I was tasked to lead 5 experienced professionals and, therefore, I needed to quickly transform myself from an individual contributor to an effective people leader.

Six months into my job, I attended a meeting hosted by the department head where only Directors and above were invited. The goal of the meeting was to align mid year performance ratings on staffs across all teams. To be frank, I was quite nervous because I did not know what to expect. Also, I knew whatever I said in the meeting could lead to decisions on bonus payout, future promotional opportunities or even layoff of individuals in my team.

Great meeting, unexpected learning

Long story short, the meeting was not as scary as I thought. There were a lot of healthy debates on which staffs performed well and who did not. To my surprise, my biggest takeaway from the meeting actually came from the introductory comments by my department head. He said:

"Guys, thanks for coming... blah, blah, blah..."

"In this meeting, I expect you to categorize all individual staffs of your team into one of the following 5 categories."

"Category 1: Outstanding Performer" This means someone who you believe to have the potential to be promoted TWICE within the next 5 years.

"Category 2: Good Performer" Someone who performs well now and may earn a promotion within the next 5 years.

"Category 3: Average Performer" Someone who made good contributions and you don't mind having in your team, but demonstrated limited potential to move up in the organization.

"Category 4: Poor performer but individual contributor"

"Category 5: Poor performer and dragger"

I listened very carefully to what he said but I was confused. I did not understand the difference between 4 and 5. What is a dragger? What does that mean?

My department head further explained:

"For Category 4, these are poor performers who operate in relatively isolated roles. Their poor performances affect the overall team output but normally do not affect other people. I won't kill you if you take time to manage these staffs, give them another chance or try to help them slot into other departments that value their skills."

"For Category 5, meaning the draggers, I expect you to come up with IMMEDIATE actions to move them out. These are employees who not only perform their role poorly but also drag the performance of other good performers. In other words, other people need to make extra efforts to compensate their poor performances. This is a very serious issue to me because such employees create massive inefficiencies and, most importantly, de-motivate good performers."

Sounds simple, but I never thought about it

Once I heard the descriptions, I thought he was damn right. I never thought about different types of poor performers. It immediately reminded me of some of the "dragger" colleagues I worked with in my career. I now realized why I hated them so much. It's because I needed to do a lot extra work (for them) that I was not recognized for, and such extra work sometimes compromised the quality of my own work. Such things de-motivated me and made me feel so unfair at work.

After some thinking, sadly, I realized that there was a dragger in my team. He's a super nice guy but he simply was not up to standard. I felt bad because I previously allowed other staffs in my team to do extra works to help him out. I realized that I should have a stronger sense of urgency to move him out. I felt I was simply too nice to him.

This meeting turns out to be an important lesson for me on people leadership. It shaped me into a more decisive people leader who values organizational performance and fairness over sympathy.

How many draggers are there in your team? Forward this article to your boss. Maybe you can motivate him or her to fire the draggers.

---

---

Comments? Questions? Email Here

© HowtoAdvice.com