[difficult people] - 5. Working with people who are unreliable
Dealing with Difficult People
Unreliable People
There are two aspects to dealing with unreliable people in the workplace: dealing with their unreliability, but also maintaining the kind of environment that provides support and encourages improvement.
Here are some key strategies to help manage unreliability:
Find the Root Cause: Begin by understanding why the person is unreliable. Are there external factors affecting their performance? Lack of clarity on tasks? Personal issues? There may be a delicate conversation but it will help clarify what is happening, and create the opportunity for a better workplace.
Ensure the person understands the importance of reliability: Sometimes the best way to start is to go back to the role description and responsibilities and re-emphasise what’s required, and the impact their unreliability is having on them, on the team, and on the project.
Be specific (and constructive) in your feedback: explain the specifics of their unreliability, and the impact it’s having. Make sure you’re explaining how they can improve, not just what they’re doing wrong.
Help them develop an improvement plan: by working together on a plan to address their areas of unreliability - small steps, interim deadlines, training that’s needed, or even adjusting their workload to better match their capacity.
Provide continued updates: keep them accountable to the improvement plan you have developed together with regular meetings: this gives additional opportunities to provide support and guidance, and keep the plan updated as needed.
Offer practical support: identify any tools, resources or support that could help them improve their reliability.
Set consequences for continued unreliability: while the plans are important, they need negative as well as positive consequences; this could be reassignment, performance reviews, performance management or other HR processes.
Recognising improvement: When the person improves, make sure this positive behaviour is reinforced, to help create a positive feedback loop to keep the improvement going.
Know When to Escalate: You may reach a point where - despite your efforts to work with them to improve - it’s time to involve a higher level of management or HR.
There is a sweet spot between directness, support, and clarity of communication that can help turn around performance issues and yet maintain a positive work environment.
Keep working hard to achieve this, and you’ll be a great contributor to a workplace team.