How do I manage someone in my team who is coasting and just doesn't seem to care?

This is often a question I’m asked when working with groups of leaders on how they engage and empower their teams. It’s a common challenge we can face and is really frustrating, as it seems like the individual is just being lazy or awkward. This frustration then leads us to either minimise the amount of time we spend on them them (because we don’t see it as a worthwhile investment and we want to minimise the frustration for ourselves), or we confront them with some “tough feedback” and start micromanaging them to try and get them to deliver more. Unfortunately neither of these approaches work. Why? Because the root cause isn’t laziness, it’s actually a lack of self-worth and engagement, and in taking either of these approaches we are further diminishing both.

Let’s look at why this is…

Our engagement is driven by our feelings about the work we do, the organisation we work in and the people we work with. If we don’t feel a sense of purpose and connection to what we’re doing, if our environment isn’t supporting us to succeed and if our line manager isn’t leading us in a way that motivates us, positive stretches us, makes us feel supported, trusted and valued, we will quickly become disengaged and start to lose our sense of self-worth. This then transpires in lack of enthusiasm and drive, and we see them going quiet, or becoming disruptive, avoiding people/situations, not stepping forward to help out or take on new tasks/responsibilities, challenging things but not providing ideas or solutions and doing only the bare minimum of what’s required,

So what’s the answer?

As leaders, there is a lot we can do to address this issue – after all, it is our role to create the environment in which all of our team members can thrive.

First and foremost, we need to make time and find out what’s going on for them. Having an open and supportive conversation, in which you ask more and tell less, listen more and speak less, will enable you to surface why they are feeling (and therefore behaving) as they are. Ask them what they need from you, or what needs to change for them to feel more positively about their work.

Rather than avoiding the individual, what they actually need is more focus and attention;

· Understand what motivates them and link their work to that.

· Help them connect to the purpose behind their work.

· Make them feel valued for what they bring to the team/organisation.

· Provide honest feedback about your observations, with an equally strong emphasis on the positive contributions you’ve seen from them in the past, your faith in them to be able to make the necessary changes and the positive impact they will have as a result.

· Ask for their help, actively seek out their input and involve them in shaping solutions.

· Ensure you are providing sufficient challenge and stretch for them, rather than sidelining them and enabling them to coast.

· And finally, demonstrate your faith and trust in them by giving them appropriate levels of autonomy and accountability.

All of these things will have a positive impact on both their sense of self-worth and their engagement.

It’s also important to remember that this is a partnership, so your team member equally needs to step up to meet you. However, it’s vital that we remind ourselves that it starts with us - we need to look at ourselves first and question whether we are giving them what they need.

As leaders, we can only measure our success through the performance of our team, so creating an environment that engages and creates confidence in every one of our team members needs to perform at their best should be our utmost focus.