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When it comes to managing staff who are not quite doing their job, we need to heat up slowly, not suddenly.

If there is a recurring theme of people management, is that a binary, off/on approach to staff management is a problematic approach, and instead we need to push for a sliding spectrum.

The phenomena of off/on, hot and cold.

Think of this off/on as a binary switch, in terms of computer code; because at the heart of all data is a bit, and a bit is simply 0, or 1. Off or on. Black or white. The simple underlying unit of our all of the computer data is on or off.

Managers tend to be dealing with a people problem, or ignoring it. First they ignore it, then they deal with it, but by that stage, they are sick of it, have run out of patience, and want it ‘sorted’ which often is either dismissal, moving, or at least a heavy penalty.

But for the employee, that’s not a fair process; that’s not a fair mindset. It’s understandable for the manager (discussed below), but it’s whiplash for the employee- one minute things are fine, the next minute things have escalated abruptly.

We see this all the time, and you see this all the time, whenever you are talking to a manager, whether you are support them as HR, managing them as a manager who has a report with reports, or just being a sympathetic ear.

First: they are cold

If there is a truism in management, it’s ‘you accept the standard you walk past’. What we tend to see is:

- Problems are not addressed at all, giving the impression it’s not a problem. If you are 10 minutes late to work, and your boss happily greets you good morning- there is no problem, is there?

- Gaps and errors are not signaled as problems. Everyone makes mistakes, everyone misses things. But when is one too many? When does a straw break the camel’s back, or when does one swallow not make spring? It’s subjective, and that means the employee and the manager are almost guaranteed to not be on the same page.

- We avoid conflict. Conflict avoidance is a very large question, that does vary between individuals, and between cultures. But to overly simplify, we are sympathetic creatures; we don’t want to cause harm, and hearing that you’re not doing well is hurtful, so we avoid doing it to people.

Then: they are hot

You’ve seen this, and I’ve seen it many times. A manager is frustrated, their patience is blown, and they want to solve this problem. Here we tend to see:

- The employee has ‘run out of credit’. The manager has been giving the employee the benefit of the doubt, has been extending them a line of goodwill they have not earnt, and is now no longer doing this. They often feel betrayed, let down, that their trust has been deliberately exploited. It can be quite intense.

- They feel they have been clear. They have spoken to the employee, they have explained their expectations, and this has been uncomfortable for them, so they expect that the employee had listened attentively and taken steps to change. So when things continue unfixed, they feel let down.

- It hits their ‘to-do’ list. We are simple creatures, but organized ones, and we all have internal list of ‘stuff I need to do’ and not often ‘things I need to watch’. The mental switch of cold to hot is simply because the manager has internally categorized the person as an action item on their list.

Why this is unfair.

The problem is that people need time to fix what they are not doing right. If an employee needs to fix something we tell them to fix, but needs a reasonable opportunity to fix, so we need to be crystal clear with the gaps. You’ll note from the above much of the shifting is happening in the manager’s mind, and sometimes the manager’s behaviour is even sending signals that things are fine.

We need to heat up cold, and cool down hot.

What is heating up cold? It’s getting managers to be more explicit, less internal with their concerns with employees. I know this is contradictory to a positive, engaging, motivating, ‘biggest cheerleader’ approach to management, but this approach has it downsides, because it discourages managers from critiquing problems. And uncritiqued problem gets repeated, and pressure builds. We need managers to address problems early, address them lightly, and build up pressure slowly.

What is cooling down hot? Deescalating those ‘we need them gone’ situations. We can always solve problems with lots of money, but not every fed-up manager should be indulged with a cheque to their employee. Often we are avoiding legal costs by talking down managers looking to fix problems quickly, but also we are avoiding the cultural blow out.

What to do

There are many ways to do this, but perhaps the simplest is to make yourself available to the manager. The more you see them, the more likely you’ll hear about slow-boiling frustration. The less you see them, the more likely you’ll hear about it late. Check-ins, quick chats, less emails and more calls are more likely to get your managers running things past you earlier than later.

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The problematic hot and cold cycle of managers