Your team member is no longer meeting expectations
Example situation
A team member who handled customer work reliably has recently needed repeated corrections. Their responsibilities also expanded, but you have not checked how the added work affects their day.
Our recommendation
Compare recent and previously successful work with current requirements, then ask what changed. Examine assignments, required skills, resources, and consequences. Agree on support and the improvement you need to see.
If you are the manager
Compare the role's requirements with work you observed. Check whether the difficulty affects one responsibility or several. Use a dated example: “The last customer summary needed its totals corrected. Show me how you prepared it.”
Ask what changed since the person performed well: assignments, tools, approvals, or quality requirements. Arrange coaching on an actual task for any required skill they have yet to demonstrate. If you added work, decide what can be reassigned or deferred.
Ask what happens when they request help or additional time. Check whether you reward taking on more work while questioning requests to reduce it. Address each condition the evidence identifies.
Write the agreement together: “For Friday’s customer summary, check the totals against the source records. I’ll arrange access today and defer the internal report. We’ll review your check before you send it.”
If access is missing, provide it before judging the check. If the person has access and time but cannot reconcile the totals, coach that step. If they demonstrate the check but later summaries still need corrections, investigate what differs in those assignments.
Respond immediately to corrected calculations, effective checks, or earlier requests for help. Compare later work with the same criteria and check whether you provided the promised support before deciding the next step.
If you are the executive
If the person is a manager you lead, examine what you changed in their role. Compare team responsibilities, staffing, budget, and decision authority with the results you expect. Ask them to show the estimate or decision associated with a missed result.
Resolve incompatible business demands and arrange coaching for a management skill they need to develop. When they identify a capacity constraint with evidence, make the resource or priority decision and explain it to affected leaders.
If the concern is about someone on that manager's team, ask the manager to handle it. Agree on the decision or support they need from you and review its effect. If the difficulty continues, base changes to role, support, or staffing on the work and conditions you examined.
Questions that come up
What if the agreed support does not improve performance?
Review whether the support addressed the observed difficulty, using further work and the person's account. If requirements remain unmet, use the organization's employment decision process to consider changing the assignment or role.
The responsibility behind this situation
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