Courage to Manage Poor Performance: Leadership Guidelines

Do You Have the Courage to Manage Poor Performance?

To be an effective new manager, you must have the courage to manage poor performance head-on. Can you move from being a teammate to a confident, decisive leader? It starts with setting clear performance standards and then understanding how each person views their work and how they want to contribute.

Managing underperformance is uncomfortable. Many new managers hesitate, hoping issues will self-correct. They rarely do because it:

• Challenges relationships.
• Invites tension.
• Forces clarity. 

Evaluating Who Should Stay and Who Should Go
Beyond mastering knowledge, skills, and a generally positive attitude, new managers face one of their toughest challenges: deciding who on the team should stay — and who, if anyone, may need to move on. This requires courage, objectivity, and a clear lens for assessment. It’s not just about performance metrics; it’s about understanding each individual’s unique situation — their confidence, competence, strengths, weaknesses, aspirations, contribution to results, and fit within the team’s culture. Only with this full perspective can a new manager make fair, informed decisions that protect both the team’s performance and its morale.

Do Not Keep Underperformers or Cultural Misfits
New managers must act decisively when it comes to making people decisions. Delaying or avoiding tough calls undermines both performance and credibility. Assessments of organizational culture consistently show that hesitating to address poor performance is among the top five warning signs of a low-performance culture because it:

• Undermines Respect
  Teams quickly recognize underperformers or misaligned behavior. They rely on managers to either coach these individuals to meet expectations or make the difficult decision to remove them. When a manager tolerates poor performance, it signals weakness, eroding credibility and encouraging others to lower their own standards. Respect for leadership is earned through accountability — not avoidance.
• Decreases Morale and Trust
  New managers often join with a mandate to boost engagement, performance, and retention. When commitments go unfulfilled or underperformance is tolerated, team morale quickly erodes. Employees lose confidence in your leadership, and trust — the foundation of any high-performing team — begins to fracture.
• Sabotages Business Performance
  When underperformance goes unchecked, the team’s output is measured by the lowest denominator. This not only drags down overall team results but also directly undermines business performance and organizational success.

Guidelines to Build the Best Team
Once you have assessed your team’s capabilities and addressed underperformance, focus on building a high-functioning, cohesive team:

1. Meet Individually with Each Team Member
   Schedule one-on-one meetings to strengthen engagement and understand each person personally. Explore what they enjoy, where their talents lie, and their preferred working style. Ask for their perspective on what would make the team more effective.
2. Understand Their Strengths and Weaknesses
   Review each team member’s track record and achievements. Have they delivered high performance in the past? If not, identify the barriers that limited their success and consider how they can be addressed.
3. Articulate the Team Culture You Want to Create
   Define the culture you want to foster and evaluate who can thrive in it. Consider which team members will align naturally, and who may need support to adapt. Clear cultural expectations help set the tone for accountability, collaboration, and high performance.
4. Assess Team Dynamics
   Examine how the team has functioned historically. Identify recurring challenges or friction points and address them early. Understanding group dynamics allows you to proactively manage collaboration and prevent issues from undermining performance.

The Bottom Line
This is not a witch hunt — it’s about building a team capable of performing at its best. A high-performing team shares core values, treats each member with respect, aligns on clear performance expectations, understands how every individual contributes to team goals, and actively cooperates to support one another. When these elements are in place, both the team and the organization thrive.

Once you have the courage to manage poor performance, download 3 Must-Have Ingredients of High Performing Teams for New Managers

by Tristam Brown: CEO

Tristam Brown is an executive business consultant and organizational development expert with more than three decades of experience helping organizations accelerate performance, build high-impact teams, and turn strategy into execution. As CEO of LSA Global, he works with leaders to get and stay aligned™ through research-backed strategy, culture, and talent solutions that produce measurable, business-critical results. See full bio.