Leadership

Last week a reader who'd just seen my blog about handling stragglers emailed to suggest getting my HR manager to do some work with the pair in question, to discover what their strengths were. If it turned out they were in the wrong job, she said, it will make their departures much less painful, and it might even turn out that I could use them somewhere else in the business.

Well I thought this was fantastic advice, so on Monday morning I grabbed my HR manager and ran the idea past her. I emphasised why this was a bad time to be carrying passengers, told her that I had misgivings about these two people, and explained to her exactly what I wanted her to do (And the great thing is, this is a secret diary - so I get to pass off all your great ideas as my own! Sorry...).

I was particularly pleased with this plan because it seemed like a great way to help her to become a bit more commercial. As I may have mentioned before, my HR manager has many talents: she's very thorough, very well-organised and very empathetic - she can spot potential flashpoints a mile off (even if there isn't one, occasionally). But she does find it a bit hard to remember that her first loyalty is to the business, not the individuals within it. And since this was half-way between development and performance management, I figured it would be good practice for her.

However, the problem with this girl is that she's an incurable optimist. Admittedly, that's probably what makes her such a nice cheery sort of person. But it also means that she's developed a kind of selective deafness. No matter how many times I say: 'this person's a problem, they need to shape up or ship out', all she ever hears is: 'this person has a problem, it's up to you to make it better'. She's convinced that anything is possible with a bit of training and coaching; that the ugliest of corporate frogs can be turned into CEO Charming. Personally, I'm of the view that if someone looks like a frog and smells like a frog, chances are that they'll probably spend their lives sitting on a water-lily eating passing insects (or whatever it is frogs do).

The result is that she focuses almost entirely on development and not enough on performance. Sure enough, I watched these two people come out of their meetings with her, and they looked happy as Larry. I was hoping for at least a whiff of fear - after all, unless people understand exactly how much of a problem they have, they won't be sufficiently incentivised to solve it. Sometimes this does mean giving them a rocket - but my HR manager is so desperate to avoid upsetting people that she always ends up sugaring the pill. And that's no use to them, or to me.

I realise this is a development need on her part, but I've no time to worry about that now. I had to make sure my message wasn't getting lost in translation, so I ended up speaking to them both directly and explaining the situation. Ultimately I have no qualms about playing bad cop to her good cop, if that's what it takes...