Help with employee who lacks critical thinking skills! They are very nice, but has an inability to do work without handholding and I have to lay out every single step of tasks that should be second nature by now. They have been at my company for over 6 months. Lacks follow through, hasn’t produced any tangible work in their time at the company, and struggles with asking questions when blocked. I spend so much time explaining and being available to help. Any strategies to help?

I hate to say this, but it sounds like the problem is YOU….

If the employee hasn’t yet been successful, that is probably in large part because you haven’t found the right way to teach the employee.

You should explore different learning types and approaches, you are probably polar opposites in how you interpret the world.

If you do all of that work to connect and create a positive environment and it is still not working then maybe evaluate if the employee is the problem.

But immediately jumping to the employee being the issue is what bad managers do. You only come to that conclusion after serious efforts.

Yes - look into leaders as coach materials. One good book is: Coaching for Performance. It covers how to coach others to be more self aware and own their learning and development.

I was that person in my last role. My manager tried to help & was doing the right things, trying to act like a coach, but I could feel their tension & impatience, which shut me down and led to a self perpetuating, downward spiral. They also overloaded all of us with work, all of it a priority, micro-managed, were critical of me & others & never showed appreciation. They lacked EQ.

All that said, it could very well be that your employee is not a good fit for the role. Just a caution to consider everything before you go down the PIP path.

This is tough. Just commenting to say I relate and hope someone else has answers. I don’t have the patience for this and usually delegate to someone else at a certain point or just let them fail. Some people have to learn by fire.

Sometimes it is just a bad hiring decision. Sometimes six months is enough time to recognize that (even sooner) and sometimes it’s not – it depends on the type of organization and the role. I’ve always worked in large organizations, and in one of them, our onboarding process lasted an entire year. The bulk of the onboarding activities, occurred within the first month, but there were strategic check-in’s over the remaining year to try and contribute to the employees’ success as much as possible which was seen as an investment in the organization as well as the employees. They were also paired with both a peer mentor as well as a performance manager. This was in the Big Four environment where we had vast resources which I realize isn’t always the case in all organizations.

Enough time has passed and coaching occurred that the performance needs to be documented and provided whether that is in an email (preceded by a conversation) or a formal evaluation with definitive actions that need to occur within a certain time frame. the feedback should clearly outline what will happen if the performance doesn’t improve within that timeframe (i.e. a performance improvement plan, reclassification, etc.). I suggest not adding pressure by mentioning possible termination at this point, even if that is a possibility. Good luck!

I have this same issue with folks. Not all people, so I know it’s not me, some people just aren’t cut out for things and that’s okay. I have started to give instructions and tell people to come with specific questions. I do things in pieces and build them up. I tell them to go back and reference the last project. But honestly, if it persists, I start documenting because I’m not going to continue to use them if they’re being useless to my team/project, regardless of how good their attitude, etc. is. It seems like you’re at that stage.

I hate to tell you this but you have to cut ties. I had an employee like this. I poured so much into her but she never progressed. She was very nice but she wasn’t a good fit for the role. After A YEAR of helping, coaching and trying to be understanding, I realized she made me do MORE work.
Not okay.
I worked with HR to coach her out.

Hi!
Here’re some questions you may want to look into?
- How clear are you with them about your expectations? How specifically did you communicate those with them?
- Instead of laying out every step on tasks - why not and ask them to lay it down for you so that you can understand where the gaps might be?
- What training has been offered to that employee? What training can be offered either by you or someone else in the company/externally?
- Did you ask them what they think about their performance and what support might they need? If they find it hard to communicate that on the spot, give them a day/two to think about it and then review their answers together in the meeting?

You may want to get very specific with your answers to the above stated questions. Think about what else can be done that’s within your control.

Lastly, only you know the whole context of the situation and based on that, one more question that you could think about is: can it be that this person is just not the right one for the role, and why yes/no? If they aren’t the right fit, how could you support them in the transition to a new job?

Wish you all the best!

If you’d like to chat further, feel free to message me/connect on LI.

I have been in a training role for over 30 years now. One thing i have learned is each individual has a different way of learning!! Some are readers, some are hands on and some retain from verbal direection. And then there are those that need a combination of the above mentioned. You as their leader need to focus on their strengths and develop those first giving them the ability to increase other areas of opportunity. By focusing on what they are great at first gives them the confidence and self esteem to learn a new skill or task. I have proven this theory with absolute success.
Give the necessary support and understanding to this person.
As a leader it is OUR responsibility to developing our team, not the team to develop themselves.
PLEASE look at how you are approaching the situation. That person with the inability to perform to your expections might be because you have not truely taken the right approach and given them the right tools or support to excel in what they are strong at

OP, one of the things I didn’t see you say you tried is to give this person very specific examples of what you see them doing that needs to change, and then give them very specific targets or actions that you need to see to consider them improved. Strategic thinking is one of the most difficult capabilities and skillsets for somebody to grow because it’s so nebulous.

So if you can’t define what that looks like with specific examples and activities, it’s gonna be really hard to get this person to improve. and if you can’t define the specifics… Do you have the strategic thinking capability?

Edited to add that all of the steps you’ve taken are great. But if this person doesn’t know exactly what your expectations are then it’s not fair to hold them to a standard that hasn’t been explicitly laid out.

It sounds like you need to sit down with them and have a very candid conversation. If they lack follow through and don’t have basic critical thinking or project management skills, they probably need to go. I have seen this before and even when you partner closely to try to improve it, it often doesn’t get better.

I have created work flows and planograms for my positions. Its outlines tasks down to every 15 minutes. It takes a bit of time to create in the beginning, but it is well worth it. I give the employee or temp a copy to keep and there is one on the station as well. I explain it to them thoroughly and also explain that i have worked the position with the work flow and i know that it works. Its fool proof. Very detailed and easy to follow.

Also, have you ever thought this person might learn by doing? I’ve found people who are asking for steps, are people who learn by doing.

No amount of “explaining” will plug them into your systems/process, you have to do things with them, until they are comfortable.

Think of it like a kid riding a bike. You don’t just put a bike in the driveway, talk to the kid for 20 minutes about how to ride a bike, and say ok kid, teach yourself how to ride it.

There is the relationship of “teacher” keeps me safe, then you explain how the bike works, then the kid gets on the bike with training wheels, you push them , probably by holding the handle bars which is a ton of work, and walk side by side for a while. Then you take off the training wheels (more work) and push the kid. The kid falls, cries, tries again and however many times needed to get it down. Eventually they get it.

From reading this, I swear you sound like the type who just drops the bike in the driveway, gives a quick explanation (which might be fine for you but not fine for everyone else) and then is angry when the kid tries and can’t ride the bike…

People management is hard. It’s not for everyone. As a people manager, you have to adjust your style to everyone else. If direct reports aren’t successful, I always look first at the people manager, because they just found a person they don’t know how to propel to success. It shows a shortcoming in that people manager.

People managers should be able to propel the majority of people successfully.

As someone who had issues like this when I started my career I didn’t realize I had a brain issue. Write down the tasks and put checkboxes by them. They will eventually improve or not.

Continuing on @brendahoover’s comment I have found that a good way to increase comprehension / learning is to have the same task explained 3 ways - and this is best done by having 3 different people. Ideally this for learning for a group of people. All 3 are targeted the same end goal / destination but use different paths to get there. If someone sees that there is more than one way to get the same results they may also understand that their could be another way in to solve the problem and they may also attach to the method that resonates for them.

But sometimes a person isn’t well suited to a role.