Hello DearyHow to love chatty low performers.
November 02, 2021It's 1145am and you've just finished rolling your eyes at the ridiculous opinions and non sequiturs from your co-worker. Let's call them Baz. They've dragged on for at least 20 minutes going back and forth with other members of the project. There is no real thought to what they're saying. It's just word soup. "What are they even wanting to communicate?," you wonder. At this point, you are totally convinced that they're not actually trying to communicate anything related to the work. Why are they talking so much? What purpose does it serve? The long winded meandering dialog makes it hard to focus. When, finally you are able to interject and tell the team that you have an issue you'd like to cover in today's sync meeting, Baz says that there "isn't any time for it."
Baz might have been speaking largely because they felt unimportant. Now however, they go out of their way to make you feel unimportant. It feels painful. It hurts your feelings. No one deserves such disrespect. However, the surprising thing that you will find is that these people – despite their flaws – do actually matter and more importantly want to do good work too.
At one time somebody told me that all work output everywhere comes from only 15 percent of the working population. "What a ridiculous statistic," I thought. If this were true 85 percent of people do nothing at their jobs. Maybe for some people, like those people who are high performers who are working with Baz, it can feel like 85 percent do in fact do nothing. In my opinion, there is a greater truth that cuts through the cynical outlook from above: most people, no matter the situation, want to feel like they are doing a good job. Years ago when music downloading from various torrent services was a new phenomenon, the music industry was very afraid of allowing their artists to sell music as a non physical downloadable digital medium. What was not understood at the time was that most people will actually prefer to buy the music rather than download illegally (if they are given an easy way of doing so). Generally speaking, people want to feel plugged in to work, society and to culture. They do not want to feel like they are outcasts. They want to feel useful
I see our coworkers like Baz as people struggling to feel plugged in. They want to perform well, and to contribute positively to the team work output. Their struggle to contribute manifests in lots of different ways: They feel compelled to fill the space in meetings with their own thoughts. Or, they dive into conversations on slack and teams where they may not be totally on topic, even going so far as to derail the original thread. They are unaware of the frustration they might be causing. Even more confounding is that, you may have even talked to your coworker (Baz) about this problem only to discover that they believe their efforts are helping the project. Somehow, they believe that their opinions themselves are a deliverable and valuable work product that benefit the whole team.
So, what do you do? I'm here to tell you, it is the job of the managers and high performers to utilize the lower performers. Employees like Baz have skills, and they have ideas. They just need to be given a gateway to output. In "The mythical man month" by Fred Brooks, he said (and I am paraphrasing) that the difference between a good developer and a normal developer is as great as ten to one. Can you imagine? Ten to one. A good dev is ten times greater than a regular one. If this is true (which I believe it is), then to a good dev most people will probably seem more like Baz than not.
I have learned that when it comes to utilizing a coworker who is not a high performer you have to communicate precisely, set boundaries, discover what they are good at, discover what they enjoy doing, be prescriptive, and always be open minded – we all come from different backgrounds, so have heart.
Communicate Precisely. Be careful what you ask for. Greater specificity will help you close gaps in your knowledge base.
Communicate your needs. When collaboration is approached from the perspective of "I need help with..." your coworkers will be more than happy to pitch in. Go ahead, ask the coworker that you least enjoy working with for help, you may be surpised to learn how willing and happy they are to deliver.
Set boundaries. Make meetings short. Present clear agendas and expectations before having any conversation. Don't give any room for off topic converstations. When talks do go off topic, be vigilant about bringing it back home. If you find this doesn't work, try using a timer. Sounds a bit much to you? I've done it before and it has worked well!
Learn about them. Discover their strengths. Discover what they enjoy. If you get in the business of asking people for help, it pays to know what they're good at first. Learn about your co-workers and try to play to their strengths.