Team Members in the Wrong Roles

The ability to evaluate your team is a core competency required of all leaders. As you assess the strengths and talents of your team, you may find that you have team members who are ill-suited to their position. You have team members in the wrong roles. They are poor performers, dragging down the progress of your team. How did this happen? What do you do?

Why are they poor performers?

Usually, poor performance is a result of one of the three things:

1. A mismatch between the job and the person.
2. Inadequate training or leadership.
3. Deficiencies in the person performing the task.

Sometimes it’s a combination of all three reasons. In my experience, it’s usually because the person is in the wrong position.

What happens if someone is in the wrong role?

What happens to a team when one or more of its members constantly demonstrates that he or she is not in the right role:

• Morale erodes because the team isn’t playing up to its potential.
• Others become resentful or frustrated.
• People working in an area of weakness resent that their best is untapped.
• Other people on the team who know that they could do better resent that their skills are being overlooked.
• Before long, people become unwilling to work as a team.
• Then everyone’s confidence begins to erode.

The biggest warning sign that someone is in the wrong role or that they have hit an expiry date is that they fail to take responsibility for their actions or circumstances. They can also show a history of not meeting obligations and fail to meet deadlines.

Examples of Mismatched Roles

• Customer-facing (yet shouldn’t be).
  • This is like having a team member who is incredibly gifted with technical or product knowledge yet demonstrates an unwillingness or ability to speak to customers appropriately.
  • They could be rude or socially awkward.
  • They might even struggle with communicating with team members, leading to some people questioning why the person is even on the team.
  • Once gone, it could be an addition by subtraction situation.

• Promoted to leadership (yet no one willing to follow).
  • Sometimes the best individual contributors are not leaders.
  • Once given a bit of power, they become a tyrant.
  • Or they could become frustrated because they think they are doing so much work compared to other leaders.
    • They usually don’t realize others are better at delegating through others than them, creating unnecessary drama.
    • Once they leave, everyone is happier.

• Supposed expert (yet ineffective with no value).
  • Positioned as experts or specialists, these people are ineffective, inconsistent or provide little value.
  • Through projects or various initiatives roles are created thinking that there is enough to fill a dedicated expert function.
  • Sometimes, these experts, while sole contributors are not capable of driving their programs forward on their own.
  • Given the title of specialist or expert, they fear being seen not as such, so they become unwilling to ask for help.
  • Usually, these people are best moved to other roles with more structure and less responsibility given to them as showing initiative isn’t their strength.

What Do You Do?

While some people opt to self-select out of roles or the organization when it’s not a good fit for them, others stick around, unfortunately. You have three options when team members are in the wrong role:

• Move them to another role.
  • Some people are miscast and if given the opportunity for a different position, they may be more effective.
  • In their current role, they may barely be surviving, but in another position, they could thrive.

• Restructure the responsibilities of the position.
  • If you can change what they are accountable for to better cater to their strengths, you may improve output.
  • Remove tasks from their plate initially.
    • Make sure you look to add the right assignments to them afterward or risk of the role being made redundant.

• Exit them (fire or terminate).
  • Some people just need to go.
  • If they won’t leave on their own, sometimes you must make it happen for them.
  • It’s a tough choice, but sometimes necessary.
  • People who don’t fit can cause your environment to become toxic.
  • Remove the problem.

For additional coaching assistance prior to making one of these tough decisions, or for more resources on how to deal with team members in the wrong roles, click here for help. For a regular dose of advice, tips, and tricks from Evolving Management, follow us on our company LinkedIn page. You can also follow me or my podcast, The Chris Hanna Show on Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn or visit chrishanna.ca for more solutions. Let’s connect.