Strong leaders address underperformance directly, clearly, and quickly before it damages culture, client relationships, and team morale.
If you lead people in an AEC firm long enough, you'll eventually face one of the most uncomfortable but necessary tasks in management – telling someone they aren’t cutting it. Not hinting, not dancing around it, and not hoping they magically figure it out through osmosis, but actually telling them in plain English.
Most managers avoid this like a root canal without anesthesia, or like opening a project financial report they already know is bad. That avoidance is exactly why mediocre performance lingers, spreads, and quietly drags the firm down while everyone politely pretends not to notice.
Here’s the reality. Your job is not to be liked, it is to build a firm that performs, and that means dealing with underperformance directly, clearly, and quickly before it infects everything else and turns your culture into a “support group for low expectations.”
Here are my thoughts:
- Stop waiting for the “right time.” There is no perfect moment where the clouds part and the employee says, “Please critique me, I have been waiting.” The longer you wait, the worse the situation becomes as performance problems calcify, expectations drift, and resentment builds on both sides. What could’ve been a simple course correction eventually turns into a much harder conversation that starts to sound suspiciously like, “How did we let it get this far?”
- Be specific or don’t bother. Telling someone they need to “step it up” isn’t real feedback; it’s avoidance dressed up as management. If you can’t clearly articulate what is wrong, you’re part of the problem. Talk about missed deadlines, blown budgets, poor communication, or weak client relationships, and use real examples so there is no confusion and no room for the classic response of, “I thought I was doing fine.”
- Tie performance to impact. AEC firms run on utilization, labor multipliers, backlog, repeat business, and profitability, so when someone underperforms, it is never abstract. It hits the numbers, burdens their teammates, and can put client relationships at risk. Connecting those dots helps the employee understand this isn’t a personality issue, it is a business issue, and the business tends to care a lot more about math than feelings.
- Drop the sugarcoating. Most managers bury the message under layers of politeness, softening it so much that the actual point gets lost somewhere between “you’re doing great” and “just a couple small things.” By the time they are done talking, the employee walks out feeling encouraged while nothing actually changes. Say it plainly that they are not meeting expectations, the role requires more, and specifically where they are falling short.
- Make expectations painfully clear. Don’t assume they know what “good” looks like, because in many cases they don’t, especially if no one has ever told them. Spell out billable hour targets, project management expectations, client responsiveness standards, and how they’re expected to work with others internally. When success is vague, failure becomes almost guaranteed, and then everyone acts surprised.
- Ask for their perspective. This shouldn’t be a one-way lecture where you talk and they nod. After laying out the issues, ask what they think is going on and listen carefully. You may hear excuses, or you may uncover real obstacles, but either way you reinforce that accountability goes both directions and that this is a conversation, not a courtroom.
- Agree on a short leash plan. This isn’t the moment for a six month improvement horizon that quietly fades into the background. Set immediate and measurable checkpoints, typically within 30 to 60 days, and define exactly what improvement looks like in both numbers and behaviors so there’s no room for interpretation or creative storytelling later.
- Document everything. If it is not written down, it did not happen, which is why documentation matters. It protects the firm, protects you, and gives the employee a clear record of what was communicated. It also comes in handy later when someone says, “This is the first I am hearing of this,” which it almost never is.
- Follow up relentlessly. One conversation doesn’t fix anything, yet many managers have the talk and then disappear, hoping the situation resolves itself like a software glitch. That is management malpractice. Check in regularly, review progress, reinforce expectations, and make it clear that this isn’t going away just because it’s uncomfortable.
- Be prepared to act. Here is the part many leaders quietly avoid, which is what happens if the person does not improve. If you aren’t willing to make a change, your words are empty, and the rest of your team will notice and adjust their own performance downward accordingly because they aren’t stupid.
Now consider the alternative. You keep a chronic underperformer, your best people pick up the slack, they get burned out and resentful, and eventually they leave for a place where performance actually matters. Congratulations! You’ve successfully retained the wrong person. That isn’t kindness, it’s poor leadership dressed up as empathy.
Good leaders tell the truth early, clearly, and respectfully, give people a real chance to improve, and then make decisions if improvement does not happen. If you want a high performing AEC firm, this is simply the price of admission, and it’s a lot cheaper than the cost of not doing it.
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Mark Zweig is Zweig Group’s chairman and founder. Contact him at mzweig@zweiggroup.com. |