Why good employees become average (and how to fix it)

Every business owner has experienced it. You employ someone who quickly becomes one of your best people. They take ownership, they solve problems, they work hard. You trust them and you start relying on them because they consistently deliver. Then, almost without warning, something changes. Their enthusiasm fades, their standards slip and they stop taking initiative. The quality of their work declines and you wonder, what happened?

Did they lose motivation? Have they checked out? Do they need replacing? Those are understandable questions but in my experience though, they’re usually the wrong ones.

After working with many business owners over the years, I’ve noticed something that keeps repeating itself. Good employees rarely wake up on a Monday morning and decide to become average. More often than not, something in the business has changed. The environment has changed, the leadership has changed or the expectations have changed. Without realising it, the business has slowly created the conditions for declining employee performance.

That may sound a little uncomfortable, it certainly was for me, the first time I recognised it, because it forced me to stop asking, “What’s wrong with my people?” and start asking a far better question. “What’s changed in the environment we’ve created”? This question changes everything.

Employee performance is a reflection of the environment

When business owners talk about improving employee performance, they often focus on the individual. They ask whether the employee has enough training, whether they’re motivated and whether they have the right attitude. Those things matter for sure, but they’re rarely the whole story.

People don’t work in isolation, they respond to the environment around them. Think about professional sport. Take the same player and place them in two different teams. One coach has clear expectations – everyone knows their role, standards are consistent, success is recognised and poor performance is addressed quickly. The player thrives.

Now place that same player in another team. Goals are unclear, accountability is inconsistent, standards change depending on who made the mistake, recognition disappears and nobody deals with poor behaviour. The same player often performs very differently. The person hasn’t changed, the environment has.

Businesses work exactly the same way. If you’re a business owner, you want results. You want a team that works but first you must look at the soil, not just the seeds. If the soil is poor, the seeds won’t grow. This is why leadership coaching for managers is so vital in this instance. It changes the soil.

Success can create complacency

One of the biggest surprises for many business owners is that success itself can create future performance problems. When a team starts performing well, leaders naturally relax. The pressure eases, they stop coaching as frequently, regular feedback becomes less frequent, meetings become shorter and performance conversations happen less often.

It feels logical, because the team’s doing well. Unfortunately, this is often the beginning of declining team productivity. People drift, standards soften and small issues are ignored because everyone remembers how good things used to be. Over time those small issues become normalised.

Nobody notices because the decline happens gradually. I’ve seen businesses where performance dropped over two years without anyone recognising it, until customer complaints started hitting new highs and revenue new lows. Performance rarely collapses overnight, it slowly erodes over time. If you’re at the point of ‘I feel stuck in my business’, look at your current standards. Are they lower than they were a year ago?

High performing employees often receive the worst deal

This may sound strange, but your best people are often carrying the greatest burden. Think about what usually happens. A reliable employee finishes their work and someone else falls behind. Who gets asked to help? – the reliable one. A difficult customer needs attention. Who gets involved? – the reliable one. A project is at risk. Who is expected to rescue it? – the reliable person.

Over time, the best employees become responsible for everyone else’s shortcomings. Eventually they become tired, then frustrated, then disengaged. Business owners sometimes interpret this as declining commitment where in reality, the employee may simply be exhausted.

One of the quickest ways to lose a high performing employee is to reward reliability with ever increasing responsibility, while allowing weaker performers to continue without consequence. Good people notice and eventually they begin asking themselves why they’re working harder than everyone else. This leads to the burnt out business owner and a burnt out team.

Employee accountability can’t be selective

Every business has standards. The question is whether those standards apply equally to everyone. One of the fastest ways to damage employee accountability is inconsistency. Imagine two employees arriving late – one receives ‘performance’ feedback and the other one is ignored because they’re popular. The message is clear – standards are optional.

The same happens when poor performance is tolerated for months. The strongest employees begin wondering why they continue putting in extra effort while others contribute far less. Eventually their own effort begins to decline. Not because they’ve become lazy but because they’ve adjusted to the environment.

People usually perform to the standard that leaders consistently accept, not the standard leaders occasionally talk about. If you want to know how to manage staff effectively, you must be consistent. You must hold everyone to the same line.

Recognition disappears

There is another pattern I see regularly. When someone first joins the business and performs well, they receive recognition. The owner notices, the manager thanks them and their contribution is appreciated.

Then something changes because their performance level becomes expected. Nobody says thank them anymore. Nobody acknowledges the extra effort. The employee hasn’t become less valuable, the recognition has simply disappeared. I’m not suggesting that people need constant praise, far from it, but everyone wants to know that their contribution matters. Recognition reinforces behaviour, silence often weakens it.

Some of the highest performing employees leave businesses because they no longer feel that what they do makes any difference. This is a leadership skill for entrepreneurs issue. You must keep seeing the good work and you must make it public.

Leaders accidentally train dependency

This is one of the biggest leadership mistakes I come across. A team member approaches the owner with a problem. The owner immediately provides the answer. It feels efficient, the problem is solved and the employee leaves. The next day another problem appears and the process repeats itself.

After months of this, the owner becomes frustrated, thinking. “Why can’t anybody think for themselves?” The answer is simple – because the business has trained them not to. Every time leaders solve problems that employees could & should solve themselves, they reinforce dependency.

Eventually the team stops making decisions. Initiative disappears, confidence declines and the owner becomes the bottleneck. Ironically, the owner then concludes that the team lacks capability. Very often the capability was there all along, it simply stopped being exercised. If you’re feeling stuck in your business, you might be the one holding the team back. You need to build a management team that thinks.

Clarity beats motivation

Business owners often ask how they can motivate employees. I think there is a better question and that is, how clear are your expectations? Motivation is inconsistent but clarity creates consistency.

Do people understand what success looks like? Do they know what great performance means? Do they receive regular feedback? Do they understand how their work contributes to the business?

Ambiguity creates uncertainty and uncertainty is the thing that creates hesitation. Clear expectations always improve employee performance because people know exactly what’s expected of them.

If your team not performing is your main worry, check your clarity. Most employees not taking ownership are actually just confused about their boundaries. They don’t know where their job starts and yours ends.

Leadership shapes culture every day

Culture is often described as something mysterious. I don’t believe it is. Culture is simply what people experience every day. It’s shaped by what leaders notice, what leaders ignore, what leaders celebrate and what leaders tolerate. Every decision sends a message.

If poor behaviour goes unchallenged, people notice. If outstanding work receives no acknowledgement, people notice. If promises are broken, people notice. Culture develops from repeated experiences, not from posters on the wall, bean bags and free lunch. Leadership is creating culture every single day, whether they intend to or not.

5 questions every business owner should ask

Whenever I see declining employee performance, I always encourage business owners to ask themselves 5 simple questions.

1. Have our standards become less clear?

Look at your documentation and look at your daily talk. Are you still telling people exactly what “good” looks like? If you’ve stopped being specific, your team will stop being precise. Clarity is a daily job.

2. Have we stopped coaching because performance used to be good?

Check your calendar. When was the last time you sat down with your best people? Not to fix a crisis, just to talk about their growth. If you only talk to them when things go wrong, they’ll learn that ‘going wrong’ gets your real attention.

3. Are our strongest employees carrying too much responsibility?

Look at the task list. If 80 percent of the hard work is on 20 percent of the people, you have a problem. You’re burning out your future leaders. Balance the load.

4. Are we applying accountability consistently across the team?

Do you have “special cases”? Are there people who get away with things because they’ve been there a long time? This kills moral faster than low pay. Everyone must play by the same rules.

5. Have we accidentally trained people to depend on us for every decision?

The next time someone asks you a question they should know the answer to, don’t answer. Ask them what they think. Force them to use their brain. Stop being the hero who solves everything.

Those questions often reveal far more than another employee survey ever could. They point to the root cause and show you why your team isn’t performing.

Building a team that keeps improving

Improving employee performance is rarely about finding extraordinary people. It’s usually about creating an environment where ordinary people can consistently do extraordinary work. That requires leadership, clear expectations, accountability, regular coaching and it requires trust.

Most importantly, it requires business owners to recognise that teams are constantly responding to the environment around them. If that environment improves, performance usually follows. If that environment deteriorates, performance often declines too.

One final thought

When I first started coaching business owners, I assumed great teams were built by employing great people. I still believe this matters. Today though, I believe something else matters even more – great leaders create environments where good people become exceptional. Average leaders often create environments where exceptional people slowly become average.

That is why I no longer ask business owners whether they have good employees. I ask them a different question. “What sort of environment have you built for good employees to succeed?” Because in my experience, that’s where the real answer usually lies. When the environment improves, employee performance, team productivity and accountability usually improve with it.

The people often haven’t changed at all. The conditions they work in have. If you’re ready to change those conditions, let’s have a conversation.

You don’t have to do this alone! A business coach can provide the outside perspective you need to see what’s really happening in your business.

 

About John Creighton:

For the past 30+ years, John has started, built & scaled businesses.

He has successfully exited 3 start-ups (one sold to a JSE listed Company) and achieved a Top 10 place in South Africa’s Top 100 fastest growing Companies.

Today, he helps ambitious entrepreneurs and leaders build better, more focused and more profitable businesses. With a reputation for clear thinking and practical execution, he helps his clients navigate complexity, elevate performance and achieve exceptional results.

To explore how John can help you take your business to the next level, get in touch him today by email or book a free 30 minute consultation.