how to handle rant team member and avoid "You don't know team management" [closed]

Question

I have already gone through How to deal with team member openly discrediting me across the company? How to deal with a team member who keeps making mild belittling insults in front of everyone? How to handle a dis-agreeing team member?

Closest: How to deal with team member who is picking argument always instead of understanding the point?

Current situation is:

1. I have team of 5 people under me, me being QA Lead in an IT company.
2. I have only been with this company for 6 months and working like a horse, day and night. Company and Customer both praises/admires my work and quality.
3. One of the team member has been here for 5 years and in the same position for those 5 years, has strong gut feeling that they won't fire him.

He simply doesn't follow whatever you say to him, this sometimes causes problems ending up complaints from customer. What I tried?

1. Talking to him one to one so that he know, that I knows the best and its benefit to both company and him that we discuss and then do things.
2. Talked to him in presence of Manager (my senior) and made him understand that he has to follow me.
3. Giving him bad appraisal score.
4. Also tried being nice to him.
5. Try to boycott him by not giving any work to him, but that backfired on me.

In all above situations he instead of taking feedback or listen to us he finger-pointed us. Finally he is still in company, got good appraisal score. What I got is, that being a experienced person I can't handle team or I don't know team management.

Please suggest how can I fix this?

Answer 1

If I understand your situation correctly:

• someone is not following your instructions, even when that causes problems for the team and your firm
• your manager is aware of this
• none of the things you have tried have magically worked the very first time you tried them, whether half heartedly or well
• your flailing on this matter is starting to affect how you are perceived within the company

If I was you, or if I was at your elbow and my job was to make you better at this, I would ask

• why doesn't this team member do what you say? Is it because he thinks you're wrong, or just because he doesn't like being told what to do?
• is there a specific pattern of problems? For example does he never follow the plan? Or just sometimes? When he doesn't, is it that he runs out of time and takes shortcuts? Is it that he does it the "old way" and isn't following your new process? What specifically is happening that causes problems with customers? Not just "the team member didn't follow my instructions."
• is there a mitigation available to you for this behaviour? For example, if you are doing web development and he tests only on one browser, can you assign someone else to test on other browsers? If he consistently delivers a few days late, can you adjust the workplan so that the project will be on time even if his part is late? If he doesn't spell check error messages or other user-facing text, can you assign someone else to do that?

I am not saying at this point to start doing the mitigation thing. I am asking you to think of it. Then you can go to your manager and say something like this:

I know you're aware of the ongoing situation with X. I'm been doing some retrospectives and it seems the problem boils down to [your specific observation.] I've tried a lot of things to get X to stop/start doing that, without success, and his good review makes it clear to me that the firm isn't going to insist on it. So I was thinking that [mitigation technique - eg we could have Y do ABC after X is finished with a piece of work.] This isn't ideal, but it should keep the customers happy while letting X work as he prefers.

Your manager may say "good idea!" or "what? X is not that special. Make him do the right thing!" or "Maybe for 6 months, but X has to come around" or something. But the two of you will be discussing the very specific issue (test deficiences, schedule slips, sloppy text) not the general "he won't listen to me!" and you'll be talking about what to do about it. Your next steps will depend on what your manager wants, but it won't be continuing to thrash around as you have been doing, trying "no work for you" and random "being nice" without a plan or target.

Answer 2

To me, there are a number of red flags here:

• You come across as thinking you know better than this staff member and aren't willing to discuss things: "that I knows the best", "he has to follow me". Being a team lead is about persuading people that you are the lead, not just asserting your authority.
• Not giving him any work. Did you seriously think that this was the practice of a good team lead?

While there may be problems with this team member, I think the first thing you need to do is to take a good hard look in the mirror at your own behaviour - at the moment, you don't sound like someone who I'd want as a team lead in my organisation.

Answer 3

You have a performance problem. I take it, the performance problem is that he refuses to comply with the team requirements as set by you, leading to low quality deliverables that result in customer complaints about the quality of the team's work.

1. You don't seem to have put down in writing - not even in emails, the deliverables you expect from him and by what deadlines. Absent this documentation, when things go South, it's a he-said she-said situation that's challenging to sort out. As your manager, I'd have no trouble laying the responsibility for the situation at your door and your days as my team lead are numbered in the single digits.

2. Your personnel situation, if unresolved, inexorably leads to someone's termination or demotion. You're the team leader, you are accountable for the team' performance. It is your responsibility to make it easy to trace a performance issue from the actions that told the subordinate to take to the fact that he did not take them. If you fail to do so, as your manager, I'll hold you directly accountable for it. Of course, if he turns out to be right in his objections and you are wrong, it is incumbent on you to make it easy for the management to trace it just as easily.

This process of documentation is meant to protect you as a team lead - you want to come across as transparent to your management and unambiguous to your team, with clear lines of expectation as to what's supposed to be delivered and when, and in what shape. As long as you are the team lead and the accountability for the team's performance falls squarely on you, you have the right to insist that things be done your way - Your management will make you pay a price if you insist that things be done your way and you are dead wrong.

Forget about not assigning any work to him - you're acting like a five-year old and you are dodging the issue, which is that he is not performing in a way that helps the team. Failures to address the issues won't reflect well on you as a team lead.

You have a personnel performance issue. You engage the management - you want to come across as methodical, logical and relentless. Most of all, the management agrees that you are making sense. You engage him - he may not agree with your expectations, but he knows exactly what they are. You document everything. Eventually, something is going to crack.

Answer 4

A couple of points in addition to the other excellent answers.

Firstly you are going to have to have a frank discussion with him where you get him to talk about what he sees as the issues (with you and with the work) and how best to approach them. If you've got to the point of worry about paper trails etc you're on a downward slope and you need to reset your relationship with him. The only way to do that is to sit down and talk and build up some trust between the two of you. It won't be an easy series of conversations and will involve admitting where you've got things wrong but without trust between the two of you, one of you is going to end up being pushed out of the company.

Secondly, he's been there for five years and should know what he's talking about. Try and take advantage of that by using his knowledge and strengths. eg don't tell people what to do but put problems to the team and get them to talk about how they are going to get them fixed on time. As well as giving members a bit of control it also puts quite a bit of peer pressure on people to deliver what they said which can help control difficult to manage people.