Avoiding the conversation usually makes the problem bigger.

Let me introduce you to Sally.

She’s a business owner. She’s great at what she does and has built a team who all get along. They like her, they enjoy working together and they even socialise from time to time.

Things are great.

Except they aren’t.

One member of the team is failing. Not just trailing slightly. Failing.

Failing professional qualifications. Failing resits. Failing in the role.

Sally knows Dan is struggling, but each month passes and another exam resit gets booked. Again, Sally hopes he’ll get it. She hopes he’ll pass the next exam. She hopes he’ll suddenly understand the more technical parts of the role. She hopes Dan will become the employee she wants him to be, because Sally doesn’t want to face the alternative:

Dan cannot do the job.

By the time Sally finally decides to deal with it and have THAT conversation, more than a year has passed.

Dan, understandably, has no idea his job is at risk.

Yes, he’s failed a few exams and some resits, but everyone at work is still nice to him. Sally hasn’t said anything, even in their monthly catch-ups.

So when the conversation finally happens, it comes as a rather nasty surprise.

Sally doesn’t feel much better afterwards either.

She feels awful having to tell someone they aren’t working at the level required. She feels like a bad person for setting performance goals and explaining that they’ll need to review them again in a month.

And in her heart of hearts, Sally already knows Dan isn’t going to be any better in one month than he is now.

Time passes. Meetings happen. Support is offered and expectations are set.

Dan still doesn’t reach the level the role requires.

To anyone looking in from the outside, it starts to seem almost cruel to keep dragging it out.

Eventually, Dan exits the business and moves into a completely different career. One he is far happier in and much better suited to.

Sally feels relieved the problem has gone. She also feels strangely proud of herself for finally tackling it.

What she doesn’t know is that one of her senior team members has already said to a colleague:

“Is this going to be like last time, where they drag it out and hope the person eventually leaves while we’re paying them a salary to do nothing useful?”

Avoiding the conversation made the whole situation far worse than it needed to be.

It became a bigger problem for Sally in her own head.

It became a bigger problem for Dan, who was left failing for far too long.

It became a bigger problem for the rest of the team, who became used to carrying the work of an underperforming colleague and, understandably, grew pretty grumpy about it.

All of this matters.

Waiting to have these conversations isn’t the answer.

They don’t* get better on their own.

*If you think that you are the exception, the rare case where it does get better on its own, trust me. You’re not.