You know when someone isn't performing at the level they need to be. The team knows it too. Sometimes, the person themselves knows it.
So you have a conversation. It's supportive, constructive and a little uncomfortable. Then nothing changes.
A few months later, you're having the same conversation again. ‘How do you think things are going?’, Is there anything we can do to support you?’.
All perfectly reasonable things to say but at some point, talking about a performance problem without addressing it directly becomes its own problem. And that's when it gets expensive.
You're not just carrying someone who isn't performing at the level you need, everyone around them is carrying it too. Their work gets picked up by others because you give them less. Standards slip. You do the work yourself. The team becomes frustrated. Your best performers start wondering why they're working so hard when someone else isn't. You’re spending time managing around the problem rather than managing the problem.
What you tolerate becomes the culture. People are watching. If someone consistently misses deadlines, produces work that needs to be redone, doesn't meet their responsibilities or has a negative impact on the team, everyone else sees it. When nothing happens, they learn that this is what the firm tolerates.
If high performers are expected to deliver, collaborate, develop people and carry their share of the load while someone else is allowed to consistently fall short, the message is clear. The standards aren't really the standards. That's when a performance problem becomes a culture problem.
Performance isn't just about the work. Some issues are easy to identify. The work isn't accurate. Deadlines are missed. Responsibilities aren't being met.
Others are harder to measure. Someone consistently creates conflict, dismisses junior people, doesn't follow through or makes it harder for others to do their jobs.
These things can be harder to quantify, but they aren't less important. When you see a problem and choose not to address it, people notice. They learn what is acceptable and who gets held accountable.
There's another version of this we see too. Something happens, and instead of speaking to the person involved, a firm-wide email goes out.
Technically, everyone has received the message. But everyone also knows who it's really for. It rarely fixes the problem. The person who needs the feedback hasn't received it, and everyone else has received a reminder about something they weren't doing anyway. If the issue belongs to one person, have the conversation with that person. If it's genuinely a firm-wide issue, communicate it to everyone. The difference matters.
There is also a tendency to think that once you’ve had the conversation, you've done your bit. You haven't. If someone is underperforming, they need to understand what isn't working, what needs to change, by when, and what happens if it doesn't. Then you need to follow up soon enough for the conversation to mean something.
Good performance management isn't about having one difficult conversation and hoping for the best. It's about being clear enough that someone has the opportunity to improve, and consistent enough that everyone understands where they stand.
Being clear isn't being cruel. People shouldn't have to guess what isn't working or what you expect from them.
It's even harder when the person sitting across the table is your fellow partner.
Now you're possibly dealing with history, equity, influence, friendships, client relationships and the very real concern about what happens if the conversation goes badly. So you defer or dilute it. The longer that goes on, the more expensive the problem becomes, because now it's not just one partner's performance. It's the partnership's ability to lead itself.
If you know there's a performance issue you're avoiding, start by being clear about what isn't working and why it matters. Be specific about what needs to change, what good looks like and when you need to see it.
Then have the conversation. Don't dress it up as a general check-in if what you need to talk about is performance. And don't leave it there. Agree what happens next and follow up.
It won't always be comfortable. But clarity gives people an opportunity to improve, and it gives everyone else confidence that the standards you set matter.
Because the question isn't just, ‘What do we do about this person?’, it's, ‘What are we teaching everyone else by what we do next?’
