How to stop a team member procrastinating
The Situation
I am a Partner and one of my trainees is enthusiastic, emotionally intelligent, a great team player and fantastic with clients. However, he does procrastinate a lot. In particular, he seems to struggle to settle down to the more technical, detailed and more introspective sides of the role as a fee earner, which is a large requirement of the role.
I want this team member to be more like me. What I mean by this is that I want him to be more focused on thinking through the technicalities of a situation, more detail focused, self-motivated, task focused, structured and methodical.
The Problem
I often find this team member frustrating and a drain on my time. I have to hand-hold him and spend a lot of time checking the details of his work. He takes too long completing tasks and this means his work is often not ready for review at pre-arranged times. Ultimately, I am concerned that he is not suited to the demands of a legal career.
The Impact
The impact of having this type of team member is that:
He distracts other team members with his chatter.
He is often distracted by the needs of others so spends a lot of his day dealing with work that is not a priority to the team or his case load.
His turn around time on work coming in and getting back out to the client is slower than others in the team, which means less turnover of invoices to clients and cash in the bank.
Our recovery rates on matters that he has worked on are not as good as they could be, which means less profit for the team.
My relationship with the individual can feel tense at times.
I don’t feel as though this individual is as committed as I am to the firm.
I am becoming reluctant to invest more of my time in him.
The Solution
You seem to have good insight into this individual’s natural preferences, which translate into the outgoing and externally focused behaviours you describe. As effective leaders, it is always important to be perceptive to and recognise such individual difference so that’s a great leadership quality that you have.
However, it is also important that we respond well to individual difference. By doing this, we can help team members to develop by providing appropriate rewards and consequences. What these are can depend on their intrinsic motivation.
In addition, it is important to remember that we cannot change people (nor do we want to!). As effective leaders, what we can do is to influence behaviours. By doing this we can create more of what we want to see, which will generate the output we desire (remember the recent StressLess Clinic column about Feedback).
The intertwining of these two concepts is summed up perfectly by this quote from Dwight Eisenhower:
“Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it”.
With that in mind, let’s focus on some of the comments you made above:
“I want this team member to be more like me and other team members that I have recruited”
As effective leaders we want to embrace the individual differences within our teams. If we want our team members to be ‘like me’, therefore extensions of ourselves, we risk confusing their needs and wants with our own.
You mention that you “…don’t feel as though this individual is as committed as I am to the firm”, which alerts me to the possibility that this interplay could be present. If so, it is unlikely you will generate development and consistently high performance from this individual.
But don’t fear! This is why the StressLess Clinic exists - to challenge and support you in these situations. By identifying this aspect of your leadership style, we can do something about it. Although this insight may feel uncomfortable to you right now, it is empowering as now you can change and develop.
So let’s start by looking at this individual’s qualities, strengths and skills. What does he ‘do right’?
You mention several good qualities by describing him as, “enthusiastic, a great team player and fantastic with clients”. To me, this indicates that he has a ‘will do’ approach and a very valuable skill in being able to bond team members and keep clients happy.
You also mention that he is often “…distracted by the needs of others so spends a lot of his day dealing with work that is not a priority to the team or his case load.” It may be, therefore, that working with and helping people intrinsically motivates this individual. Motivation is key when we are looking at (high) performance and comes both from within the individual, psychologically (ie setting themselves a challenging task which will bring them a sense of achievement) and externally from the situation (ie receiving a bonus on completion of a task).
The interaction of these elements can be summarised as:
Performance = (Skills x Motivation) Situation.
If we know what motivates your team member, we can develop rewards (and consequences) that tap into that intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. This can be very useful when addressing another comment you made:
“I want him to be more focused on thinking through the technicalities of a situation, more detail focused, self-motivated, task focused, structured and methodical.”
The great thing about the skills that you have identified here are all learnable behavioural skills. So what does he possess already? You refer to the individual being a trainee so is it the case that some of these skills he has have not expressly been taught?
In addition, we have already found clues as to what motivates this individual. It might be, therefore, that he is not intrinsically motivated to sit down to draft long documents because it will mean long periods of working alone. Therefore, we could consider what extrinsic motivation we can create to reward the individual when he has completed this type of work quickly and efficiently? This might be a symbolic reward; like a ‘gold star’ system (don’t underestimate the impact of this type of reward!) or could be a larger reward like being involved with an internal project working with lots of colleagues and will ultimately help them. This is likely to play to all his strengths and his intrinsic motivation!
Remember, we are looking to support and challenge him in equal measures (remember the high challenge/high support mindset discussed in our earlier StressLess Clinic column [INSERT LINK]) into equipping him and developing these skills for life. We have already identified that he has a ‘will do’ attitude so if we get this right, we should be able to develop him beyond his own expectations!
Perhaps you can think about what resources you have to your disposal that you can access to support you and him in achieving all this? Such resources might be:
Expertise;
Money; and
Time.
In Summary
I would suggest that you start this exercise without the individual so that you can use it as an opportunity for your own self refection.
Ensure that you are always identifying what are really your needs and wants so that you can separate them from the individual’s. You may need an objective facilitator to challenge and support you in doing this!
But, before you implement any changes, ensure that you are working with the individual to gain insights from them, after all, they live with themselves 24/7! It might be that you do utilise psychometric tools as part of this exercise.
Identify the individual’s strengths and where they excel currently.
Consider the individual’s current skill set and, therefore, identify their capability levels.
Identify what motivates the individual intrinsically and extrinsically.
List the behaviours that you would like to see more of from the individual.
Agree rewards (and consequences) that are relevant to the individual’s motivation, the skills they have and the skills you want to see, which will result in the performance you desire (or higher!).
And remember: Performance = (Skills x Motivation) Situation.
Good luck! And please do contact me if you need any further support or challenge.
If you would like to find out more about honing your leadership skills then book a FREE 40 minute Discovery Call with me now by visiting the website!
The StressLess Clinic column
This is a monthly column, which is part of the StressLess Clinic that supports leaders in professional practice. The solutions are drawn from the core of Flying Free or Fly Higher programme, which incorporates Liberating Leadership or Pioneering Professional.
Each month I answer a scenario based on real life events so that we can all learn and improve our leadership techniques. All scenarios are anonymised so it’s just coincidence if they remind you of a colleague; we all experience similar issues!
If you’d like to submit a ‘situation’ to be considered and (if you’re the chosen one!) responded to, please do so via the Contact page on my website! Subscribe to the Skylark Post to ensure you get this monthly column and other news delivered directly to your inbox!
