Tag: human-resources

Reader asks: “Hey James! As a young leader in your organization, how would you go about holding your direct reports accountable when they may be older and more experienced than you in their respective fields?”

Wonderful question. This is something I (Ironically as a young leader) have a lot of experience in. How do you deal with the tenured, experienced employee who has seen it all and done it all? I’ll answer this question in three separate parts: Role, Responsibilities and Process.

First, let’s discuss Role. Let’s assume your role is generalized as a Mid-level Manager role (Operations Manager, CI leader, Team Leader etc), and your direct report is somebody who holds a specialized position (This assumption is made because “Experience” typically lends itself to more skilled position) so they have some pull in the work environment or may even be a specialist. The first conversation you need to have with that individual is Role. What is your Role in the company? In my case, I am responsible for the P&L, Safety and Quality of my business. Then you need to decide the Role of the individual. Are they a specialist? Are they responsible for maintenance? Are they a leader? How do they impact you roles? For this example I will assume you are a leader and they are one of your skilled employees (meaning not minimum wage) and your Role is to lead them and provide KPI’s to your boss that are positive. Let’s assume their Role is to be a member of your team and positively influence those KPI’s.

This leads us into Responsibility. What are this individuals exact responsibilities? All too often as leaders we look towards the job description for the answers. “Participate in team meetings” or “Update team members” or “Create project timelines” are fine and well, but what do they actually mean? An experienced employee will find what works for them in lieu of specific guidance, and conduct their business accordingly. Let’s further our example and assume that your employee is consistently late. First, check the job description and see if it is an inherent responsibility. If not, it needs to be included and the change passed down through your team.

Lastly, let’s discuss Process. “Don’t be late again, or else” – Somebody from the 1960’s probably – May have worked back in the day, but today’s generation has options. It’s an employee driven market and quite frankly, that answer is not good enough to be an effective leader. The proper way to go about handling this would be to default to the process. If an employee is late once a week, what are the steps you take? If the employee is late daily, what steps are there to take? These Processes need to be in place before you can begin to think about approaching the employee. I’ll give an example process below that I have used in the past that was effective;

“Points Attendance System”

10 Points = Terminated

8 Points = Final Warning

5 Points = First Written Warning

3 Points = Verbal Warning

Call in = 1 Point

No Call No Show = 3 Points

Late = .5 Points

Points fall off after a year of being active (if you get 1 point today, it’ll fall off 1/8/2026 of next year)

This can work for KPI as well, however I would caution you against disciplining employees for KPI related work. My advice would be to look at the process in its entirety as well as the machines or items that are a function of the process before you ever start looking at the employee. Fix the Process not the employee is my general guideline. Employee moving slow? Maybe the process isn’t efficient enough. Not sure if the Employee is moving too slow? KPI’s are not reflecting actual work performance.

In summary, you might have noticed I didn’t bring up experience or age in most of my solutions. This is because neither of these should be the main driving factors in an employee’s performance. Experience can be a positive, but it can also be a negative. If your employee knows more than you about the job (this is the case 99% of the time) then you should be happy about that. Understand that your role as a leader is not to do the job, it’s to support your employees to do their job better, faster, easier and ensure everybody is held to the same, clear standard. I love this question and it really is a fun one because it focuses in on what a leader is and their role.