Before You Can Explain It
When I first became a manager, I thought I knew what performance problems would look like. Clearly they would involve someone yelling in a meeting. Maybe a policy violation. Definitely an obvious technical failure so glaring it couldn’t be ignored. I had a mental catalog of scenarios, and I was confident I’d recognize one when it showed up.
For the most part, that’s just not how it works.
Underperformance rarely arrives as a single event. It usually arrives as a pattern.
Looking back, I don’t think I recognized those patterns by noticing the engineer. I recognized them by noticing how my own behavior shifted.
The first time someone on my team was genuinely struggling, I didn’t have a lightbulb moment where I suddenly knew what was happening. Instead, I found myself asking a quiet question that lingered in the back of my mind.
Is something off here?
In the first moment I consciously had that thought I would have struggled to tell you why. Nothing had exploded. There wasn't a failed release or an angry customer. It was just the growing realization that every project involving this engineer seemed to require a little more attention than the rest.
I was checking in on their projects more often. I hesitated before giving them leadership opportunities that should have been an obvious fit for their level. I found myself mentally building contingency plans before deadlines arrived. Sometimes, without realizing it, I was quietly lowering my expectations just to keep the work moving. None of those decisions felt significant on their own. It was only later that I realized they were all pointing in the same direction.
At the time, I thought I was just being thorough. Looking back, I had already started managing them differently. That's the moment I've learned to pay attention to. Not because it tells me someone is underperforming, but because it tells me I don't yet understand what's happening.
My role in that moment isn't to decide whether they're underperforming. It's to understand why I've started responding differently. That's why I investigate before I coach.
If one person consistently occupies more mental space than everyone else - you’re wondering whether they’ll deliver, building backup plans before you need them, checking in just one more time - that’s worth understanding. Not because they’re guilty of anything, but because you’ve already started adapting around something you haven’t yet explained. If I ignore those signals, I don't avoid the problem. I quietly adapt around it.
Early on I thought performance problems would be obvious. I also assumed someone else would point them out if they weren't. I had already started managing that engineer differently, but because no one else was saying anything, I convinced myself I was imagining it. Waiting for external confirmation didn't make the conversation easier. It just delayed understanding what was actually happening.
Performance dips happen to everyone. We all have projects that go sideways. We all have weeks where we’re distracted or simply not at our best.
Underperformance is the pattern that continues after expectations have been clarified. After coaching has become specific. After someone has had a chance to adjust.
By then, the cost is rarely isolated to one person. Teammates have started compensating. The manager has started checking in more often, making backup plans, and lowering the bar just enough to keep things moving.
The danger isn't that you'll miss the problem. It's that you'll adapt to it.
You stop giving them stretch work. You check in more often. You assign someone else as backup. You quietly redefine what "good enough" looks like for one person.
That's unfair to them because they never get the coaching they need. That's unfair to the rest of the team because you've quietly changed the standard.
That’s why I pay attention when I catch myself managing someone differently. Not because I’ve reached a conclusion - I haven’t yet. But because that’s when there's still time to understand the problem instead of adapting around it.
