Diagnosing reasons behind team underperformance can feel overwhelming and is cited by managers as one of the most challenging elements of their job.

But, it doesn’t have to be that hard. In all of my years working with businesses on increasing performance and productivity of their teams, nine times out of ten underperformance comes down to one of two things (or both) – the person is either not being managed in line with their behavioural strengths, or they are in a role that doesn’t play to their behavioural strengths.

This works both for ability and motivation challenges:

Ability – someone doesn’t have the ability to do the job well. This is usually down to them either not being behaviourally strong in the role they are in, or in not having training or management that is delivered in a way that resonates with their dominant behaviours.

Motivation – they aren’t motivated enough – this is usually a result of down the job not playing to their dominant motivators, or their manager not managing in a way that motivates them.

People can, and will, work against their behavioural strengths, but when they do so, you will see gaps in performance and productivity over time. As an example – someone can be dominant in having choices and flexibility, but still work well with procedure in small doses. However, if their whole role is about creating processes, and following processes, it is highly likely they will not be as productive, motivated, or have the level of ability within process as someone with a behavioural strength in procedure.

People can swim “against the current” so to speak for a period of time (longer if they are experienced) but then over time you will start to see performance slip, or disengagement creep in, as it isn’t sustainable to work against your behavioural strengths, over a long period of time.

If you have team members who are currently underperforming it is useful to ask yourself two questions:

1. Are you as their manager, managing them according to their behavioural strengths? Using the same example as previous, if you as their manager are procedural, but you are managing someone high in choices, and you constantly give them processes to follow, a procedural list of what you need done, and you talk to them in a process driven way – you may just end up on different pages and stifle the high choices, creative piece in them. Simply put, you aren’t managing them to in line with their behaviour strengths.

To manage them with greater impact, although you may need them to follow a process, it would be better to give them a couple of choices in how to do it. You might give them a list of things to do but give them the freedom to do them in whichever order they prefer.

Simple switches in how you manage often net significant gains in performance.

2. Are they in a role that plays to their behavioural strengths? You may find that you are managing them in a way that gets the best out of their behaviours, but actually they are just in a role that isn’t a good fit behaviourally.

Using another example, if you have someone in a sales role that is neither goal focused or achievement focused, you may find that they aren’t hitting their targets and are more interested in creating a “nice” relationship with the client.

Regardless of how much achievement that role has in it, if the person doing the job isn’t motivated that way, it is unlikely they will perform in the role as well as someone who is goal focused or achievement driven.

They would perform better and have higher motivation in a role that wasn’t as highly goal or target driven, and you would have much more success placing someone with high goal focus and high achievement into the same sales role.

If you have team members underperforming in your team currently – consider the above two questions – what might you need to do differently?