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Hi guys,

I joined my company back in February. I inherited a poor performer that had a documented history of absenteeism and unreliability, also underwhelming productivity. I continued documenting him, and spoke of a possible performance plan. He left on his own accord back in April. Most of my team was hired in 2015. The rest of my team is solid. When this guy left, since my team is newly formed, I got a lot of concerns and inquiries from individuals about their own performance.

I’m working an agile process and have been encouraging my team to focus on team throughput, rather than individual productivity. I got pushback from one of my developers, citing this recent mysterious departure. Helping a tester might not be traceable back to his core duties as a developer kind of thing.

What can I say to my good-performing team to put them at-ease? I can't speak of the circumstances of poor-performer departure, but yet I want him to know: "you got nothing to worry about!"

-Tom

dhildreth's picture
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my method would be to explain the process that you would use for someone that had a performance issue - such as feedback, coaching, and then a specific performance plan if things did not improve.
Then the logical step is "if this is not happening to you, then you can infer that I do not see any issues with you".

williamelledgepe's picture
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I have found the feedback model puts people at ease. Especially when positive feedback dominates. 

If you want someone to know they have nothing to worry about, You could also tell him or her, that he or she has nothing to worry about. Or you could say, here are the expectations, meet those and you are good.