Are They Good at Their Job?

Something is not right with a member of your team. You know it. Their manager knows it. Their teammates know it too. It's not that they're not working hard. It's something more personal than that.

• You hear the low groan of gossip and the off-hand comments about them slipped into a conversation.
• You see them fall short on commitments or quality and then attempt to shift the blame elsewhere.
• You sense the tension between them and others in meetings.

And yet, when you try and talk to their manager, you'll often hear something odd:

"But they're really good at their job."

The problem is, it's not true.

It might be true that this person is good at some of the technical elements of their job; coming up with marketing ideas, writing code, making sales calls, moving fast through support tickets, etc. But what's not true is that having one of those skills makes you good at your job, or a valuable member of the team.

If all a member of your team has going for them is a technical skill then they're not good at their job. They're terrible at it.

Being good at your job means being good at being part of a team. And being a member of a team is all about relationships. It's in the ability to own how you impact other people. To stand up for yourself when others impact you. And, more than anything, it's being able to be a vulnerable professional, someone who has the skill to name what they're feeling rather than sitting on it and then acting it out.

It's learning how to speak your mind respectfully and be open to learning things about yourself that you don't know yet (aka personal growth).

And here's the most important part: It's not your employees' responsibility to figure all this out. It's yours.