What nobody told you about managing underperformers — and what most managers never figure out on their own.

If you manage people, at some point, you’ve had a Johnny. Johnny isn’t delivering. Johnny doesn’t seem to get it. You’ve hinted to Johnny. You’ve talked to Johnny. You may have said something in a performance review that felt honest to you but, in retrospect, was softened enough that its real meaning slid right past him. And now you’re frustrated — because nothing is changing.

I spent over 20 years as an HR executive sitting in conversations about underperforming employees — with managers who managed Johnny, and with both the manager and Johnny in the same room. I’ve coached managers on exactly what to say before those conversations. And I can tell you: without the manager even realizing it, the message was often diluted, softened, and in some cases never mentioned at all. The manager was well-intentioned. But Johnny didn’t hear anything different. And of course, Johnny’s behavior didn’t change.

The reframe nobody teaches in management training

The single biggest thing holding good managers back from becoming great ones is a fundamental misunderstanding of what their job actually is regarding employees.

Most managers believe their job is to fix underperforming employees. When someone on their team isn’t performing, the internal pressure is: I need to make this person better. I need to turn this around. This is my problem to solve. It isn’t.

Your job is to provide the tools, resources, coaching, and context an employee needs to succeed.

What they do with those things is on them.

That sounds simple. It isn’t. Most companies don’t provide manager training or teach how to coach. Most managers are promoted because they were exceptional individual contributors — not necessarily exceptional coaches. Coaching is a completely different skill set. Effective coaching is as important as tools and resources. 

Coaching means understanding why someone else isn’t meeting that standard and building a bridge to get them there. Most companies don’t teach this anymore.

When you don’t know how to coach, you do what feels natural: you tell people what to do. Very few employees respond well to being told.

What it looks like when managers don’t know this

In my experience, managers who struggle with underperformers tend to fall into one of three traps. Each one is a different version of the same misunderstanding.

The Rescuer

This manager genuinely cares. Their internal dialogue sounds like: “I need to help Johnny. I need to fix this. This is my problem to solve.” They coach endlessly. They absorb the failure personally. When Johnny doesn’t improve, the Rescuer concludes they aren’t a good enough manager — and doubles down.

The strength here is real: empathetic, invested, engaged. The weakness is equally real: they’ve confused supporting an employee with owning the employee’s outcome. You can hand someone a map. You cannot walk the road for them.

The Reputation Protector

This manager is less emotionally attached to Johnny personally and more focused on organizational optics. Their internal dialogue sounds like: “Johnny’s performance is making me look bad. I need to turn this around before it reflects on me.”

The motivation may be self-centered, but I’d rather see urgency than apathy. The problem is that urgency without coaching skills usually produces the same result: the manager pushes harder, gets more direct, sometimes more passive-aggressive — and Johnny still doesn’t change.

And in my experience, Johnny’s struggles aren’t always a reflection of the current manager’s skills. Johnny may have come from previous managers who never had the courage to be honest. He may not have received thorough training and genuinely doesn’t know what the desired behavior looks like. He may have personal issues affecting his focus. The picture is rarely as simple as “this manager can’t manage.”

The Indirect Avoider

This one isn’t a management philosophy. It’s a resignation.

The Indirect Avoider has stopped addressing Johnny’s behavior altogether. Not because they approve of it — Johnny’s performance is obvious to everyone on the team. But the manager has quietly concluded they’ve already said something. So they stop engaging directly. The conversations get shorter. The feedback gets vaguer. The relationship gets colder.

The internal dialogue starts sounding like:

• “I’ve already said something. Nothing changed.”
• “He has to know by now.”
• “Maybe this will correct itself.”
• “I don’t want to crush his morale.”
• “I don’t want to be the bad guy.”

This is discomfort avoidance dressed up as patience. And it’s where management quality deteriorates the fastest.

Many managers believe they’ve had the conversation when what they’ve actually done is communicate disappointment without communicating consequences.

Where all three roads lead

Whether you’re a Rescuer, a Reputation Protector, or an Indirect Avoider, the end of the story tends to look the same.

Johnny is frustrated. He feels he isn’t being treated the same as when he was first hired. Johnny senses he’s being avoided in the hallway, talked over in meetings, and left out of conversations he used to be part of. He doesn’t fully understand why, because no one has clearly told him.

You’re frustrated because Johnny is still being Johnny. The relationship deteriorates — not dramatically overnight, but quietly, little by little, until one day both of you wake up past the tipping point.

Johnny starts looking for a new job. Or worse — he stays and puts in just enough effort to keep his paycheck. And you? You’re quietly relieved when he turns in his two-week notice.

That outcome is avoidable. But avoiding it means going back to the reframe: your job isn’t to fix Johnny. It’s to give him what he needs to fix himself.

What providing resources actually looks like

Providing resources doesn’t mean dropping a training manual on someone’s desk and checking the box. It means:

• Making sure the employee understands what success actually looks like in the role — specifically, with numbers and timelines, not generally.
• Providing access to training, mentorship, or peers who model the behavior you’re looking for.
• When resources are limited — and they usually are — being transparent about that and building a realistic, longer-term plan together.
• Helping the employee understand why these tools matter and motivating them to actually use them. That last part is the job.

You’re not just making resources available — you’re making a case for why engaging with them is in the employee’s interest. That means helping them understand how their current behavior is being perceived, how improving in one area can open doors to the next opportunity, and what continued performance issues may ultimately lead to. That’s coaching.

And if the employee still won’t engage after genuine effort on your part — that’s a different conversation entirely. We’ll get there.

A manager has many responsibilities. Fixing everyone on the team isn’t one of them. Giving them the tools so they can be successful is. And your boss understands this distinction.

Next week: what Johnny needs to hear — and why he probably hasn’t.

See you at the after party,

Ringo “HRNasty” Nishioka, SPHR, SCP

HRNasty.com

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Ringo Nishioka writes about how managers actually make career decisions. Follow on LinkedIn and Bluesky.