Who to develop, and who it is more honest to let go

I am not very fond of the idea that any employee can be "pulled up" if you train them enough, motivate them enough and give them enough feedback. Sometimes you can. Sometimes you cannot.

When someone is not coping, the first impulse of a good manager or HR is understandable: send them to training, assign a mentor, write a development plan. But before doing that, I would first figure out exactly why there is no result.

Four reasons for no result

The person may simply lack knowledge. Then we teach.

They may lack experience. Then they need more complex tasks, practice, support from their manager, and time.

There is another story. The employee is perfectly capable of doing good work, but practically nobody manages them. Tasks are vague, priorities change every day, there is no feedback. In that situation it is odd to "develop the employee". I would look at their manager first.

And sometimes the person is simply in the wrong place. For example, they were a strong specialist, got promoted, and the manager's role does not suit them. Here the answer is not necessarily dismissal. The person may be better off returning to an expert role where they will deliver good results again.

When the role has outgrown the person

But there are situations where the demands of the business have changed more than the person's capabilities. The company has grown, the role has become more complex, the scale of responsibility is different. The employee may be good, loyal, long-serving, yet the new role already requires something they do not have right now.

And this is where the most unpleasant part of talent management begins.

Development makes sense where there is potential and where the person themselves wants to move forward. If the gap between the role's requirements and the employee's capabilities is too wide, endless training only postpones the decision. The company loses time, the manager keeps covering for the employee, and the team sees it.

Humanity is not the same as avoiding decisions

In such moments I think it is important not to confuse a humane attitude with an unwillingness to make hard decisions.

You can give the person a chance to fix the situation. Say clearly what exactly is missing, what result is expected of them, give feedback and time to change.

But if nothing changes, you also need to be able to admit it.

Sometimes, for both the company and the person, it is more honest to part ways than to spend another six months pretending that the next training course will finally fix everything.

Share how you have handled situations like this.