When Waiting Becomes a Leadership Decision -

If you are postponing a performance decision, more time only helps when something changes.

I don't think I have ever fired someone and later regretted it. I have, many times, regretted waiting too long.

But that realization doesn't stop me owning my part in the problem. I had either made a mistake in hiring or failed in onboarding.

I do not want that reflection to become an excuse for avoiding a decision. I want it to change the way I approach one.

The two separate questions are: What does this situation need now? And what did my leadership contribute to it? Answering only the first can leave you repeating the same problem with someone new.

Give the extra time a purpose

Patience can be a thoughtful leadership choice. Someone may need a clearer expectation, a chance to practice, or feedback they have not received.

But waiting without identifying what needs to change leaves everyone with the same uncertainty.

If you believe more time will help, be able to explain why. What is the employee working to improve? What support will you provide? What evidence will you both examine next?

Those questions turn an indefinite delay into a specific commitment. They also make your part visible. If you agreed to provide training or remove an obstacle, the next conversation should include whether you did it.

An extra week is a period of time. It is not, by itself, a plan for improvement.

Examine the expectations you actually communicated

Early in my career as a manager, I made the mistake of assuming people were like me. I thought I did not need to give them much direction.

That assumption is easy to miss when you are evaluating someone else's work. You know what you intended, so you may judge the result as though the other person knew it too.

Before describing an expectation as obvious, ask where you made it explicit.

What result did you agree on? Did you explain which decisions the person could make? Did you discuss what should happen when the work got stuck?

This does not mean every performance problem comes from unclear direction. It means a leader should check their own contribution before treating a disappointing result as the whole story.

Learn from the hiring decision, too

I also need to examine the hiring decision. Calling someone a bad fit does not explain what I got wrong.

What did I believe the role needed? What evidence did I use to decide this person could do it? What did I leave untested or unexplained?

These are questions for improving the next decision. They should not become a rewritten history in which the warning signs were always obvious and only the employee was responsible.

If you discover that you hired for one job and then expected another, that matters. If you discover that your onboarding covered tasks but left out priorities, that matters too.

Write down the specific lesson. 'Hire better people' gives you almost nothing to use next time. 'Explain the decisions this role owns before someone accepts it' gives you something you can change.

Own your part without leaving the situation unresolved

Responsibility can pull a leader in two unhelpful directions. You can blame the employee and learn nothing about your own decisions. Or you can feel responsible and postpone the conversation indefinitely.

I want to avoid both.

You can acknowledge a hiring or onboarding mistake while still addressing what the work now requires. You can give someone a fair chance to improve while being clear about what improvement means.

Before your next difficult performance conversation, prepare two short lists: the specific work that needs to change, and the specific support or clarity you owe the person.

Then decide what happens next and when you will revisit it. Do not leave the employee guessing while you privately debate the situation.

Learning from your part in a problem is leadership work. So is bringing the uncertainty to an end.

Talk through a leadership decision with me.