A Team Member Isn't Pulling Their Weight

The Problem Is Already Spreading

You have a team of five. Four of them are doing their jobs. The fifth isn't, and everyone knows it.

Morgan has missed self-imposed deadlines, turned in work that needs more review cycles than anyone else, and skipped two team meetings without explanation. In your one-on-ones, Morgan says everything is "on track." The work says otherwise. Your most senior person pulled you aside and told you they've absorbed three of Morgan's tasks this month and they're burning out. Someone else took a shot in standup about "some people" not updating the project board.

You like Morgan. They were strong in year one. Something has shifted.

Here's the hard truth: the longer you wait to address this, the more you're punishing the people who are showing up and delivering. Every week you don't act is a message to your best people about what your standards actually are.

But charging into a confrontation without thinking it through is just as bad. Let's do this right.

What You Actually Know vs. What You've Heard

Before you say a word to Morgan, you need to separate what you've observed from what you've been told.

Your senior team member's frustration is real. The standup comment is real. Both of those things tell you the team's patience is wearing thin, and you need to know that. But they are not evidence you can use in a performance conversation. Walking into that meeting and saying "the team is saying you're not pulling your weight" is a disaster. You've turned a coaching conversation into a tribunal, and you've made it personal before it needs to be.

What you can bring into the room is what you've seen with your own eyes. Missed deadlines. The specific number of review cycles on specific deliverables. The two missed meetings. The gap between what Morgan tells you in one-on-ones and what you're actually seeing in the work.

Document those things before you sit down. Dates, deliverables, outcomes. Not a legal case, just enough specificity that you can be concrete instead of vague. "I've noticed the last three deliverables needed more revision than usual" lands differently than "your work quality has been off." One is an observation. The other is a verdict.

The First Conversation

This is not a performance conversation yet. It's a clarity conversation, and that distinction matters.

Morgan may not know you see a problem. That sounds hard to believe, but I've had this exact conversation with people who were genuinely surprised. Sometimes people are in survival mode and they're focused on keeping their head above water, not on how they look from the outside. Sometimes expectations were never as clear as the manager assumed. Sometimes there's something going on personally that's dragging everything down and the person has no idea how visible it is.

Walk in curious, not prosecutorial.

Start with the facts you've documented. "I want to talk about the last two months, because I'm seeing a pattern that concerns me. The Horizon deliverable came back for revision three times. The status on the Calloway project has been marked in progress for four weeks. You missed the Tuesday planning meeting and last Thursday's team sync without flagging it to me ahead of time. I'm not bringing this up to put you on the spot. I'm bringing it up because I want to understand what's happening."

Then stop talking. Let Morgan respond.

What you're listening for is whether this is a skill problem, a workload problem, a clarity problem, or something personal. If Morgan is overwhelmed, you need to know that. If there's something going on at home, you need to know that too, not so you can fix it, but so you can factor it in and connect them to whatever support exists. If Morgan tells you everything is fine and they don't see a problem, that's also information. That tells you the self-awareness gap is part of what you're dealing with.

What You're Specifically Avoiding

Don't bring the team into this room. The moment you reference what your senior person told you or the standup comment, you've changed the conversation. Now Morgan is defending themselves against colleagues, not having a direct conversation with their manager. That's not fair to Morgan, and it creates a whole separate mess you don't need.

Don't soften the concern to the point where it disappears. I've watched managers do this and it never works. They build up so much padding around the hard thing that the person leaves the meeting not understanding that there's actually a problem. Morgan needs to leave that conversation understanding clearly that the current pattern is not sustainable. You can be direct and humane at the same time.

Don't make promises you can't keep. If you're thinking "I'll give them a few more weeks and see what happens," put a timeline on it and say it out loud. "I want to check back in two weeks and see how things are tracking." Vague goodwill is not a plan.

Setting Expectations for What Comes Next

If Morgan acknowledges the problem and seems genuinely engaged, the next step is to get specific about what success looks like over the next thirty days. Not a long list, something concrete and measurable. Deliverables hit on the dates they're set. Meeting attendance or advance notice if something comes up. Work that goes through one revision cycle instead of three.

Write it down. Send a follow-up note after the meeting that summarizes what you talked about and what you agreed to. Not a formal write-up, just a clear record. "Hey, following up from our conversation today. Here's what we discussed and what I'm expecting over the next month." This protects both of you, and it closes the loop on any ambiguity.

Check in weekly. Not in a surveillance way, but genuinely. A quick "how's the Calloway work going?" in a one-on-one isn't micromanagement, it's follow-through. The first conversation means nothing if you don't reinforce it.

Handling the Team's Frustration

You still have four other people to manage, and they're watching.

You're not going to tell them what's happening with Morgan. That's private. But you can acknowledge that you hear them without violating Morgan's privacy.

When your senior person came to you, the right response was something like "I hear you, and I appreciate you telling me. I'm aware of the situation and I'm working on it." That's it. You've validated the concern, you've confirmed you're not asleep at the wheel, and you haven't thrown Morgan in front of the bus.

If someone makes another pointed comment in standup, address it in the moment without making it about anyone specifically. "Let's take the project board stuff offline, I want to understand where the gaps are." Then actually follow up. Don't let it sit.

The thing you cannot do is let the resentment compound. Your best people are absorbing extra work. That's a real cost to them, and they need to see that it doesn't go unnoticed and unaddressed forever.

If It Doesn't Improve

If you have the first conversation, set clear expectations, do the follow-up, and two or three weeks later the pattern is unchanged, then the nature of the conversation has to change.

That's when you move from coaching to a formal performance discussion. You loop in HR. You document what you've observed, what was agreed, and what happened instead. You're explicit with Morgan that this is now a different kind of conversation, that continuation of the current pattern will have consequences.

This is not the moment to go easy. Your team is depending on you to enforce the standards that you set, and if Morgan was once a strong contributor, they deserve the clarity of knowing exactly how serious this is.

Some people turn it around when the stakes are named plainly. Some don't. Either way, you've done the job right: curious before judgmental, direct before formal, consistent throughout.

That's what fair looks like. It's also what firm looks like.