Tips to Get Your Slaker Team Members Pulling Their Weight!
Is there someone on your project team who only does the bare minimum, leaving everyone else to pick up the slack? If managing lazy team members feels like your biggest project challenge, you’re not alone.
Sluggish team members show up everywhere, and they can really slow things down. Arming yourself with some tried and true tips can help you quickly turn things around though, and before you know it, you’ll have everyone pulling their weight.
Tip 1 – Don’t enable them
As much as it might be tempting to avoid the discomfort of addressing the issue and instead pick up the slack for a lazy team member, that’s a passive way of dealing with the issue, one that will likely backfire and burn you out.
As the Project Manager, you’ve got to take the bull by the horns and have a tough conversation and hold them accountable. Don’t wait until things get worse, because the project will suffer, other team members will get resentful, and things can quickly get out of control.
Tip 2 – Offer direction
Your lazy team member might not be just goofing off – they might be overwhelmed with work and need some help.
Talk to them about how they’re spending their time, and if they seem overwhelmed, offer guidance on how they could be more efficient and productive with managing their workload.
More tips for managing lazy team members
There are a few more things you should do when you encounter a team member who isn’t pulling their weight, so I put together a video explaining some key strategies. It dives into what kind of tools and motivation you can offer your team member to get things turned around.
Follow me over to YouTube and we’ll keep chatting about this!
And if you want to make sure you really succeed in your project manager role, make sure you check out my SLAY Project Management course where I give you all the templates, tips, and techniques to implement to make every project successful.
Adriana Girdler, PMP | Creator of Slay Project Management™
P.S. Check out what one of my students said recently about SLAY:
“This course was priceless. It showed the practical side of PM work. Great examples and templates that you can add to your toolbox. It will surely give you the confidence needed to manage a project.” NF