Tips on how you as a boss encourage unmotivated employees

Berlin In his 16-year career as a manager, Dirk Henke particularly remembers one employee. She did a good job, her word carried weight. After a promotion, however, she never settled into her new role – and became more and more hostile to her job.

“The rest of the team actually worked in a solution-oriented manner, but the employee affected had a demotivating effect on the others,” recalls Henke, head of the freelancer market Malt. In the past few years, in which he worked as a manager for Microsoft and Yahoo, for example, he repeatedly encountered so-called “low performers” – i.e. employees whose performance fell well short of expectations.

Dealing with low performers presents managers with major challenges. Because they can be a burden on the whole team, bosses should under no circumstances ignore them. Manager Henke and executive coach Gunther Wolf give seven tips on how bosses can encourage low performers to achieve top performance again.