Do you have the right person in the right role?

Who on your team is costing you too much energy?

I don't necessarily mean time.

I mean energy.

They're the person you find yourself thinking about on the drive home.

You check their work more than you should. You compensate for things that aren't getting done. You have another conversation about the same issue.

And eventually you find yourself thinking:

“What am I going to do with this person?”

I have this conversation surprisingly often with leaders.

And before deciding that someone is a “performance problem”, I like to use part of a very simple framework from EOS:

Right Person. Right Role.

Let's start with the role.

EOS suggests three questions:

Do they GET IT?
Do they really understand the role, what is expected and what success looks like?

Do they WANT IT?
Do they genuinely want to do this job—not simply want the salary, title or security that comes with it?

Do they have the CAPACITY to do it?
Do they have the skills, capability, emotional capacity and resources required to succeed?

I then add two questions of my own whenever the answer is NO.

First:

What impact is this “No” having on their work?

Don't settle for “They don't get it.”

What are you actually seeing?

Missed deadlines? Poor decisions? Lack of initiative? Frustrated colleagues? You constantly having to step in?

Then comes the more important question:

How could we turn the NO into a YES?

Perhaps they don't GET IT because nobody has ever properly explained what good looks like.

Perhaps they don't WANT IT because the role has changed—or because you've never really understood what motivates them.

Perhaps they don't currently have the CAPACITY, but training, coaching, additional resources or removing another responsibility could change that.

Or perhaps the honest answer is:

This “No” isn't going to become a “Yes”.

That's useful information too.

Because sometimes a struggling employee isn't a bad employee.

They're a good person sitting in the wrong role.

So here's my challenge.

Think about the person who's consuming too much of your leadership energy and ask:

GET IT?
WANT IT?
CAPACITY?

For every “No” ask:

What's the impact?

Then:

What would it take to turn this into a Yes?

You may discover you've been trying to solve the wrong problem.

And getting good people into roles where they can succeed is one of the things that can help you love growing your organization.