Motivation case: challenges are needed

I had an underperforming employee. My team noticed that he underperformed right after a probation period. During a private meeting, he explained that he was not interested in his work and did not have any self-improvement goals. He mentioned that he used to have multiple jobs and did not have any free time to think about working on interesting staff.

It is interesting that he literally asked me to overwhelm him with tasks. 😄 So, after a short discussion, we defined challenges for him and created a self-improvement plan.

I asked the company to pay for courses that interested him. Also, I asked the developer's PO and the team to give him more ambitious tasks that looked too complicated to other teammates. We gave him a lot of challenges as he wanted! 😄

I have learned that I need to have a better understanding of the expectations of each team member that I lead.