If you have a team member who’s doing okay — not great, not terrible — the problem might not be the person. It might be the work.
There’s someone on your team who’s… fine.
Not a disaster. Not someone you’d rush to fire. But not great either. They’re getting things done — mostly — but work still feels slower than it should when it’s on their plate. You’ve had a conversation or two. You’ve been watching it for a while.
And somewhere in the back of your mind, a job description is starting to take shape.
Before you go there, I want you to ask one question first.
Is this a wrong person problem — or a wrong work problem?
When someone on your team is performing at a B-minus, the natural response is: wrong person. Time to find someone better.
And sometimes that’s true.
But replacing someone is harder and more expensive than most people plan for. There’s the time it takes to find the right person, the toll it takes on you and your team to cover everything while that position is open, and then the ramp-up time once someone new comes on board.
So before you go down that road, it’s worth asking: is this a wrong person problem — or a wrong work problem?
A wrong person problem means the person genuinely isn’t the right fit. The skill, the personality — it’s just not there.
A wrong work problem means something different. The person can do the work — they’re capable — but it’s not where they do their best thinking or bring their best energy.
From the outside, both look almost identical: slower output, work that feels harder than it should. But one requires a hiring process. The other requires a conversation and a closer look at who’s actually doing what.
Here’s what this looked like for one of my clients
She had a team member who’d been running at a B-minus for months. Competent. Not checked out. Just not clicking.
She was close to starting a search when she sat down and looked at what that person was actually doing every day.
Her team member was supposed to be the client relationship person — the one keeping projects moving, translating what clients actually wanted, making sure nothing fell through the cracks. That’s where she was good. That’s where she came alive.
But half her week? She was in QuickBooks. Reconciling invoices, chasing down expense receipts, tracking payments. It had landed on her plate two years ago when the business was smaller and just… stayed. She was capable enough to handle it without failing. She didn’t complain. But it was quietly draining the energy she needed for the work she was actually great at.
My client shifted the work. The bookkeeping went somewhere else. The client relationship work finally had room to breathe.
That team member became one of the strongest people on the team. No new hire. No months of recruiting and onboarding. Just the right work going to the right person.
The question to ask before anything else
Before you post a job description, before you have a hard conversation, before you make any decision about this person — ask:
Is this team member doing work that’s actually in their Zone of Genius?
Look at what fills their days. How much of it matches where they genuinely do their best work — what they’re good at, what engages them, what moves the business forward?
And here’s the thing — nobody is in their Zone of Genius 100% of the time. That’s not realistic, especially in a small business where everyone wears a few extra hats. But when someone is in their Zone of Genius about 70% of the time, something shifts. They have the energy and the bandwidth to handle the other 30% without burning out or disengaging. The work that isn’t their favorite still gets done — and done well — because they’re not running on empty.
When that ratio flips, though? When someone is spending most of their time outside their Zone of Genius, like my client’s team member buried in bookkeeping instead of client relationships? That’s when capable people start looking like the wrong person.
(If you want a refresher on how to identify Zone of Genius for yourself and your team, this post and this one walk you through it.)
You don’t need a perfect answer. You just need enough clarity to see whether the work and the person are actually matched — or whether you’ve been asking the wrong question all along.
Want to do this live?
If you’re looking at your team right now and something feels off — but you can’t quite put your finger on it — that’s exactly what the Zone of Genius Workshop is for.
On Wednesday, May 27 (3-4pm ET, free, live on Zoom), we’ll work through the Zone of Genius Framework together. You’ll leave knowing which work on your plate is actually yours, where your team might be in the wrong lane, and what to shift before the end of the week.
*Image created in Canva
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