In a small business, what looks like a performance problem is often a clarity problem. The fix is that every person can answer three questions without hesitating: what do I own, what does good look like, and how will I know if I am doing it well? Where any of those draws a blank, write a page for that role.
Standards need to be named clearly, recognised when met, and addressed promptly when not. Avoiding the difficult conversation creates ambiguity, and performance drops.
Are you looking at a performance problem or a clarity problem?
Ask three people separately what their main responsibility is and what good looks like in it. If the answers differ from each other, or from yours, the problem is clarity rather than effort.
What are the three questions every person should be able to answer?
- What do I own? The outcomes that are theirs, and the decisions they can make without asking.
- What does good look like? Written in terms someone could check: turnaround times, quality standards, what a finished piece of work includes.
- How will I know? One or two measures they can see for themselves, plus a regular conversation where the two of you look at the same picture.
One page per role covers all three, and you both refer to it when something is not working.
What does an unclear role cost?
An invented illustration of the shape — not a client, and not a claimed result. Two people both believe the other is checking work before it goes out, so nothing is properly checked. Errors reach clients at a rate of roughly two a month, each taking about four hours to correct across two people at a loaded £30 an hour: around £240 a month in rework, or £2,880 a year, before any goodwill discount. Add one lost client a year at an average value of £7,500 and the real figure is over £10,000. The fix is a written standard naming who checks what and when, plus a line in the delivery checklist. That is an afternoon’s work.
How do you write down what good looks like?
Take one role and one process, and write the standard as observable behaviour rather than intention. For example, write “enquiries answered within four working hours, quotes out within two working days” instead of “responsive to clients”, and list what a finished job includes instead of asking for attention to detail.
Write it with the person, who knows the work in detail, so they are more likely to hold to it. Refer to the page in your one-to-ones and update it when the work changes.
How do you hold a standard?
Holding a standard means three things done consistently: naming what good looks like in advance, recognising it out loud when it happens, and addressing it promptly and specifically when it does not. Skip the third and the first two lose their meaning, because the standard becomes optional for whoever is willing to test it.
Address a slipped standard within a week, while it is a small conversation. Our guide on difficult conversations covers the structure, and this is regular work in leadership coaching.
What about the person who is good at the job but difficult to work with?
Someone delivers good work that clients like, and is also short with colleagues, dismissive in meetings, or the reason two people have asked to be moved off their jobs. Because the output is good, the behaviour gets tolerated.
The cost falls on everyone who works around them: people stop raising problems, stop volunteering for that person’s projects, and eventually leave without giving this as the reason.
Treat behaviour as part of the standard. Write it into the page for the role in the same observable terms you used for the work: how disagreements are raised, what is expected in a meeting, how handovers happen. Then talk about that standard with a specific example, such as “In Tuesday’s meeting you cut across Aisha twice and she stopped contributing, and I need that to be different.”
Say plainly that the work is valued and the behaviour has to change, and apply the same standard to every strong performer. If nothing changes after a fair, clearly stated run at it, you are into a formal process, and that is the point to take proper HR advice rather than coaching guidance.
What do small teams do better than large ones?
Small teams have structural advantages: communication is direct, contribution is visible and course corrections take days rather than quarters. Use them deliberately, with short decision paths, openly shared information and a clear link between what somebody does and what happens to the business.
The risk is that everything depends on the owner’s habits: your standards, energy and willingness to have the right conversations shape the team more directly than any process or incentive scheme. The Team Development model is a useful map of the stages a team moves through, and what great leadership looks like in a small business covers the day-to-day version.
What should you do this week?
- Ask three people what they own and what good looks like. Compare the answers with yours.
- Write one page for the role where the gap is widest, with the person, not for them.
- Name one standard that has slipped and address it within the week, specifically and calmly.
- Give one piece of specific recognition — what they did, and why it mattered.
- Put a fortnightly one-to-one in the diary for each direct report and protect it.
- Pick one measure per person that they can see without asking you for it.
- Check what you are modelling: turning up late, cancelling one-to-ones or letting your own standards slide teaches faster than anything you say.
If the team meeting is where the ambiguity shows up, our guide on running a team meeting that works is the practical next step.
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Frequently asked questions
How do I know whether it is a clarity problem or the wrong person?
Write the clarity down first, then give it a fair run. One page for the role, agreed together, with what they own, what good looks like in observable terms and how progress will be measured. Then a fortnightly conversation against that page for two or three months. If performance moves, it was clarity. If nothing changes despite the person understanding exactly what is expected and having the support to do it, you have a different problem and you now have a fair, documented basis for addressing it. Take proper HR advice before any formal process, since coaching is not a substitute for that.
What if the team is used to lower standards?
Change it openly rather than by stealth. Say what is changing, why, and what it means in practice, then apply it consistently from that point rather than retrospectively punishing what happened under the old rules. Expect a testing period of a few weeks. Hold the standard calmly and specifically the first time it slips. A prompt, calm conversation resets a standard, and everybody notices it. Write the new standard on the page for each role, so everybody can check their work against the same description, and refer to it in one-to-ones.
Do small teams need formal one-to-ones?
Yes, and the smaller the team the more useful they are, because informal contact all day rarely covers the important things. Thirty minutes a fortnight, in the diary, with a simple shape: how is the work going against the standard, what is in the way, what do you need from me, and one thing about the longer term. Protect the slot as you would a client meeting. Cancelling it tells people their development is negotiable. Keep a short note of each one so you can see what changed since the last.
How much does pay affect performance in a small team?
Pay has to be fair and defensible, and if it is clearly out of line with the market you will lose good people regardless of anything else you do. Beyond that point, pay is a poor day-to-day motivator and a reliable source of resentment when it is unclear how it is decided. What tends to move performance more is knowing what you own, being told plainly how you are doing, having the tools to do the job well, and seeing that standards apply to everybody including the owner. Get the clarity right before you assume the answer is a rise.
What if the person whose standards have slipped is a long-serving, loyal employee?
Loyalty earns a careful, private, well-prepared conversation. It does not earn an exemption, and treating it as one is unfair to everybody who is being held to the standard. Two things make the conversation easier. First, name the loyalty explicitly and mean it, then be equally plain about the specific thing that has to change — people can hear both when they are said in the same breath. Second, ask before concluding: long-serving people often slip because the role grew around them without ever being redefined, or because something outside work is going on. You may find the answer is a rewritten page for the role rather than a performance conversation at all.