Table of Contents

The Demand

Before you address your next underperforming cast member, you run the six leadership failures against yourself first — hiring, training, evaluation, coaching, values alignment, culture. If you skip this and go straight to blaming the person, you are the operator who ends up in the seventy-six percent who do not make it past year three.

The Work

  1. Pick the cast member you are currently frustrated with. Before any corrective conversation, answer each of the six questions in writing: Did you hire them for talent or because you needed a body? Did you train them to mastery or hand them a manual? Does your evaluation measure real performance or likability? Can the manager who oversees them coach and handle conflict directly? Were their values checked before hire, or hired around and hoped to fix later? Does your culture reward the standard or subsidize mediocrity?
  2. For every “no” or “not really” answer, that failure is yours to fix before you fix the person. Write down the specific correction — a revised interview process, a rebuilt training sequence, a new evaluation criterion, a coaching conversation with the manager who avoids conflict.
  3. Fix at least one of your own failures this week before addressing the cast member’s performance directly.
  4. Only after your own audit is complete do you have the performance conversation with the cast member — informed by what you found, not separate from it.

This week, you complete the six-failure self-audit in writing before you correct anyone else, and you fix at least one system failure you found.