How would you handle a situation where a team member is not contributing?

When a capable person on your team stops moving the work forward, the first instinct is often to deliver a stern talk or to quietly take the task back yourself. Both moves feel decisive in the moment but neither solves the real problem. Performance is not just a matter of attitude. It lives inside the design of the work, the clarity of expectations, and the systems that turn effort into outcomes. Treat the situation as a design problem and you will avoid the drama that so often surrounds underperformance.

Begin by resisting the urge to tell a story about the person. Narratives multiply quickly. They are disengaged. They do not care. They are lazy. None of these labels help you lead. Instead, collect evidence. Look at concrete artifacts from the period where momentum faltered. Read the tickets, the drafts, the email threads, and the calendar. Notice whether the person is unclear about what outcomes they own. Notice whether they are drowning in reactive tasks that do not connect to team priorities. Notice whether they are blocked by a decision or a missing input that only you can provide. This quiet review is more than an audit. It is a way to see the system that produced the slowdown without confusing it with your feelings about the person.

With a neutral diagnosis in hand, shift from observation to conversation. Invite the team member to a one on one that frames the problem as shared work. Anchor the discussion in the business outcome that matters, not in generic traits. Replace soft requests like be more proactive with observable expectations like deliver a complete draft by Wednesday at 3 pm that covers these sections and resolves these open questions. Ask them to restate the outcome in their own words. Polite agreement often hides ambiguity. Alignment only counts if it can survive stress, competing priorities, and the ordinary noise of a busy week.

Turn the conversation into a compact role charter. One page is enough. Name the mission of the role in a single sentence. List the three outcomes that define success in the next six weeks. Clarify decision rights. If the person must wait for approval on every choice, velocity dies and so does initiative. If they can decide on scope and sequencing within a clear boundary, forward motion returns. Close the charter by mapping interfaces with other functions. Spell out where handoffs begin and where they end. Ownership is not a vibe. It is a map that shows who moves first, who follows, and where responsibility changes hands.

Now create a short intervention window. Three weeks is a workable horizon. In the first week, remove a major blocker and reduce competing work so the core outcome can breathe. In the second week, choose two visible checkpoints with dates and clear artifacts, such as a working draft, a demo clip, or a validated customer note. In the third week, consolidate what the person has shipped and document the habits that made it possible. If progress stalls again, the evidence you have gathered will help you decide the next step without heat or speculation.

Support should match the root cause. If the gap is skill, encouragement alone will not help. Offer a targeted skill ramp with a narrow scope. Pair the person with a peer for focused working sessions that model the needed moves. If the gap is confidence or psychological safety, rebuild your review rituals. Replace performative meetings with quieter sessions that welcome early drafts and rough thinking. If the gap is prioritization, install a weekly planning check that forces tradeoffs in writing and protects the small number of goals that matter. Clarity is not punishment. It is coaching made visible.

Leaders often struggle with whether to tell the wider team what is happening. Total secrecy creates mystery and rumor. Total exposure creates fear and humiliation. A useful middle path is to share process without naming people. Tell the team that you are tightening ownership maps, that midweek checkpoints will anchor work, and that each person will hold fewer priorities at one time. When you explain the system changes, everyone learns the new rules and no one becomes a cautionary tale.

If the person remains stuck after a fair reset, consider whether the role is the wrong fit. Some people fail in broad, ambiguous roles and thrive when the box is tighter. Others struggle in coordination heavy jobs but do well in maker heavy lanes where time and focus are protected. Use the evidence you collected to propose a redesign that aligns with the person’s strengths. A thoughtful redeploy can save a hiring cycle, preserve culture, and turn a frustrating chapter into a productive one. A forced stretch that never fits will drain the team and corrode trust.

If an exit becomes necessary, handle it with precision and respect. Document objective gaps, the support you provided, and the checkpoints that were missed. Keep the conversation grounded in role requirements and business needs. Thank the person for the work that did land. Offer a reference for strengths you genuinely observed. Your team will learn what accountability means by how you manage endings. They will also learn whether your standards are real, and whether dignity is possible even when outcomes fall short.

There is a regional dimension to this problem that matters in many young companies across Southeast Asia and the Gulf. Leaders sometimes delay tough conversations in the name of harmony. The delay rarely produces harmony. It produces quiet resentment, hero culture for high performers, and a soft normalization of low contribution. Kindness does not require the absence of standards. The kindest move is to make ownership visible, feedback routine, and priorities sane so that most people can succeed most of the time.

Remote and hybrid work add complications that design can solve. If collaboration is mostly asynchronous, build visibility into the system. Require short working notes that record decisions, open questions, and next moves. Keep a living decision log that any teammate can scan in five minutes. Move from status theater to artifact first reviews that evaluate what exists rather than how confidently it is presented. When the work is inspectable, contribution is not a matter of vibe or charisma. It is a traceable trail.

Prevention is less thrilling than rescue, but it pays better. Protect new managers from spans of control that are too wide. Coaching disappears when one lead is responsible for eight or nine direct reports while also carrying an individual workload. Name roles by outcomes rather than by department nouns. A person can sit in marketing without owning funnel analytics if that responsibility lives with growth. Finally, run a monthly ritual that asks two questions in writing. Who owns this. Who believes they own it. Any mismatch is a future slowdown waiting to happen.

The pattern here becomes a compact framework you can reuse. Diagnose without judgment by reviewing artifacts and interfaces. Recontract outcomes with a one page charter and a three week plan. Enable with support that matches the real gap. Escalate decisions with documentation and respect if performance does not improve. Each step signals that standards are not a speech. They are a structure.

Before you act, sit with two reflective questions. If I stopped showing up for two weeks, would this role keep moving. If this person left tomorrow, which outcomes would stall and why. Your answers will tell you whether the issue sits inside one person or inside a system you have not built yet. If the system is thin, fix the system first. If the system is sound and the person still cannot deliver, then you will have earned the clarity to make a hard call.

The phrase how to handle a team member not contributing sounds like a delicate conversation. In practice, it is a design conversation. You are not looking for a clever speech that jolts someone into action. You are building a way of working where contribution is the natural outcome of clear ownership, reasonable focus, and inspectable progress. Most people will rise to meet a structure like that. For the few who do not, the path forward becomes simple and calm, and the rest of the team learns that your culture is both human and serious about outcomes.