The Untouchable: When Your Underperformer Has a Bodyguard

Every leader eventually meets one.

The team member who is not pulling their weight, everyone knows it, and yet nothing ever seems to happen. Because somewhere up the corridor sits another leader who hired them, likes them, owes them a favour or simply does not want the fuss.

You have inherited an underperformer with a bodyguard.

It is one of the most frustrating spots in leadership. You are responsible for the results, but you do not have full control over the person. Push too hard and you start a turf war. Do nothing and your best people quietly start updating their CVs.

So what do you actually do?

First, check your own story

Before you go into battle, be honest with yourself.

Is this person genuinely underperforming, or are they performing badly at the job you assume they have? Sometimes the “protected” person was hired for something different, by someone who sees value you have not spotted yet. Sometimes the expectations were never written down, so they cannot possibly be met.

Ask yourself three things.

• What exactly is not happening? Not “they are not great”. Something specific, with examples.
• Has anyone ever told them, clearly and kindly?
• Do they know what good looks like in this role, or are they guessing?

If the honest answer to the last two is “not really”, you do not have a protected underperformer yet. You have an unclear role. That is a much easier fix.

Make the performance visible, not personal

Protection thrives in fog. When performance is a matter of opinion, the person with the most senior friend wins.

So take the opinion out of it. Agree clear, measurable expectations for the role, ideally the same ones everyone else in a similar role has. Then track them, quietly and consistently. What was due, what arrived, what was the quality.

This is not building a case for the prosecution. It is giving everyone, including the protector, the same picture you can see. Most people defend a person. Far fewer will defend a pattern.

In an allied health business, for example, unclear expectations can ripple from one team member into delayed notes, uneven caseloads and a tired practice owner carrying the gap. That is a leadership and operating rhythm problem. Business coaching for allied health providers can help owners make roles, measures and conversations clearer without turning people into numbers.

Talk to the bodyguard early

The instinct is to avoid the other leader until you have “enough evidence”. That usually backfires. By the time you arrive with a folder of examples, it looks like an ambush, and they dig in.

Go early, and go curious.

“I want to get the best out of Sam. You know them better than I do. What do you see as their strengths, and where do you think they need support?”

You will learn something useful. You will also turn a potential opponent into a co-owner of Sam’s success. It is much harder to protect someone from a plan you helped write.

Coach first, properly

Give the person a fair go, and make it a real one.

Clear expectations. Regular, short check-ins. Support where the gaps are skills, and honest conversations where the gaps are effort. Write down what you agreed, and follow up when you said you would.

Plenty of so-called underperformers turn out to be people who were never managed. A little structure and genuine attention fixes more of them than you would expect, and they often become fiercely loyal to the leader who finally bothered.

If it does not change, escalate the pattern, not the person

Sometimes, despite all of this, nothing moves.

At that point you take it up the line. But how you do it matters. Not “Sam is hopeless and Jo keeps protecting them”. Instead: “Here is what the role needs, here is what we agreed, here is the support we put in, and here is what has happened over three months. I need a decision on how we handle this.”

You are not asking anyone to pick a side. You are asking them to look at the facts and make a call. Leaders who protect people rarely want to be seen protecting results that are not there.

The bit nobody likes to say

Here is the uncomfortable truth. The biggest cost of a protected underperformer is not their own work.

It is what everyone else learns from watching.

When your strongest people see that standards apply to some and not to others, they draw a very simple conclusion: effort is optional, and fairness is not on the menu. Some will ease off. The best will leave. And the person you were trying not to upset ends up costing you the people you could least afford to lose.

That is why this matters. Not because one person is slow, but because the whole team is watching how you handle it.

In Mistakeology terms, the original mistake was probably small: a rushed hire, a vague role, a favour between friends. The expensive mistake is letting it run because the conversation feels awkward.

Have the awkward conversation. Kindly, fairly, early.

Your team will thank you, even the ones who never say it out loud.