Maintaining good performance is as important as improving weak or substandard performance. Good performers want to continue to be good performers, and so they need work that keeps them interested and engaged. If we ignore good performers, even though they are doing well, we run the risk of them losing interest and moving on to another job.

Be careful of avoiding conflict. We see supervisors who are apt to be overly critical of good employees in the belief this keeps them growing and engaged, and at the same time they are overly lenient with poor employees because they don’t want to go through the conflict necessary to have poor employees improve.

If you are a supervisor and you want to be fair and just, you must prepare and deal with both sets of circumstances. When it comes to improvement, if there is a good measurement system in place for the type of work they do, then raising the standard and offering training or development will both improve and challenge (unless they feel you are being unfair and asking them to do more than everyone else).

Remember: don’t wait until the performance review to handle problems.