Tech Leadership Tuesday with Lena Reinhard: How to Manage Underperforming Individuals and Teams with Marcus Blankenship

As a tech leader, addressing underperformance is one of the most challenging—and unavoidable—parts of your role. Whether it’s a high-potential engineer struggling to meet expectations or a team that’s lost momentum, unresolved performance issues drain morale, slow delivery, and create ripple effects across your organization. Avoiding the conversation or applying quick fixes rarely works. So how do you diagnose the root causes, have productive conversations, and create actionable improvement plans—without demotivating your team or burning yourself out?

Marcus Blankenship and Lena Reinhard discuss practical strategies to identify and address underperformance in both individuals and teams. You’ll learn how to distinguish between skill gaps, motivational issues, and systemic blockers, and discover frameworks for giving clear, compassionate feedback that leads to change. You’ll also hear when coaching is appropriate —and when it’s time to make a tougher decision. You’ll leave with a clearer approach to turning performance challenges into growth opportunities for your people and your organization.

Tech Leadership Tuesday is a dynamic monthly live event that helps empower people and technology leaders to become more effective and successful in their leadership roles. Each episode delves into a relevant topic for engineering leaders and, through a conversation between a host and guest, you’ll learn about common challenges, best practices, and lessons learned from the guest’s experience. During the event, you may ask the host and guest questions about the topic or leadership in general.