Hi all! I'm looking for advice from people that might have experienced this.
Long story short, my team had a manager for the past three years until mid 2025. In September, one of my colleagues (same level) that had 6 month seniority over me was appointed manager. As of January, the team and also upper management was unsatisfied with their work, and they had a one month time off due to work-stress mental issues. During this time, I was promoted instead of them as team manager and upper management accepted for them to come back as a subordinate. However, they are not performing well 5 months in, even as a subordinate with very easy tasks. Someone hired recently out-performs them on most KPIs. A lot of leniency has been given to this person, considering their know-how valuable. However any type of approach fails on motivating them to basically do their job.
How would you further proceed here? ETA: I'm not looking at firing them. Just don't know how to approach them regarding motivation. Giving them less to do would not be fair for the other team members.
ETA: most advice is to go through the steps of dismissal. This would have been my last resort, disregarding the pressure. I wanted advice on how to avoid this. Seems inevitable. I thought my lack of training on this "management" field is to blame.