If gender doesn't matter why bring it up in the question? You can just mention that you are leading a team of 3 and one has issues.

Are you just the team lead or also the manager ? In the companies I've worked, the team lead is the technical lead but doesn't manage employees; they're responsible of the project, makes decision about architecture and other technical aspects. The team lead reports to the team's manager, for example by making them aware of problems in the team that will impact the success or timeline of the project. Depending on what your actual responsibilities are, this will change your course of action.

@MlleMei I do think that's an important distinction. The fact that this "team lead" appears to be reporting directly to the CTO left me with the impression that it's a pretty flat org with no other leadership/manager over these staff, but if there is, you're right, that does change the perspective.

"John knows only basic Java and nothing else. Now, I am mentoring them in a front-end project made up of Angular. " Was this known at the time of hiring? Based on this detail, it sounds like John is being placed in an inappropriate role.

Possible duplicate of What can I do to make a coworker's lack of effort more visible?

@ZachTurn no this wasn't known at the time of hiring. Even, I was in a similar situation like this. I only knew Java and C++ and then was put in Angular project

I think the question title is a little off; it sounds like trying to manage a peer, when you actually have authority. Maybe say "subordinate" instead of "colleague"?

@MlleMei I am the Team Lead. But in actual, my work is to manage those 3 employees, divide the work to assign them the tasks, fix their issues and in parallel, to do another work, which my CTO assigns to me.

Is John getting paid for the training he's being told to do in off hours?

@MikeTheLiar No, he isn't getting paid for it. But I haven't assigned him the work which he has to do in office. My intention is to make him learn the basic concepts which will be beneficial for his present and future.

You are enabling John spoon feeding him solutions. Let him fail.

"How to deal with an underperforming colleague?" is wrong. It should be "How to properly manage an underperforming team member?"

Do you give John any time to train or study during work hours, or do you expect him to only do it at home in his off-time?

If gender doesn't matter, why instead of making it gender neutral, the gender of the person in question changed? How does this help the question?

If they need to learn something to do the work that is expected of them then they should be provided time during their work hours to do that learning. Otherwise what do you expect them to get done during the work hours if they are trying to learn that technology during their off hours? The simple fact is that if they need to learn it having them try to do it during work hours and learn during off work hours won't work.

In the comments of an answer the OP wrote: "Actually, I have no problem in mentoring him and allowing him subsequent time to learn. But the main problem is my CTO who has committed to the highest authority people about the delivery of project and whenever I try to tell CTO about this situation then he always replies that these excuses doesn't matter to me. [...] I, myself, is looking to switch the job due to these unfavorable circumstances." Sounds to me like you are asking an entirely wrong question!

It appears it is actually the CTO at fault, based off of your comments.

I highly recommend you check out leadership resources like getlighthouse.com (their blog is pretty fantastic). In a team leadership position you really want to get some leadership skills - and assuming that's actually 1.5 years and not 15, you definitely got chucked in the deep end!

@RuiFRibeiro if I let him fail, then surely he would learn slowly but the CTO would scold me 2x times because he had committed the project delivery date to his seniors. I feel like I am stuck in a difficult situation.

@SethR yes, I had always given him the time. Also, I told him that don't write the code until you understand the concept behind it. I gave him 2-3 websites from which he can understand the concept. But still the situation is same. If I give him a slightly difficult task to solve which he has to use his brain, he just gets frightened and gives up after 5-10 minutes.

@Froopy because I think that people, on reading my question initially, were treating me as a misogynistic guy.

Despite some of the answers, don’t blame this on you. If somebody is not willing to learn if they have huge deficits and logical working is not their thing, you won’t be able to coach or train them. Get the person on a more aproperiate position or get rid of them.

The guy does not seem invested and has no passion, it is a dead end. However in my management positions, I have learned too lessons : it is less taxing letting people not appropriate to the tasks fail than them dragging me together, and trying to change impossible deadlines ASAP.

At the bare minimum, structure tasks in a way where John focuses on the business logic side of Angular. With the framework coming from Google, the patterns are quite similar to Android (Java), at least from a JS/TS perspective. This could help ease the transition for John.

Perhaps John really is not a good worker, when you say he just does something without much logic. But on the other side 1. Why was John employed? He can't do the work he is supposed to do - did nobody ask this before employing him? 2. He is a fresh graduate. Some of them know things like that but who would assume this for sure? 3. You passively admitted 1. and 2. to him and additionally give him unpaid homework? You should desperately care about your company's reputation!

This "His main problem is that he doesn't do the work in a logical way but always try some random permutations and combinations in order to make his flukes as a successful attempt to do the work." could be a sign of said person having very minimal programming experience, and that he is just learning to program. Maybe he has participated in programming courses so that credits have been granted based on group work, and he has mostly done something else than programming.

@J.J.Hakala I have had probably half or more of my university mates finishing their course like that.

The title and this discussion are a massive false dichotomy: as if your only options are either spoonfeed them, or let them fail and damage the project and people's reputations. Also, stop before you start throwing around the term 'underperforming'; nowhere did you establish that you clearly told them "Your position requirements have changed and I need you to learn Angular and CSS". Preferably in writing. And that they are ok with this. It sounds like you should simply tell them in writing to urgently take a (Coursera/etc.) course in CSS with graded homeworks. Scheduled during the workweek...

..to me all your complaints about employee simply sound like they never heard from you to urgently learn CSS, scheduled during worktime (what %), as a priority. I mean, why not say "I need you to sign up for and complete Coursera(/whatever) class X with grade Y by date Z (company will reimburse the course fee)". Unless you're trying to invent reasons to can them. It does seem like an awfully strange way to manage people. Agree clear, reasonable, actionable recommendations with dates with your subordinates. Have a brief discussion, help them reprioritize other tasks, summarize it in writing.

And as for the complaints "main problem is that he doesn't do the work in a logical way.... tries some random permutations/ combinations in order to make his flukes as a successful attempt to do the work." So what? That's how many junior web developers start out learning stuff. For something like jQuery, that's the right learning style. So just tell them to take the course, pronto, already, with graded homeworks... you should have done this already back when the CTO changed their workload to include Angular and CSS. (Lesson learned: Don't assume they understand "learn X" the same as you)

Everyone is requested to please read the question EDIT.

A short response--your job in this position isn't to crash-train your newbie, its to wake up your CTO and force them to realize that they have unrealistic expectations.

@DG4 Ok so your edit says, down at the bottom: "The irony here is that my company hires the employees just on the basis of their aptitude test and with an extremely easy programming test. They tell the freshers that you will be provided with 6 months training. But in actual, this training goes for no more than 1 week". So your CTO (and HR) are deeply unethical and merrily churn through bodycount of hapless new-hires...

...your obligation is not to whip them harder or terrorize them more effectively or fire them faster. Nor to spoonfeed them. But to (politely, quickly, firmly) fix the CTO's dishonest and frankly insane attitude to hiring, interviewing, project assignments and training. For example, by telling CTO "If we expect new-hires to be coding Angular + CSS by day three, we must either a) add non-trivial interview questions and coding tests on Angular + CSS or b) factor in an n-month training overhead."

How did any other team leaders function under this CTO in the past? (What happened to the last team leads? How long do they stay?) How does the CTO not have a toxic reputation in the industry and locality? Are you prepared to quit (or ask to go back to being individual contributor) if the CTO doesn't cut this out? Really the CTO's behavior is the root of all evil in your scenario. You can't change anything unless you figure out how to modify their behavior. Or quit.

But anyway, your title "How to deal with an underperforming subordinate?" is an active misrepresentation. An accurate title would be "CTO refuses to do promised new-hire training, pushes unrealistic expectations, blames me as team lead - how to react?"