Are you addressing poor performance correctly?
- 2 hours ago
- 3 min read
In our Culture Strategy Alignment 2025 Report, one finding landed with uncomfortable clarity: Managing poor performance is not being addressed in a timely or appropriate manner, making it the third highest culture blocker to success across organisations.
This is backed up by our Hogan psychometric data, where globally, challenging poor performance is the second highest area leaders need to improve.
Leaders are not skilled enough to be able to successfully navigate these difficult conversations and step into the discomfort of honest, direct conversations in a relational manner.
What is performance management?
Performance management is an ongoing, intentional system that:
Sets clear expectations
Reinforces desired behaviours, not just outcomes
Enables regular, honest performance conversations
Addresses underperformance early and constructively
Aligns individual contribution to organisational goals and culture
It is not a once-a-year appraisal, a set of KPIs sitting in a document, or a reactive process triggered only when things go wrong.
Effective performance management creates clarity for teams and leaders. Yet, many leaders seem to be encouraging confusion, frustration, and disengagement.
Why do leaders find performance management difficult?
Our Hogan insight shows leaders know they should challenge more directly, yet many shy away from discomfort or lack confidence to do so. This is because they don’t have...
A shared language for feedback
A system that normalises challenge
Confidence that directness won’t damage relationships
Without structure, leaders default to politeness, delay, or dilution. However, conscious leaders understand that:
You can manage the business and stay in good relationship
Accountability and humanity are not opposites
Clarity is kindness
The real cost of avoiding poor performance
When poor performance goes unchallenged:
High performers disengage
Productivity drops
Trust erodes
Standards drop quietly
Resentment builds beneath the surface
Talent leaves
Most damaging of all, leaders lose credibility.
While leaders might be avoiding feedback, thinking they’re being compassionate, it’s actually irresponsible. In fact, if you want to unlock growth, you need friction and courage.
How to signal that you take employee development seriously
Most leaders will say they care about the personal and professional development of their teams. Fewer are willing to prove it when it matters most.
Caring personally means:
Addressing underperformance early, instead of waiting until it becomes undeniable
Naming behavioural issues, not just technical gaps
Having conversations that are uncomfortable, not convenient
Avoidance is not neutral. When leaders choose silence, the message received is loud:
This behaviour is acceptable
Standards are negotiable
Growth isn’t really the priority
If leaders truly care about development, they must be willing to interrupt patterns that limit someone’s growth, even when that risks short-term discomfort.
Unlocking performance management at a relational level
Kim Scott, through her Radical Candor Framework, forces us to continually question how we professionally and personally support our employees and stakeholders.
Do I get out of my comfort zone? Do they? Do we both need to?
At its core, Radical Candor is about caring personally while challenging directly. Performance management that lacks either element quickly becomes dysfunctional.
Care without challenge becomes ruinous empathy: collusion dressed up as kindness.
Challenge without care becomes obnoxious aggression, and corrodes trust.
Absence of both created avoidance, and that is where culture erosion accelerates.
Performance management is about leaders demonstrating, repeatedly, that they care enough to tell the truth.
The importance of performance management systems
Radical Candor cannot survive on personality alone. It needs reinforcement at a system level. A strong performance management system:
Sets behavioural expectations explicitly
Removes discretion about whether to act
Reinforces that feedback is an obligation, not a personal choice
Aligns performance standards with stated values
When systems reinforce intentional behaviours, leaders are no longer left asking:
“Should I say something?”
The system answers:
“You must, because this is how we help people grow.”
Helping leaders care personally and challenge directly
We work with organisations that are willing to confront this reality honestly.
Our work focuses on:
Designing performance management systems that normalise candour
Building leader capability to challenge directly without damaging trust
Using Hogan insight to address avoidance patterns at source
Embedding behavioural clarity into performance conversations
The outcome is braver leadership. Leaders who can hold performance, relationships, and organisational outcomes in balance.
Accepting discomfort in performance management
If managing poor performance feels uncomfortable, that’s because it should be. Discomfort is often the price of integrity.
If you’re serious about improving performance management and creating a culture where challenge is a sign of care, not conflict, we’d welcome a conversation.
Get in touch to explore how we help leaders build performance systems that reinforce conscious, radically candid cultures.
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