A piece of research from Gallup* recently highlighted something that generated shocked headlines but didn’t surprise me at all. The US-based research showed that only one in five employees say they’ve had a conversation with their manager in the last six months about how to reach their goals.
When you pause on that number it of course looks shocking, especially because helping people succeed in their roles is one of the core responsibilities of leadership. Yet in so many organisations, performance management has drifted from an open dialogue that should help people improve, grow, and feel valued, into being a quarterly or annual process that involves structured forms and ratings designed for accountability.
Managers are busy and calendars are full, so it’s easy to rely on the structure that already exists and have people just work towards their formal review or appraisal. There is a well-developed process in place, and goals can be discussed in detail during that time. But there is a major hiccup there; performance doesn’t happen quarterly or annually, it happens every day.
When conversations about performance are saved up for formal reviews, they often become infrequent, overly structured, and strangely disconnected from reality. By the time the meeting happens, the context is months old and examples are vague. Feedback can become awkwardly heavy because it’s been stored up for too long, and instead of being useful the whole conversation starts to feel like a box-ticking exercise.
In coaching conversations with leaders, we often reframe performance management simply as a human interaction. We know that people primarily want to know what’s expected of them, how they’re doing, what to keep doing, what to adjust, and where they’re doing particularly well. These things are incredibly difficult to deliver in one or two formal conversations a year, it’s a format which lends itself to ‘little and often’ conversations instead. Short, regular check-ins of 30-minutes maximum, where performance on fresh and relevant projects can be discussed in real time.
There is a practice in sport called hot and cold debriefs which I encourage everyone in leadership to try. After a match or competition, teams immediately have a hot debrief where people quickly share their immediate thoughts on what worked, what didn’t, and what needs to be adjusted for next time. Later on, a cold debrief is held once people have had time to process and review what happened. Essentially, both are valuable.
Using this analogy, it seems that most business performance cycles create something closer to a frozen debrief. The conversation happens months after the work took place, when the moment has long passed and the learning opportunity has faded.
Having regular conversations can:
- Create clarity, because expectations are talked about frequently.
- Build trust, because feedback becomes relaxed and potentially more informal rather than loaded with meaning.
- Allow people to adjust quickly, rather than discovering months later that they were heading in the wrong direction.
- Give leaders opportunities to recognise progress, show appreciation, and celebrate small wins.
If someone asked your team about the quality of your one-to-one conversations, what would they say?
If that question sparks a moment of reflection, it might also be a sign that there’s an opportunity to strengthen the way performance conversations are happening in your team.
Leadership development and coaching can often help leaders build the confidence and habits that turn performance management from a process into a genuinely valuable conversation.
To find out more, contact us for a free consultation
Sources
*One in five employees say they’ve had a conversation with their manager in the last six months about how to reach their goals
https://www.gallup.com/workplace/272681/habits-world-best-managers.aspx