A new leader came to me this week concerned about her first performance review with two staff members, both making genuine mistakes in how they work within the team. Her intention was good; she wanted to encourage them, not crush them. She just didn't know how to start.
The most prevalent assumption is that leadership needs to be the person talking in a meeting, the one with all the opinions, the one who walks in with the verdict already written.
If you do that, and here's what actually happens. You tell someone what they did wrong, and you may get compliance, not a change in behavior. They nod, they fix it on the surface, and the resentment sits underneath, waiting. Or worse: you soften it because you're trying to be nice, trying not to be the bad guy, and the person walks out with no idea where they actually stand. Either way, you've just taught them that conversations with leadership are something to survive, not something to grow from.
In intentional leadership, we flip the script. The leader becomes the quietest person in the room.
Here's why that works: people already know whether they're performing or not. So the first question is never your assessment — it's theirs. "Please review yourself. Where have you done well? Where can you improve?"
From there, it goes one of two ways. 1. They've assessed themselves correctly, so you ask for a plan: how they'll improve, by when, what they're committing to. Or they haven't, and now you get say what you have observed and to be crystal clear. Not soft or people-pleasy. Just true, with total clarity, using three simple lines: what I want more of, what I want less of, what you should keep doing exactly as is. It's a quiet conversation. Nobody has to defend who they are. They leave the room knowing exactly what needs to change.
The fuller process:
1. Ask before you tell. Open with "how do you think the last few months have gone?" What has gone well? Where could you improve - not your verdict.
2. Feedback stays private. Always. Correct someone publicly, even gently, and the whole room learns one lesson: mistakes get aired here. After that, people stop bringing you problems early, they hide them until they're expensive.
3. Trade criticism for "more of / less of." Name the behavior, not the person.
4. Sequence matters. If there's tension between people, individual reviews come first, the team conversation second. Fix the one-on-one friction before you ask two people to commit to teamwork in front of each other. I also think that teamwork is just a concept that needs to be translated into real actionable behaviors.
This is how you start to create a culture of accountability in a way that is not anxiety creating for your staff. people learn that a conversation with leadership isn't a verdict to survive, but a process that actually helps them grow.
Curious where your own leadership habits stand? I built a 4-minute scorecard to help you find your strengths and growth areas → https://yvonne-f9bvndu3.scoreapp.com
#Leadership #PeopleManagement #Coaching #Accountability
