What's the difference between performance management and development and why should you care?
Many of the people we work with in our workshops ask us what kind of formal review process would best support a culture of Radical Candor. Before answering this question, I want to be really clear on one point: The biannual or annual review is performance management, which is different from developmental feedback!
Radical Candor is mostly about developmental feedback, which has to occur regularly—ideally every week—in impromptu two-minute chats. You risk undermining all of your hard work spent making your culture more Radically Candid if you conflate development and performance management.
The way you think about developing the skills of the people in your organization and how you think about performance management must be aligned.
It is a manager’s job to both help each person on their team develop and grow in their career, and also to manage the performance of each person.
If you are trying to create a culture of Radical Candor, it’s important to explain the difference between development conversations (impromptu chats that happen weekly) and a performance review (the formal annual or biannual process that tells people where they stand).
Balancing the intrinsic desire to improve and grow and the extrinsic desire for rewards like bonuses, equity, and promotion is one of the most difficult things about being a manager.
It also makes designing performance management systems and teaching development very difficult.
If you’re not careful, you’ll design a performance management system that makes people reluctant to invest in development or a development system that is so focused on helping people improve you never do proper performance management or let people know when they are simply in the wrong job.
An easy way to think about the differences:
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Why is it so important to keep development and performance management separate?
The ratings and rewards or penalties associated with performance management trigger a threat response that makes it really hard for people to take in any kind of development suggestions during that process.
When you give someone a rating, it’s natural for them to focus on how they can convince you to give them a better rating so they get a bigger bonus or a promotion, or how they can avoid getting fired. They are focused on the consequences, not on their development. Asking people to concentrate on how they can develop their skills when there’s a big, honking bonus check at stake or their job is on the line just isn’t realistic.
That’s not a reason to eliminate performance reviews. It’s a reason to separate development conversations and performance management. But people have often come to expect the rating and the developmental feedback will come together at one time, and only once or twice a year.
For a team to truly succeed, leaders must be held accountable for investing in the development of the people who work for them, not just for doing proper performance management.
If development is never taught nor compensated, it won’t happen. Development takes real work and emotional discipline; it must be rewarded before a person gets to heaven.
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All too often people use a performance review process as an excuse not to have the two-minute impromptu conversations that are an essential part of development and should be happening separate from a performance review.
A performance review process without regular development conversations is like capping a rotten tooth. It will just rot faster and more painfully.
So if you are trying to create a culture of Radical Candor, it’s important to explain the difference between development conversations (impromptu chats that happen weekly) and a performance review (the formal annual or biannual process that tells people where they stand).
You want to maximize the chances that development conversations are purely about helping each person to improve and to allow the performance management process to focus on making compensation and promotion decisions more transparent.
Performance Management and Performance Development are Both Part of Your Job as the Boss
Radical Candor is mostly centered on development, on the habit of soliciting and giving frequent, on-the-spot guidance. But this does not mean I don’t believe in performance reviews. Indeed, I’m concerned about the trend that many companies seem to be deemphasizing them or eliminating them altogether. I predict most of these companies will have to reinstitute performance reviews.
If companies decide to divert resources into teaching managers to have more frequent and meaningful development conversations before designing a new and improved performance management system, that would be a big step in the right direction. But if they eliminate performance management and don’t step up their development efforts, then managers simply aren’t being held accountable for managing.
Good performance management is fundamentally about results, fairness, retention, and transparency. It’s about making sure that the people who have the best skills get more responsibility if they want it, so they can have a bigger impact. That improves the results of individuals and teams collectively. Plus, it would be unfair to promote incompetence or to pay the person who’s doing sloppy work the same bonus as the person who is doing excellent work.
It’s also about retention. You want to make sure you’re identifying the people achieving the best results, and doing what you can to keep them happy and productive so they don’t quit. And, crucially, a good performance management system will make decisions about pay, promotions, and firing more transparent; the transparency will hold managers accountable, resulting in better, more fair decisions.
Managing other humans is not a job to be entered into lightly. In general, we undervalue the emotional labor of being the boss. But this emotional labor is not just part of the job; it’s the key to being a good boss.
Radical Respect is a weekly newsletter I am publishing on LinkedIn to highlight some of the things that get in the way of creating a collaborative, respectful working environment. A healthy organization is not merely an absence of unpleasant symptoms. Creating a just working environment is about eliminating bad behavior and reinforcing collaborative, respectful behavior. Each week I'll offer tips on how to do that so you can create a workplace where everyone feels supported and respected.
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2moGood article for the most part. It help me narrow down my path for wanting to bring Employee Development into companies. I've had jobs where I rarely get formal reviews or proper training; especially since I have a small learning disability and a 20 question gal. So most companies just doesn't have that patience to provide the extra training or spell it out in a way that I can understand them.
Product Engineering @ Coursera | ELC Silicon Valley Chapter Lead | UIUC Gies MBA Candidate
1yAgree with everything you said. Developing a system to keep ahead of all this, and stay well prepared and maintain consistency/energy when meeting each person takes a lot of work, discipline and self-awareness. Also, the expected methods used vary across different organizations, and even within organizations, adding to the complexity. It's a challenging and rewarding role.
Cofounder and former CEO, Confirm. Founding Chief Product Officer, Carta.
1yYour post highlights the complexities managers face in balancing employee growth and performance. For what it's worth, at Confirm, we use Organizational Network Analysis (ONA) to address this issue. By asking questions like "Who do you go to for help and advice?" or "Who energizes you?", we're able to map relationships and understand the underlying dynamics within teams. Incorporating ONA allows managers to identify not just the obvious stars but also the "quiet contributors," which enables a more nuanced approach to development and performance management.
Leadership Coach & Conflict Resolution Specialist | Executive Coaching | Team Coaching | Accredited Workplace Mediator | Helping Leaders Transform Conflict into Growth
1yThe sentence, "In general, we undervalue the emotional labor of being the boss. But this emotional labor is not just part of the job; it’s the key to being a good boss." is so true. Great newsletter piece here helping make that labour just that bit easier.
Corporate Keynote Speaker & Trainer | LinkedIn Learning, Stanford CSP Instructor | Ex-Founding Editor at LinkedIn, Prezi | Author of Unforgettable Presence: Get Seen, Gain Influence, and Catapult Your Career (Wiley 2025)
1yThis is a helpful distinction, and I completely agree that managers need to be rewarded and be given positive signals to encourage development conversations. It's a big part of the job that is too often put to the wayside in favor of the more established annual reviews.