If you’ve ever had an employee who should be a top performer but keeps plateauing, you know the emotional roller coaster of trying to “fix” performance.
Most managers in that moment default to one of two extremes:
- micro-managing (hovering, checking every move, “just do it this way”)
- “setting them loose” (hoping ownership magically emerges)
Newsflash: neither works.
Improving employee performance is not a one-time conversation – it is a system.
And the more consistent that system becomes, the less emotionally draining performance conversations become – for you and for them.
This article is for managers and team leaders who want to create better performers without taking on more work, guilt, or frustration.
Let’s break down the actual levers that move performance – the ones that are both human and tactical.
1) Clarity Always Precedes Performance
Most under-performance is not rooted in laziness.
It’s rooted in ambiguity.
Employees often think they are doing what is expected – because “expectations” were never fully defined.
Here’s the uncomfortable truth: vague expectations create vague performance.
Managers who are clear get better results even with average talent.
Clarity is not more meetings. Clarity is alignment.
Full disclosure: this is a weak point for me (and I’m sure many people who have been in the workforce for…let’s say a couple decades). You assume people know what you know and where to go with it. They don’t – and clear instructions are really what is needed.
Three Questions Every Employee Should Be Able to Answer
- What does success look like this week?
- How will we measure that success?
- When will we check progress?
That’s it.
If your employee cannot articulate those three – performance will wobble.
2) Feedback Must Be Small, Frequent, and Neutral
Annual reviews are too late.
Quarterly reviews are too late.
“End of month” is often too late.
Humans do not learn well from delayed correction – we learn by micro-course corrections.
Not emotional correction. Not piled-up frustration. Just neutral guidance soon after the behavior.
This is a management style most Millennials and Gen Z workers prefer, so why not adopt it across the board?
A simple single-sentence framework:
“Here’s what worked – here’s what to adjust for next time.”
That structure removes judgment. You can even use it live in a meeting.
Example:
“Your kickoff deck was great – the pacing worked. For next time, shorten the problem framing; we only needed half that length.”
It is short.
It is actionable.
It’s not personal.
This is how managers build safe performance growth – without becoming “the bad guy.”
3) Remove Friction Before You Add Training
Most managers jump to “they need more training.”
But training on top of friction is waste. Before offering development – remove blockers.
Friction examples:
- unclear priorities
- bottlenecked access to tools
- competing goals from other stakeholders
- poor cross-functional communication
- unpredictable work intake
Many employees appear “underperforming” when they are simply navigating chaos.
Your job isn’t to fix their motivation – it’s to fix the environment they’re trying to perform in.
90% of the time? Performance jumps the moment friction is reduced.
4) Development is Not One Giant Plan – It’s Skill Stretches
Managers often think development = career paths + formal training budgets.
That feels overwhelming, so it usually doesn’t happen.
High-performance development is actually small, targeted, near-term skill stress.
One new skill at a time. Measured in weeks – not quarters.
For example:
- Give them full ownership of one repeatable task
- Have them run one part of a team meeting
- Let them present for 5 minutes on project updates
- Ask them to build the FAQ’s for new team members
Growth is most powerful in bite-size. When development is modular – performance naturally expands.
5) Measure Outcomes – Not Effort
If you reward effort – you train people to look busy.
If you reward outcomes – you train people to deliver value.
My son worked in sales for a company that had a “renowned” training program. Their claim to fame was hiring new grads and putting them through an intensive program that taught them all of the building blocks of sales. Great, right? Not so much.
What it focused on was that 90 phone calls was more important than actually reaching a human – and that those numbers were MORE important than reaching your sales goals for the month. I don’t know about you, but as a business owner, I’m more concerned about the outcome. If you achieve your goal in 6 phone calls, it is more important to me than whether you made 600 this month. But I digress….
Managers have to model this shift:
- Stop praising “hours”
- Stop praising “responsiveness”
- Stop praising “I worked so hard on this”
Instead: Praise clarity, impact, and efficiency.
Example:
“The fact that you cut that process from 7 steps to 4 without sacrificing quality – that matters.”
Outcome praise reinforces business value. And it signals the performance bar clearly without saying “work more.”
6) Resilience is a Performance Skill (Not Just a Personality Trait)
We reward resilience when we see it, but we rarely teach how to cultivate it.
Resilience is not “push harder.” It is the ability to recover quickly and stay adaptive when things shift.
Managers can build resilient performers by:
- normalizing challenges
- asking what they learned – not just “what happened”
- using reflection as a performance amplifier
- not rescuing them too fast
Top performers earn that label not because they are perfect, but because they rebound.
High performance is consistent resilience, not flawless execution.
Where to Start This Week
If you want to see field-visible improvement, then don’t overhaul your entire system.
Start with just these two moves:
Move #1 : Define one weekly success metric for each employee
– In writing. Clear. Measurable.
Move #2 : Deliver 2 micro-feedbacks per week
– Positive or corrective.
– Short. Timely. Neutral.
These two shifts alone dramatically change:
- alignment
- engagement
- accountability
- confidence
And, most importantly, these shifts do not require new software, new budgets, or new org approvals.
They only require consistency. And consistency is where performance actually transforms.
A Final Reminder
Performance isn’t “fixed.” Performance is shaped.
And you, as a manager, are not the firefighter in this story. You are the architect.
Employees do not rise to their potential by accident ; they rise inside systems that make success easier.
- Make your system simpler.
- Make expectations clearer.
- Make feedback smaller and more frequent.
Performance will rise and your stress level will fall right alongside it.
I also wrote a similar article a few years back with a very different take. If you want to check it out, you can click HERE.
How do you improvement performance in your employees? What tips and tricks work for you?
As a reward for making it to the end of this article, I’m including a couple of free tools for you to use.
The first is a Performance Improvement Checklist. The first step to ensure YOU as a manager are providing the foundation to set your team up for success.
If all else fails, I’m including the Performance Improvement Plan. This provides a framework for employee improvement and accountability.
Follow us for more useful information and tools to make your job easier!
by Natalie Lemons
Natalie Lemons is the founder and President of Resilience Group, LLC, author of The Resilient Recruiter, and Co-Founder of Need a New Gig. She specializes in the area of Executive Search and Career Coaching and services a diverse group of national and international companies, focusing on mid to upper-level management searches in a variety of industries. For more articles like this, follow her blog.