Do your people know what performance means? Or are they guessing?

What does performance mean in your organisation?

What are your earliest memories of having your performance assessed?

Mine are from school. At the kitchen table, my parents told me to focus on effort while my older brother pushed me to chase the highest grades.

That tension followed me into university and then the workforce.

I kept hearing "do your best," but what that seemed to mean was “be the best”:

• Team members pushing their hardest but struggling to meet goals would miss out on opportunities to progress.
• Product teams celebrated for launches while operations teams handled outages and customer escalations without recognition.
• People who needed time off work were left behind whilst others rose up the ranks.

I once saw a leader working nights and weekends trying to keep up with expectations; celebrated for delivering high value while simultaneously being chastised for not setting a good example of workload and boundaries for their team.

I've watched countless teams receive a barrage of messages to prioritise work-life balance yet struggle to keep up with the expectations to meet climbing performance targets.

The thing is, many factors that influence success (in terms of achieving outcomes) sit outside a team’s control.
But giving their best given the conditions they’re working in? That's squarely in the team’s hands.

So what does performance actually mean?​
➡️ Is it about achieving outcomes? giving your best effort? A mix of both?

How a performance philosophy helps

Most people start their careers wanting to do meaningful work, grow their skills, and have an impact. Without a clear performance philosophy, team members feel lost - they stop focusing on doing their best work, and divert energy into "playing the performance game."

HR teams and leaders that invest in a bit of time up-front to clarify performance in their organisation (beyond just goal setting) create the conditions for teams to tap back into intrinsic motivation and focus on what matters:

🎯 Employees spend more time on high-value work. With a clear philosophy connecting individual performance to team performance and organisational success, people know where to focus their energy.

🧭 Leaders receive a compass for equitable people investment. Instead of unintentionally rewarding based on unconscious biases, leaders can take a fairer and more consistent approach to recognising high performance and supporting development.

💡 Your organisation can make smarter People Experience decisions. Instead of drowning in "best practices" trying to work out which performance management approach to follow, you can design employee experiences that will actually improve attraction, retention and organisational capability.

Most importantly, a clear performance philosophy helps you build an organisation where your people can do the best work of their lives, without wearing them out in the process.

How to develop your performance philosophy (the quick version):

Your performance philosophy doesn't need to be perfect. It needs to be clear enough to guide decisions AND it needs to be co-created with leadership.

HR can facilitate this work with three simple steps:

🔍 Speak to leadership about the business strategy and performance culture:

• What is your organisation trying to achieve in the next 6-12 months?
• What's the business model? How does the company create value for customers?
• What behaviours are currently being rewarded (even if unintentionally) and how are they hindering or driving business success?

💬 Bring your leadership team together and facilitate an open discussion about performance:

• What does high performance look like here? (Ask for observable behaviours instead of broad labels like "goes above and beyond")
• What are your top performers doing that others aren’t? What impact does it have?
• When rewarding performance, which trade-offs are you willing to make? Speed vs. quality? Individual achievement vs. team success? Short-term results vs. sustainable pace?

✏️ Draft a performance philosophy that answers these questions:

• What outcomes matter most? (e.g. Revenue? Customer satisfaction? Innovation?)
• How should work get done? (e.g. Collaboration? Autonomy? Speed? Quality?)
• What does sustainable performance look like? (e.g. Do we value consistency or heroic efforts? What capacity do we expect to be running at and for how long?)
• How do we respond when performance falters? (e.g. Development-first or consequences-first?)

You don't need months of workshops and a 20-page document, just a clear enough point of view to stop people guessing what "good" means. Invest a little bit of time to begin with, and then iterate if you need.​
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Don't let your performance philosophy collect dust in a digital drawer.

Your performance philosophy should guide the design of your talent strategy and employee experience, including your performance management processes.

Here is an example of how two different performance philosophies might influence leadership expectations around performance management:

1️⃣ Leaders as Coaches - "High performance means continuous growth through regular feedback and direction."

At at company with a 'leaders as coaches' philosophy, leaders would need to be close to their teams' work, providing ongoing support and course correction. This means frequent 1:1s, real-time feedback, and leaders who understand the details.

2️⃣ Leaders as Enablers - "High performance means empowered teams delivering outcomes autonomously."

At an org with a 'leaders as enablers' philosophy, leaders might instead be expected to focus on ensuring teams have the resources, capabilities, and clarity they need to succeed. This means less hands-on coaching, more strategic support and obstacle removal.

👉 In both scenarios, high performance is the goal. But they have completely different implications for how leaders spend their time, what skills they need, and what the performance processes should look like.

The bottom line: a clear performance philosophy aligns an organisation

It might seem like work, but the investment you make in aligning leadership on what success actually means for your organisation enables more autonomous and effective decision making at all levels.

Without it, you're leaving people to guess what "good" looks like. With it, you create the conditions for your team to do their best work.

Start simple: understand your business reality, collaborate with your leadership team, and make it concrete enough to guide real decisions. Test it. Refine it. Use it.

This newsletter was brought to you by Megan Trotter, in collaboration with Crewmojo

👋 Hi there,
This might be the first time you're reading some of my content. If so, I thought it might be worth introducing myself...

I'm Meg, a UXer turned PXer. I spent the early years of my career designing customer experiences and product strategy before hypothesising that the same principles could transform how we build workplaces. That led me to study Organisational Psychology and transition into People Experience (PX).

Most recently I was at the BBC leading their HR to PX transformation. I have also led PX at a scaling fin-tech startup and as a consultant for clients across a range of industries. Along the way, I've seen what happens when organisations try to adopt performance management "best practices" without understanding what actually drives performance in their context.

I believe the future of HR isn't about copying standard processes but rather designing people's experiences that align to business strategy and create workplaces where colleagues can do the best work of their lives.

And it all starts with having a clear performance philosophy.

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🐝 Meg
Director & People Experience Specialist @ PollinateXD

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