The performance you never talk about

Most leaders think ‘developing’ people means giving them feedback.

Which explains why most leaders aren’t developing people at all.

What they are doing is smoothing off the edges. Why? Because feedback (the primary tool for ‘developing’ people) lives only at the edges of performance.

See if this looks familiar:

The excellent presentation gets noticed. The missed deadline gets addressed. The terrible meeting gets discussed. The standout result gets praised. But the ordinary performance - the acceptable, repeatable, ‘average to good’ performance that makes up most of someone’s working life - happens without comment.

Most performance remains unexamined.

And if it remains unexamined, it is unlikely to change.

This is what I call The No Comment Zone: the huge middle ground between brilliant and terrible where most of a person’s actual performance lives, and where most leaders say all but nothing.

When leaders only comment on the extremes, they develop the edges of performance. They tidy up what is going wrong and occasionally reinforce what is already working, but the vast middle - the place where the biggest cumulative shift could happen - is left untouched.

A person may be doing their job, but not stretching. Communicating adequately, but not influencing powerfully. Delivering work, but avoiding the harder thinking. Managing relationships politely, but not building the trust required for real collaboration.

None of this is failure.

But all of it is opportunity.

Most leaders have found a language for praise and a language for problems, but very little methodology for the ordinary moments where someone could be helped to see themselves more clearly and lift their standard.

So they say nothing until something is either excellent or unacceptable.

No comment … not through avoidance, but through genuine lack of awareness of what to say or why they are saying it. There’s nothing to fix, yet vast chance for improvement.

In The No Comment Zone lies literally dozens of small opportunities to develop the person every week. Not an overhaul of performance, but a compounding evolution of performance.

Note – this isn’t about feedback. It’s about noticing and exploring, searching for understanding of what works, why it works, and what could be better.

You might say, “I’ve noticed in the last few meetings that you bring useful information, but tend to wait until the end before offering your point of view. What is happening for you there?”

It’s not a problem, but it is an opportunity.

Or, “You handled that client conversation well, but I think there was a moment where they were looking for more direction from you. Did you notice it?”

Or, “This is working, but I don’t think it is yet at the level you are capable of. What do you think could make it stronger?”

It’s simply attention to what is.

And attention is one of the most powerful development tools a leader has.

To create high performance, you have to work with the bulk of performance, and the reality is it exists in a zone that few leaders mention. You cannot only comment on what is excellent or unacceptable. You have to become interested in the vast middle, where most current capability is being expressed and most future capability can be unlocked.

What you do not bring into conversation, you cannot develop.

And what you do not develop will almost certainly stay the same.

I teach leaders a method of communication that addresses the entire spectrum of performance, without emotion or confrontation. A method that develops the whole person (including the leader) whilst generating better results with more ease.

Sound too good to be true?

It’s not. People have potential and they want to be better. What is required is development of language and an approach to utilise your genuine insight with a newfound curiousity into what’s really possible.

Every time, it’s far greater than what you could have even imagined.